According to local musician Jemma Hicken, when the Gorge Harbour Marina partially shut down for renovations this summer, they also closed one of the most popular music venues on Cortes Island.

“Me and a lot of my musician friends have been playing at the Gorge and have been paid to play at the Gorge – which is amazing on Cortes. You don’t often find paying gigs here. Then the Gorge shut down most of its operations this year, and I think a lot of the community felt like there was a big hole left by the lack of live music. There’s been a couple of attempts at organizing live music around the island. I know that there’s live music happening at the Co-op on Saturday nights, which is awesome. We’re going to have live music for the Friday Markets as well.”

Radio Sean: “We had a fair number of people show up. More than we expected on the first day of the series. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out.”

I would call the audience smallish, but intimate. There were no more than a dozen people at its largest extent during the second set, and probably no more than 20 in total. As the Commons is set back, there were also no disruptive conversations spilling over from the Market. Everyone at the concert was there to listen.

Belcourt explained, “We are attempting to put on live music every Friday from 1 to 3 PM during the Friday Markets. We’ve been working with Manda Aufochs Gillespie from the Cortes Foundation and in support, with the radio as well, to try to get some live music for the community. It’ll be a lovely revolving door of local musicians who want to play.” 

“We’re just filling the schedule in right now. Please reach out if you like to play, if you have upwards of an hour and a half of material and reach out to us. Just show up to the Friday Market at any time between one and three and talk to Louis or Jemma.”

Jemma Hicken: “Especially if you want to play July 7th, or July 14th.”

Hicken said they have Rick Bockner booked for July 21. 

Jemma Hicken: “Maybe Amy is going to play with him as well. My partner and I are going to be playing at some point. We haven’t booked our date yet, but I’ll let you know when it happens.”

CC: Where do you get your inspiration? 

Radio Sean: I just love music. I love playing music. I love listening to music. It’s  a very, very big focal point of my life. I’m known as Radio Sean, and I have my fingers in a lot of radio pies, including Cortes Radio. I’ve been playing music since I was 15 years old, on an amateur basis. Then I busked in the 1980s. During the Expo 86 year I was in Victoria and made a lot of money busking. That’s where I found my musical legs, and I’ve  been into it ever since.”

Catriona told her side of the story, “I was about 15 when I was gifted a guitar.  I’d been playing other things before that, but I didn’t get better until in my late twenties when I would come to music jams and it motivated me to practice and learn more songs. Having various partners along the way that were musicians really helped a lot because playing with other people, you get better quicker. With Sean, one ferry trip I grabbed my daughter’s ukulele and started to figure out the chords. And that’s been really awesome to be able to play with Sean on his guitar because the uke fills in around it. Once you learn one instrument, you can learn as many as you want.”

Cortes Currents: How long have you been playing together? 

Sean: “We may have played a couple times before we got together, but we’ve been together close to 10 years. So we’ve been playing music around the same amount of time.”

Catriona: We’ve done open mics in the past and also performed like this. I’m not perfect on stage, and that’s not really the goal, but it’s so fun! I want to encourage people to get back into live music. Having the music industry make everything be so perfect, people get intimidated and they don’t try. They think, ‘I’m not musical, but I don’t actually believe that. I think everyone is. So I want to bring more live music into the community because it really feeds our souls in a way that canned music doesn’t.” 

Sean: “We have heard that less instruments are selling today than any other time in history, relative to the population. Live music is such an important part of human existence and human culture. It would really be terrible to see it go away.”

“We don’t do a lot of live gigs. We play on the beach a lot and in our living rooms, Catriona says, but  these opportunities come up from time to time. We’re very happy to come and bring out our extensive repertoire.”

(This is where Sean and Catriona sing ‘Emerald Isle,’ ‘Jack-a-Roe,’ and Look at Miss Ohio in the podcast.)

Sean is the techician that kept Cortes Comunity Radio running since it first went on the air in 2004.

Sean: We would love to see live music come back to Cortes Radio. That would be a really cool thing. It’s kind of strange, we moved into a bigger studio space some years ago and there’s barely been any live music in there since. If someone was to come forward and wanted to do a live music show, we will be very happy to train you and make it happen.

CC: Which is bigger in your heart, radio or being a musician? 

Sean: “They are one. They’re very much integrated in my life. In fact, one of the reasons I really like doing music and doing radio is cause it involves my whole brain. There’s a technical aspect of it, and there’s also the whole artistic aspect of it. I find for me, it’s very empowering to have both sides of my brain working at the same time.” 

There are more venues opening, Jemma Hicken and Louis Belcourt have received a microgrant to set up another performance in Mansons Landing.

Louis Belcourt: “We’re trying to revitalize and invigorate this lovely little piece of public land with as much music as we can this summer with support of the Cortes Foundation. The date and lineup hasn’t been confirmed, but me and Jemma, in conjunction with the Cortes Foundation, we’ll be hosting another afternoon music event here at the CCEDA Land, also known as the Village Commons.”  

Jemma Hicken: “The one off event we’re trying to organize is going to be  an in the round songwriting and story sharing event. So we’re going to have four different songwriters onstage, all up there together, holding the space together and taking turns going around in a circle, sharing songs. Our idea is that it’s going to be an all women led songwriting event. It’ll be a Sunday afternoon, I think tentatively August 6th. So keep your schedules open.” 

Music Credits for Podcast

• Radio Sean and Catriona Vega provided the MP3 recordings of ‘Emerald Isle,’ ‘Miss Ohio’ and ‘Jack-a-Roe’ used in this program.

Top photo credit: Cartiona Vega and Radio Sean in Concert – Photo by Roy L Hales

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