Feel the love Winnipeg concert promotion company celebrating 10 years of combining work and pleasure By: Eva Wasney Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Thursday, Mar. 24, 2022

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They say if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. It’s a dated chestnut that rings — mostly — true for Adam Soloway and Gil Carroll, the founders of local concert promotion company Real Love Winnipeg.

“There’s sort of an unlimited amount of work,” says Carroll, who also plays in a band and manages a touring company with Soloway. “But we’re really happy that this is our job… we love doing it.”

The pair of childhood friends have been putting on shows and music festivals under the Real Love banner for the last 10 years. It’s a milestone that feels extra sweet amid a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the live music scene.

“We definitely feel lucky to have kept it going for this long,” Carroll says.

Real Love got its start in 2012 as the release party for Beach Station Blues, a compilation album featuring a slew of up-and-coming musicians recorded at a family cottage in Winnipeg Beach. Making an album with a bunch of artists they admired seemed like a good way for the duo to gain purchase in the local music scene. Throwing a launch party turned out to be an unexpected delight.

“We quickly realized that putting on concerts was fun,” Carroll says. “And it sort of naturally grew the music community and scene that we wanted to be a part of.”

The goal has always been to celebrate indie music in a fun and supportive environment. It’s a simple philosophy that has earned Real Love a loyal following over the last decade. Pre-pandemic, the group was putting on roughly 60 venue shows a year, while programming for the Sherbrook Street Festival, Winterruption and their own Real Love Summer Fest.

Like much of the business, starting a music festival happened purely by chance. In 2014, Carroll and Soloway were approached by organizers of the former Matlock Festival of Music, Art and Nature, who were looking to attract a younger crowd to the small cabin community on the western shore of Lake Winnipeg.

Tickets to the inaugural event were $20 and featured local acts Richard Inman, Slow Leaves and Micah Erenberg. The three-day event was a success despite some behind-the-scenes hiccups — namely flooding in Matlock that forced a last-minute relocation to Gimli.

“It was kind of funny — we got interviewed by Breakfast Television the day after the Matlock festival site told us they couldn’t host it,” Carroll says with a chuckle. “We were talking about this festival that didn’t even have a location.”

The festival, which moved to a treed lot in Teulon several years ago, has become Real Love’s flagship event, attracting more than 800 attendees annually. After two years of cancellations and alternate formats, Summer Fest is set to return to its old stomping ground July 22-24. Carroll is looking forward to the homecoming.

“There’s a lot of really beautiful things that happen at Summer Fest that are sort of indescribable,” he says. “Being in nature with all these amazing bands performing, it can be sort of magical to look around and it always makes us feel proud.”

Real Love’s success has been helped along by symbiotic relationships with Carroll and Soloway’s other projects. The pair have met countless emerging artists while touring with their band, Living Hour, and have helped establish Winnipeg as a hub for indie music through their booking agency, First Date Touring.

“Everything we do helps the other businesses as well,” Carroll says, adding that the best part of the job is introducing audience members to their new favourite bands and booking first-time gigs for young artists.

The Real Love founders plan on doing more of the same over the next 10 years — just bigger and better. Facilitating good times for good people never gets old. They hope to expand the summer festival and grow the city’s all-ages event scene to give underage artists more opportunities to play for a crowd.

Real Love is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a series of concerts beginning this Friday at the Good Will Social Club and the West End Cultural Centre. Visit reallovewpg.com for more info.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney