Cram Jam: The video

Cori Alfreds and Alicia-Rae Light provide a look at Cram Jam that combines video and photography, the bands and the fans, as they capture some of what happened in Cloverdale in late September. (Video is large.)

KSA lost $50,000 on Cram Jam; inexperience blamed

(Note: This article has been edited to correct Trevor Loke’s name, which was misspelled as Locke in the original.)

The Kwantlen Student Association is blaming inexperience for a $50,000 loss on this year’s Cram Jam.

The event was held Sept. 26 and attracted fewer than 900 people. Given that there were three well-known headliners – Daniel Wesley, Ten Second Epic and Sloan – the newly-elected Director of Events and Student Life, Vanessa Knight, thought that the concert would have been a lot more successful.

The original budget for Cram Jam was $100,000 but it ended up costing almost $120,000. Knight says that the concert “took on a life of its own” and the money needed to be spent. She says that the KSA, a non-profit organization, never expected to make money.

Knight didn’t become involved with Cram Jam until the beginning of August, when she was appointed to the position after Trevor Loke resigned as Director of Events and Student Life for the KSA.

“He came up with all of the ideas and had this big grand plan and he resigned,” Knight said.

Knight thinks that the huge loss was because of unexpected costs because “we didn’t know what we were doing.”

Loke had allotted around $5,000 for advertising and he says that he had set up a provisional deal with CFOX, which would have allowed Cram Jam to be advertised cheaply. He says that CFOX understood that the KSA didn’t have a lot of money to advertise; when he left the KSA the budget for advertising was still at $5,000.

The actual cost of advertising on CFOX ended up costing $29,000. Another unexpected cost was the bill for advertising in the Vancouver Metro, which was supposed to cost nothing but ended up costing $12,000. Knight blames Loke for not planning properly for the actual cost of advertising.

Loke responded: “When the trains do not run on time you don’t blame John A. Macdonald for building the railroad.”

About two weeks before the event was held, James Manear from Precision Entertainment, offered to kelp the KSA out and ended up saving the KSA some money, which helped to make sure the loss was only $50,000.

Loke said he started planning Cram jam before he even took office last year. He drew up the first budget and a number of provisional dates that showed how the concert would look.

However, Knight says that concrete planning for Cram Jam didn’t actually start until early June.

“We pretty much did the revised budget as we went along. It would have been done in like August,” said Knight.

Loke said that he originally proposed a $70,000 budget, but there was a debate between council members about the size of the event, the bands and the location. Loke increased the budget to $100,000, which was approved by the KSA council. Knight says that nobody went over the budget with an experienced eye until Manear came. He knew that there was something wrong right away, she said.

The budget called for ticket sales revenue of about $102,250, but the actual income was only $9,030. Knight speculates that this huge difference is because the KSA charged too much for tickets sold to the general public. She also thinks that holding the concert on the south side of the Fraser River was a bad idea, and that there wasn’t enough advertising during the summer because the KSA was waiting for students to get back into school and to buy tickets.

Loke, however, thinks that the KSA, after he left, should have picked a target audience, instead “they just poured money into media outlets.”

Loke said that his original idea for Cram Jam was to have a break-even event. He proposed cutting funding to all other events going on around that time, so if there was a loss “it would come out of the same line.”

The $50,000 loss will come out of the KSA’s capital reserve fund.

Related: Locke suggests politics played a role in Cram Jam deficit

A political agenda inside the KSA may have had something to do with the $50,000 Cram Jam loss.

Trevor Loke, previously the Director of Events and Student Life, said that before he left, he had lined up a few Canadian Federation of Students-aligned school that were going to help sponsor the event., but that some people within the KSA had problems with that association.

In March 2008, as Cram Jam was coming together, the KSA was embroiled in a campaign to convince Kwantlen students to opt out of CFS membership. Students voted to reject the KSA’s proposal. Loke, an avid critic of the CFS, said that there are no reasons why the KSA shouldn’t have worked with the schools as Cram Jam was not a political event.

Loke had gotten a few of the CFS-aligned schools on board with Cram Jam to help with advertising costs and ticket sales. Locke said he later found out that those schools were not only not part of the event, they hadn’t been contacted, either. Loke also says that there were other sponsors that the KSA was looking at, and after he left, they weren’t contacted either.

Vanessa Knight was appointed to Locke’s position after he resigned two months before Cram Jam was held. Knight says that a few CFS-aligned schools were supposed to sponsor Cram Jam in return for cheap tickets for their students but it didn’t end up happening. Knight said that Kwantlen didn’t sponsor Cram Jam because it thought it was a bad investment. However, the CFS did sponsor Cram Jam “but not nearly as much as we thought they would,” she said.

Related articles:

NEW: Cram Jam: The Video

The Chronicle’s Cram Jam coverage from late September

Jammin’

They ripped it up in Cloverdale Friday, at one of the biggest KSA-sponsored events of the semester. Kwantlen students and other music fans turned out for headliners Sloan, Daniel Wesley and Ten Second Epic — and other bands — at the all-ages event. We’ll be adding to our coverage over the next few days. To start, here’s a photographic look at some what happened.

For the fans, Cram Jam another success

There was no shortage of sound in Cloverdale Friday, where Kwantlen students, locals and other music fans gathered for the third annual Cram Jam, one of the biggest KSA-sponsored events of the semester, complete with an enticing line-up of indie, punk, alternative and rock artists from across the country.

At 2 p.m. Friday as the festival is scheduled to begin, the sun is gleaming outside the venue, but the site is practically empty, with the exception of a stage crew, a few volunteers, security guards and members of the Kwantlen Student Association running about the venue finalizing last-minute details.

“We need to get the first band on now if we want to stay on schedule,” said Vanessa Knight, the KSA’s director of events. “It’s a festival. Things never run as planned.”

The opening band hit the stage near 3 p.m. Full of energy and completely disregarding the lack of audience, the four pre-teen boys who’ve named themselves Childsplay start off this year’s festival with some original songs and a cover of the Ramone’s first hit single, “Blitzkrieg Bop.”

“How do you feel playing for a bunch of university students?”

“It was cool,” says 12-year-old vocalist, Mishel Salum, wearing crisp, skinny jeans, a studded belt, bright white trainers a paint-splattered shirt and a skinny pink tie. “It’s so exciting.”

Levin Faber, the 13-year-old blonde-haired drummer, adds: “I’m allergic to hay, but other
than that it was awesome.”

Besides the stifling scent of hay bales and horses, as would be expected at a rodeo grounds, the venue couldn’t have been better. If the crowd were larger that is.

“We’re expecting 600, hopefully,” says Knight. The goal was 2,500. The KSA overestimated ticket sales and the venue never fills up to even a fourth of its capacity.

For the next several hours, local talent – Versus the Nothing, Tenant and Exit 200 – play for a small, but supportive crowd as the audience slowly builds. Near 7 p.m., The Fury rip up the stage. With guitarist Jonathan Wu and female vocalist Chase in the mix, the band sets up the rest of the evening.

“We’re only hoping for it to get bigger and better every year,” says Kathryn, site manager and coordinator for Cram Jam. This is the first year that the festival has required a ticket for entry and that it is open to the public and not just Kwantlen Students. “An event of this magnitude takes a ton of planning and preparation. We have a number of staff working on it full-time who have been working on it for about six months,” she says.

At 7 p.m., in the beer garden, the atmosphere is buzzing with excitement.

“Who are you here to see tonight?”

“Obviously, Daniel Wesley,” says 24-year-old Carry Bradford, who celebrated her birthday at Cram Jam.

As festival goers, mostly 20-somethings, help themselves to $5 pints of Granville Island Ale and raspberry Growers cider, the Cram Jam vibe is beginning to look up.

“We just got here and we’re having an amazing time,” says Sam Robertson, a 20-year-old student at Kwantlen Surrey Campus.

