W’field Does W’field does harmony to sold-out crowd

I don’t know of the collective noun for a bunch of individual singer/songwriters but I like a “harmony” – we’ll go with that. There was indeed a harmony of singer/songwriters, all of them from the Hills at the Black Sheep on Saturday, Feb. 5. A harmony of 17 gathered there for the annual Wakefield Does Wakefield concert and treated the sold-out raucous crowd to a non-stop celebration of the depth of musical talent in the Hills. (I’m trying to avoid the ‘The Sound of Music’ Hills-are-alive-cliché here, but the music was delivered with such communal vitality and warmth that I can’t resist.)

The tradition that is Wakefield Does Wakefield started 10 years ago when local luminary Luther Wright, following up after overhearing a remark about local musicians covering each others’ songs, invited a merry band of local songwriters to pick a song by another local songwriter and perform it at Kaffé 1870.

When those in the performing arts were stageless during the pandemic in 2020, Wakefield Does Wakefield, working with Theatre Wakefield, received a Heritage Canada grant and 25-area musicians and technicians produced a full-length album and an award-winning documentary film that is available on YouTube as ‘Wakefield Does Wakefield: The Movie’.

This made for an eclectic evening, with tunes across the spectrum – from ballads to all out punk.

For the Feb. 5 evening, the combined logistical efforts of Wright and Greg Stone kicked-off the concert with a tribute to the Black Sheep in song. Thereafter, each of the 17 stepped to the front and, with varying degrees of support from both the house band and their fellow performers, covered one of their own songs, then one by a local songwriter. This made for an eclectic evening, with tunes across the spectrum – from ballads to all out punk.

What was obvious was the mutuality of the performers as they teamed up in various combinations. The evening was both a marker and a celebration of the present moment of local musical prowess. And while space prohibits me from naming all the performers and what they sang, I would like to give a shout-out – and I’m sure the others won’t mind – to the drummer in the house band, Erik Allen, a recent arrival to the Hills and a welcome addition to the team.