Canadian privatized music funding is helping keep industry afloat

For Crave magazine – October 2009

Matt Powell

It’s hard to believe it all started here: this old farmhouse, in the middle of nowhere. Its

white-stucco exterior has peeled with age, and is soaked by the heavy rain of this soggy, cool

October night. The roof’s black shingles flap in the storm-like winds. There are no lights, except

for small flickers of interior illumination outlining the building’s loosely hung (and only) door.

The ghostly effect is heightened by the surroundings: a lone farmhouse, in rural Toronto,

accessible by a single-lane gravel road, which is riddled with puddles and potholes. A small

Honda in the driveway is the only sign of life.

Through the lone door are five young musicians. They have been working here for four

years, polishing their catalog of indie-pop songs. This is where Ruby Coast makes its magic.

The young artists huddle around a ratty leather couch, taking drags of cigarettes between

sips of beer. The small coffee table in front of them is littered with scraps of paper bearing

chicken-scratched lyrics, song progressions and silly doodles. Justice McClellan, a singer with a

magisterial name, is propped up on a milk-crate, a cigarette dangling from the neck of his

acoustic guitar a la Eddie Van Halen. Tobacco fumes dim the scanty light that comes from three

ceiling pot-lights, encircling the musicians with musky smoke that looks like a special effect: say,

heavy morning fog.

Posters of The Who, and The Beatles hang proudly on the walls. The small-kitchenette is

besieged with empty beer bottles and pizza boxes. Wires wind themselves across the floor in a

messy maze, snaking their way between guitars and amplifiers, keyboards, and samplers.

Tonight the band is working on a song they hope will make the cut for the new album,

scheduled for February 2010.

But they’re not working alone. Their invisible companion may be a tidy sum of $15,000

– money they couldn’t raise by themselves if they were held hostage by the Taliban. This

significant sum will, should their application succeed, come from FACTOR, one of the biggest

subsidy programs for working artists in Canada.

And FACTOR isn’t government money. It comes from an industry consortium of private

radio stations run my media corporations like Corus, Astral Media, and Rogers which respects the

dream many young bands have, of headlining arena tours and signing big record contracts.

This low-profile money is important to shore up the boys’ dreams, since they also know

that only about ten per cent of Canadian bands get signed and release a record. While Ruby Coast

still falls into that category, their dedication and persistence has pushed beyond being five guys

with a musical dream. They do their thing, write, record, play live. But, they find themselves in

that kind of musical purgatory between greatness and the less-dreamy part where they work full-

time jobs between rehearsals at the farmhouse, and recording sessions in guitarist Nathan

Vanderweilen’s basement (they’ve turned it into a full-on recording studio). Their essence is

their dedication. Like endless nights in the basement relentlessly re-doing the details and listening

to them even more relentlessly. Ruby Coast’s ambition is clean and clear, and they’ll do anything

to get there. They’ve hired the services of former Arcade Fire drummer, Harold Bilerman, to

produce the new EP that will be recorded in February next year. To have someone like Bilerman,

who is a Juno award winning musician, manning the controls in the studio is a pretty big deal, and

something that FACTOR will have to consider when deciding whether or not the band will get

their money.

2009 was a big year for the relatively small band, who are still unsigned, but have made

their way across the U.S supporting indie-rock giants, Tokyo Police Club, headlining Halifax’s

Pop Explosion Festival, and a gig at Toronto’s legendary Horseshoe Tavern with CBC Radio 3’s

North By Northeast Festival. The only thing they didn’t do this year was record their first proper

EP.

FACTOR is one of Canada’s most significant independent artist funding programs. It is a

completely privately run foundation that helps independent artists fund recordings, tours, and

even provides marketing campaigns. Of course, the Canadian government does provide some arts

funding, but FACTOR is funded solely by private contributors. Since it started in 1982, it has

helped some of Canada’s major talents hit the big-time, including Nickleback, Matthew Good,

and more recently, Tokyo Police Club. Independent record labels can also receive funding to

help artists market themselves without the big budgets that major labels could provide.

“The FACTOR grant would be big for us because it would allow us to put any money

we’ve put back into the band into other tools like mastering the record once we’re done on

Montreal,” says bass player Mark Whiting. “We’ve always paid our previous demo recordings, so

it would definitely be nice to get this paid for by an organization dedicated to getting Canadian

artists out there, especially considering how hard it is for artists to make a living on their own.

This is our first real record, and it’s going to cost a lot, so it’s nice knowing that we have some

support if we prove that we’re worth giving it too.”

Last year, the foundation offered more than $12.5 million to Canadian independent

musicians. Of the 3, 648 applications received, 42 per cent were approved (1,534), 30 per cent of

which was offered to support marketing and promotion agendas. Funding has become especially

important for artists during a time when the music recoding industry is suffering significant losses

due to decrease in the sales of physical recordings. Canadian record sales last December were

down by 38% according to the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

It’s even said that associations like FACTOR are necessary for merely keeping the

Canadian music industry afloat, especially during this time of economic hardships and an

increasingly significant shift towards an online, digital industry.