On stage, Will Currie & The Country French, an indie folk band from Waterloo, Ontario adds a different vibe to the evening. The band originally got together in a small room in the basement of the music faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University. Will Currie, lead vocalist and founder of the band, skillfully plays the piano on jazzy, uplifting tunes as drummer Aaron Mariash holds the beat during their set with a charming smile on his face throughout. The songs Surprising Me and Friendly Fire are crowd favorites and they sing along.

“It’s the final day of our tour,” says Mariash with a sigh, as the band packs up outside the Agriplex. “This tour with Sloan has definitely been the highlight of our time together as a band.”

Inside, rock band Ten Second Epic puts on nothing less than an epic show, with more head-banging involved than at a Slipknot gig.

As Daniel Wesley finally makes his way onto the stage, nearly everyone in the crowd is swaying, smiling and singing along to his lyrics, lost in the moment. Fans seem to be mesmerized by his Sublime-meets-Jack-Johnson-esque sound. Sing Dance, his hit has the crowd screaming and firing up lighters and cell phones and waving them in the air.

And then it’s time for the final act of the evening.

17 years after they started, Sloan has still got what it takes to wow an audience. Older members of the audience are singing their lyrics word-for-word, dominating the front of stage alongside the younger generation. The quartet closed off the evening leaving the crowd with exactly what they came for, if not more.

The music, for the most part, was brilliant. Cram Jam was filled with a blur of amazing acts and the sound was incredible. The venue was the only downfall, being far too large for the number of fans.
But it was definitely a music festival of sorts. Indie kids and rockers alike went home more than satisfied, with their heads filled with an abundance of abrasive rock tunes and alternative sounds.

Inspired by family, Daniel Wesley makes a splash

Daniel Wesley, a critically acclaimed singer, songwriter and guitarist won the 2007 Fox Seeds award and had the most requested single in Vancouver, and this is just the beginning for Wesley. Touring with The Trews and opening for Tom Cochrane, Daniel Wesley is making waves across the country with his mellow, beach-style rock music that leaves fans wanting more.

Wesley grew up in Langley, with his older brother, two younger sisters and a little brother. Wesley’s father worked, while his mom quit her job as a nurse to be a stay-at-home mom. The family had a huge influence on his music.

“My family’s been fostering kids for 20 years almost. It’s been a big part of our upbringing,” said Wesley. “I think it’s really helped us get a good perspective on some things.”

Wesley first got into music at a young age. He remembers piling into his mother’s Volkswagen van with his siblings, cranking oldies and singing along.

“It was fun times, there was a lot of love in that van,” Wesley said. “Then I’d start singing in the shower and just enjoying things like that. My brothers and sisters and I would put on Michael Jackson and we’d wear Michael Jackson jackets and jump around and sing.

“It was just all about love, and music is all about love and it just kind of registered. Then you grow up and realize that some things are more important than other things, and music has been one of the best things in my life.”

Before The Daniel Wesley Band, he was in a heavy rock band and began “getting sick of that type of music. I wanted to do something different,” he said.

“This project is like an inspiration of life. Sometimes my life has had dark periods, sometimes there’s happy periods. And I just want to be a happy person. Sometimes I did bad things to myself and other people, and I just wanted to turn over a new leaf and really do good things, and this whole thing, Daniel Wesley, was the start of it.

“I started writing songs that made me happy and they ended up being reggae, beach kind of songs.”

Wesley finds his inspiration from his family, friends and his girlfriend. “If I’m happy, and the things in my life are good, then my music’s going to carry that along,” he said. “That’s the most important thing to me; having good relationships with the people that mean the most to me.”

The band was having some difficulties getting along in earlier tours which resulted in changes with drummers, but they think they have finally got it right with Mark Luongo on bass and Josh Carlsen on drums. “We’re all getting to a point now, where we pretty much found the guys that are going to be playing with us,” Wesley said.

“We’re going to be doing lots of the States before Christmas, we have our album released in Japan and we want to go to Australia and the U.K.”

Of all the places Wesley plans to go, he is most excited to see Brazil. His brother lived in Brazil for a year, and Wesley missed out to work on his music, which paid off in the end.

