Plenty to admire at local music production showcase in the Exchange

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This article was published 24/04/2024 (526 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While the Jets faced the Avalanche down the street, music industry professionals and artists had other plans on Sunday night, cramming into a sweltering room in the Exchange District for the first-ever Good + Plenty Producer’s Showcase, featuring the city’s next generation of songwriters and producers.

Since 2022, the not-for-profit Good + Plenty has provided mentorship and training opportunities for women, trans and non-binary people in the music production sphere, seeking to boost the representation of those groups in that space.

According to four-year-old research from the University of Southern California’s Annenburg Inclusion Initiative, fewer than two per cent of North American music producers are women, and the proportion is even lower for trans and non-binary people.

Of the 12 producers highlighted at Videopool on Sunday, nine identified as women, trans, or non-binary.

Before welcoming the first producer, Kiara, up to share her song Fading, host Lana Winterhalt — a songwriter, producer and Good + Plenty co-founder — warned the audience there was no room for nitpicking or negativity.

Not that there was really any occasion for negativity. Fading, a breathy percussive, piano-driven track left off Kiara’s 2022 EP Indigo Sky, started the evening off strong.

Before each track was shared, the enthusiastic Winterhalt, who should host her own variety show, asked each producer to share their pronouns, their artist name and where they were at in their music-production journey. The audience got to listen to several as-yet-unreleased songs. Afterward, they shared their feedback, most often in the form of whoops and hollers.

Some participants, such as Larysa Musick and Snackie, are a bit more familiar in the local indie scene. Last fall, Musick released the six-song folk collection Tomorrow Is Bound to Come; on Sunday they shared a demo of Tired of Working, a track with a heavier, bluesier sound. Snackie, one of the city’s most sought-after vocalists, put themselves first on Soul Vacation, an evocative piece co-produced with Roman Clarke.

For the most part, the participants were closer to the first mile of their production marathon, such as 17-year-old Jessica Snider, who shared her spoken-word, broken-hearted track Gone.

A Grade 11 student at Miles Macdonell Collegiate who counts Lana Del Rey, Childish Gambino, Doja Cat and Dolores O’Riordon as influences, Snider was in a music production class visited earlier this year by Winterhalt, who messaged Snider to ask if she would be interested in sharing a song at the showcase.

Snider said her experience Sunday was “completely surreal.”

“That was the first time I’d ever shown a larger group my music. I mean, I’ve shown family and friends, but never complete strangers,” she says.

Local Argentine guitar hero Onna Lou, who has a degree in music production, highlighted a performer even younger than Snyder, 16-year-old Winnipeg songwriter Sofika, who debuted the summery song Couldn’t Care Less.

There Once Was a Boy, a song by 18-year-old Kaiden Peters co-produced with John Paul Peters, was a stirring, gorgeous distillation of the artist’s experience with gender and trans identity, moving several people in the room to tears.

On Sunshine, co-produced with Banggz, Kwae Kobain sampled the ethereal Mahalia Jackson, juxtaposing spiritualism with his own taste for the grime-light production of contemporary U.K. recording artists such as Dave and Central Cee.

A few hours before it was released on streaming services, Mckye shared Scrollin, an easygoing, piano-driven track co-produced with Derek Voth. “I did that!” she said after the song finished playing.

FaceTiming in, CEC (pronounced cease) shared the song Love Me, a densely packed track highlighting the songwriter’s dynamic range.

Changing the pace with his soulful, mysterious song Tonada, which has lived on his Soundcloud for 11 years, Luis Hermida plucked each of his guitar’s seven strings to tremendous emotional effect.

Princess Dasha, the musical side-project of Dasha Plett, shared Have a Great Night! the outro music from Plett and Gislina Patterson of We Quit Theatre’s YouTube cable-access interview show Men Explain Things to Us… And We Like It.

Throughout the night, the heat in the room became a running joke, so it felt fitting that the final song was Summer Time by St. Luther ft. Nate Devine, produced by Bleachh, which feels exactly like its title.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com