“If it weren't for these programs, I'm not entirely sure there would be much of a music

industry in Canada. Certainly not from the independent level, anyhow,” says Bobby Kimberley,

Marketing Director for the Manhattan based music marketing firm, The Muse Box. “I'm not sure

I know of a single independent label that is turning a profit right now that isn't supported by

FACTOR in some form or another. Even labels like Last Gang or Arts & Crafts, arguably the

two most successful independent labels in Canada, depend on FACTOR to get the ball rolling,

and still throw their names in the pot to this day trying to get some of the money to put towards

their emerging artists.”

Kimberley has worked closely with Ruby Coast for a few years now, and even considers

them close friends. He has been at the fore-front of their FACTOR application, and even attended

a FACTOR selection panel in Montreal in September, getting a first hand look at how bands are

selected, and places an emphasis on the fact that FACTOR depends on bands that are marketable,

and would turn the most profit.

“Bands are selected by a jury. I'm not a hundred per cent sure who is on the jury from

time to time, but I imagine it’s a bunch of industry types eating sandwiches around a large table

with a CD player in the middle and remarking appropriately,” says Kimberley. “I know that

they're looking for sales potential as much as artistic merit; basically, they want to support the

recordings that they feel are going to yield results.”

Kimberley signed Ruby Coast to a management contract after the band blew away the

Muse Box’s President, Nadine Gelineau, who flew north to Toronto last June to see the band co-

headline a show at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern during the North by Northeast festival.

It’s been a good year for FACTOR. The foundation’s artists were nominated for 21

CCMA awards this year. The foundation, especially in the recording sector, is dependent on those

bands that will turn a profit, because in the end, the band has to pay FACTOR 50 cents for every

album they sell for two years after its release, according to Kimberley. Whatever is left over is

written off as a grant. It’s a pretty good program considering there isn’t really any pressure on the

band to depend on record sales, because bands make most of their money at live events anyways.

Having a record is usually followed by a tour, which usually means some income for the band.

And in the case of FACTOR, the bands don’t always have to give every cent back to the

foundation. FACTOR doesn’t seem to be too affected either, especially considering they turned

over $18 million in revenue last year, $12.5 million of that was turned into grants and funding,

and the remainder of the $14 million in expenses went into administrative costs – approximately

$1.5 million.

It’s been two weeks since our first trip to the old farmhouse on that soggy evening in

October. It’s not raining tonight, but the narrow gravel road’s potholes are filled with water on the

drive . Tonight’s jam session includes a run through of a new song that remains untitled despite

the fact that the band has been working on it for a year.

McClellan constantly stops, starts over, flip flops between lyrics and guitar riffs only to

mutter: “alright, let’s do it again.”

A bass guitar hangs off his shoulders. Keyboardist Keith Bradford patiently waits to start

over while drummer Corey Marshall sits smugly behind his drum kit, his moppy hair soaked with

sweat. The pressure is on now, both musically and financially. The band has to master a catalog

of tunes to present to Bilerman in two short months, but they also have to come up with the

$15,000 it’s going to cost them, and they still haven’t heard back from FACTOR.

The band, however, remains optimistic. The record will be recorded, with the funding or

without it. Lots has been happening over the past two weeks, including a trip to Halifax for

McClellan and Whiting alongside Dave Monks, a good friend who also happens to be the lead

singer of Tokyo Police Club. . The band has juggled their time between the old farmhouse for

late-night rehearsals and Vanderweilen’s basement, recording into the early hours of the morning,

including one marathon that went until 3:30 a.m. The demos coming out of this crazy rehearsal

and recording schedule will ultimately be sent to Bilerman in Montreal, so he can get an idea of

what’s coming when the boys land in Montreal in a few months. But, they will also be sent to the

FACTOR panel, where they hope to blow them away with their newer, more polished indie-rock

sound, which feature, especially, a lot of McClellan’s vocal range and an increased dependence

on digitized keyboards and samplers.

For Canadian musicians, the future is never clear. It’s hard to tell what’s going to come

next unless you’re signed into some big contract with a major label who has signed your band to

record six albums over 10 years. These days, it is few and far between. Ruby Coast is no

different.They’re unsigned, but they work themselves silly. Between full-time jobs that earn little

coin, and a relentless rehearsal schedule, they may be on the verge of one of the greatest

opportunities yet in their young careers.

Heading to Montreal to work with a guy like Bilerman who already has a significant

resume as an artist with one of the more successful Canadian acts in the last ten years, is an

opportunity in itself.

“Put it this way, if we get the grant, I may just be able to pay off my credit card finally,”

says Whiting, as he sips on a coffee at the local Starbucks. “It’s really cool that there are people

out there that care enough to pump money back into the industry, especially independent artists

that need any help they can get.”

The FACTOR grant would represent perhaps a more significant achievement, for it

would ease what has been a difficult year of back-breaking work for the young band who has

done everything themselves so far. FACTOR has proven that it can keep the Canadian music

industry afloat. Ruby Coast could very well be another chapter in the Canadian music success

story, and FACTOR could help write that story.