“It’s a really new chapter for us,” said Wesley. “It will be really cool once it becomes more of a worldwide thing, but just because I want to see the world, just like everyone else.

“I want to have a career as a musician, and I want to make the best music I can make. I think the best musicians are the people that end up being famous. It’s something I’m willing to cope with. I think I’m a capable person of dealing with it, but it’s not something I’m really looking forward to or looking for.”

At Cram Jam, Wesley’s voice penetrates the Cloverdale Agridome. He breaks only to take a sip of beer or to change his guitar. When Wesley performs, it’s hard not to notice the swooning girls, and it’s not just because of his tattooed arms or curly blonde hair; it’s his flawless voice.

“I see some familiar faces,” he says, before pulling out his first guitar, which is just one out of the four he will use. He begins to sing and the crowd sings along with him.

“I like it because they sing our songs with us. When that started happening for us, that was really, really neat,” said Wesley. “It’s something I’ve always wanted.”

Epic performance gets crowd off the bleachers

Ten Second Epic, the Edmonton rock-and-roll band, got the crowd off the bleachers with songs from their album, Count Yourself In at Kwantlen’s Cram Jam Friday. If you haven’t heard of them yet, you should count yourself in.

With three music video’s getting airtime on MuchMusic, performing on Much on Demand and MTV in Canada, Ten Second Epic is ready for more. Their new album, Hometown, will be released in January.

The band started six years ago. Patrick Birtles (drummer) met Andrew Usenik (singer) at school. Birtles lived in the same neighbourhood as Craig Spelliscy (guitar) and they grew up playing music together. Spelliscy went to a different high school and met Sandy MacKinnon (bass) who knew Daniel Carriere (guitar.)

Everyone thought “we work, we get along, and we can write music together,” said Patrick Birtles. “This is going to happen.” And it did. Ten Second Epic are now full-time working musicians.

Birtles remembers the first time a Ten Second Epic song was played on radio. He sang along and air drummed to the beat while driving in his car. “I felt kind of like a tool celebrating my own song so much,” he laughs, “but you got to do what you got to do.

“Every milestone becomes its new highlight,” said Birtles. “Whether it’s hearing your song on the radio for the first time or seeing your music video on TV for the first time. It just sort of trumps the radio thing and then you have an interview live on MuchMusic. It’s even one more step.”

Ten Second Epic currently tours in a van and they’ve learned to stay out of each other’s way, but they’ve also learned “how to piss people off really easily,” he jokes. When the band fights, it’s mostly about who gets to ride shotgun. “It’s always really stupid things and we always feel dumb for doing it.”

The band member’s girlfriends are understanding of life on the road. “You come home from tour with a pretty high phone bill but that’s about the worst of it,” said Birtles.

Without their friends and families support, Ten Second Epic doesn’t think they would have accomplished what they have.

Success does have its downfalls. “My friends are proud of me, but it’s tough because I’m on the road so much,” said Birtles. “It’s almost alienated myself from some of my friends. I feel bad, but it’s something I’ve committed myself to.”

Ten Second Epic has just finished recording its second album and, Birtles said, “it’s simpler” but didn’t come easily at first.

They wrote and recorded the whole album and scrapped it. “We felt like we achieved the same we already experienced, and we wanted to go further than that,” he said. They rewrote the album from scratch and think it’s bigger and better. “It’s an experience I wouldn’t change for the world,” said Birtles.

Through their six years together, and their latest album, they’ve “learned to play together as a band,” said Birtles. “A cohesive unit, as opposed to five different members just contributing to a song.”
Ten Second Epic gets the crowd moshing with their high energy show. MacKinnon and Spelliscy bang their ’80s rock-and-roll hair to the beat, while Usenik bounces around the stage, belting out every lyric without running out of breath. Birtles claims that he still gets nervous before every show, but you can’t tell.

It is clear that Ten Second Epic lives up to their reputation of a band headed for the spotlight. “I’d love to be famous. How can you hate some random person coming up to you and asking for an autograph?” Birtles said. “It’s like, the greatest feeling in the world.”

