Pop Montreal Is the Setting for Quality Block Party 1.3
SAINT JOHN– Saint John-based music festival Quality Block Party is bringing the party to Pop Montreal on Friday.
The festival will be hosting a showcase at 356 Avenue Du Mont Royale featuring seven east coast acts.
Quality Block Party made its debut in Saint John last April to coincide with the East Coast Music Awards that the city was also hosting. Organizers since held another successful festival in the city in August.
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Peter Rowan, a music industry veteran and one of the festival’s organizers, told Huddle in an interview last month that Quality Block parties are a platform for nurturing a live-performance scene in the region, so that bands are more confident and experienced when they go out on tour across Canada, and even the U.S. and Europe.
“You have to be able to go away and work but to come back and know this is a place where you can be creative and be supported and experiment with your art, and fine tune it,” said Rowan.
But now it’s time to start bringing the party elsewhere. Besides Pop Montreal, Rowan said they’re “taking advantage of some of their connections” to organize Quality Block-branded “pop-up” shows at Festival (506) in Moncton, the Halifax Explosion, and maybe a show in Toronto in November.
They’ll use the opportunities to promote New Brunswick music and give the region’s bands the opportunity to play at these big festivals.
“We’re featuring acts that aren’t part of the mainstream yet,” said Rowan. “It doesn’t mean that they don’t aspire to be, or shouldn’t be, they’re not at that capacity yet.
Bands set to perform are Heart Attack Kids, Little You, Little Me, The Hypochondriacs, Young Satan In Love, S.H.R.I.M.P. Ring, WROTE and Tooth & the Fang. The Quality block party kicks off at 8 p.m.