17 years later, Sloan still rocking

It’s been 15 years since Sloan’s first album went gold in Canada and, 10 albums later, Sloan is still rocking like it’s 1993.

Two years after the Canadian band from Halifax formed in 1991, Sloan debuted its first full-length album, Smeared. Their 10 albums include such hits as If it Feels Good Do it, The Good in Everyone, Underwhelmed, All Used Up, The Rest of My Life and Money City Maniacs.

On Sept. 26, Sloan was the headliner at the Kwantlen Student Association’s Cram Jam, one of the many stops on the tour to promote the band’s latest album, Parallel Play. By Oct. 1, Sloan will have done shows in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Jay Ferguson, vocalist and guitarist, said that over the years it’s gotten easier for the band to get along on the road. “It’s like a family; you have to learn not to get on anybody’s nerves.”

Today Sloan has the Internet on the tour bus, “so we don’t talk to each other that much any more,” he jokes.

The Internet isn’t the only addition to the bus. Ferguson said, “Kids seem to be the main difference,” between touring now and a decade ago. “Everyone has kids or a home,” he said. The band members miss their kids a lot while they’re touring.

Sloan has traveled the world, making stops in Australia, Japan, Europe, Spain and the U.S. One of the band’s favourite destinations is Japan. Ferguson said the band loved the culture shock of Japan, and the fans that waited for them at their hotel. The fans gave them presents and sang along to their songs word for word. He said, “It was like a mini-version of Beatles mania.”

Sloan’s sound is unique, with a mixture of The Beatles sound and some harder rock and roll. They’re “a do-it-yourself kind of group,” said Ferguson. On each record, each of the members of the band has written three or four of their own songs.

It may have been hard for a Canadian band from Nova Scotia to make it internationally in the ’90s but it’s getting less difficult. “There’s so many Canadian bands that have done well internationally,” said Ferguson, largely because of touring and then word-of-mouth through the Internet. “I mean you still have to be good, make good records, put on a good show.”

“It’s not like we’re the new, hot band on the block,” said Ferguson, “so it is a little more difficult. We make good records and have an awesome fan base. There’s no records I’m not proud of.”

The ’90s was a decade of one-hit-wonders and grunge. “Many of our peers from the early ’90s broke up,” said Ferguson. “The fact that we exist is our greatest accomplishment.”

Before Ferguson gets off of the red velvet couch, he said, “I hear the fries at the venue are fantastic!” While Ferguson looks forward to the fries, the fans in the audience look forward to a taste of Sloan.

At one point, a pumped-up fan begins crowd surfing, shoving himself towards the front. Patrick Pentland, guitarist and vocalist, says, in true rock-star style, “If you come over here, you’re out, okay?”

As the band plays, Ferguson dodges a flying shirt, thrown up by a female fan, and condom balloons bounce from person to person inside the Cloverdale Agridome. Seventeen years later, and Sloan’s still got it.

Cram Jam fills day with music

 

Rockers Sloan, Daniel Wesley and Ten Second Epic will headline Cram Jam 3, the Kwantlen Student Association’s most ambitious entertainment event to date.

Cram Jam, which will run from 2-11 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 26 at Clovedale’s Agriplex, is an all-ages music festival. Along with the headliners, bands from throughout the Lower Mainland will perform.

One of those, The Fury, gave Richmond students a taste Tuesday when they performed as part of Welcome Week activities. While fans gathered to watch, not-so-excited teachers cancelled classes, and some area residents filed noise complaints.

“They’re fabulous,” said Kwantlen student Minnie Huang. “I can’t wait to see them at Cram Jam!” The band is made up of local musicians who met through Craigslist last winter and is preparing to release its first album this fall.

Other local bands that will perform at Cram Jam include Exit 200, featuring two Kwantlen students, and Tenant, featuring two Kwantlen alumni.

Tickets for Cram Jam 3 are $15 if purchased before Sept. 12 and $20 after that date. For more information and to purchase tickets go to www.cramjam.ca.