Ear to the Ground - Officially Cancelled

Hi Friends,

Well today has been a very sad day for me.

First of all, for those of you in Ottawa, the Ottawa Ear to the Ground Launch Party which is happening Wednesday Sept 14th at Babylon is still happening and I invite you all to attend. Doors are at 9pm and the music starts at 10pm sharp. Cover is $5. All the money made at the door is going to the artists performing that night. Performers include: As The Poets Affirm, The Department of Foreign Affairs, Lindsay Ferguson, Ana Miura, Phil Lafreniere, Melissa Laveaux, Marc Charron, Neil Gerster, Tanya Janca and myself flutin' with a number of folks. We will all be partying it up in style and I hope you can make it out to support our artists, especially considering what I am about to write to you...

For the past 9 months now, I have been volunteering my time as a music programmer with the indie arts festival called Ear to the Ground. I volunteered my time for this festival because I wanted to find a way to get performing opportunities for all the talented young folks that I believe in and who I think deserve more recognition and exposure from our Canadian music industry. This festival was to take place from Sept 16 - 18 at Toronto's Exhibition Place. As of 9pm tonight, I received word that the festival has officially been cancelled. It is a truly sad day for the younger indie arts community. I could go into great detail about how all of this happened and I do plan to write about it on my blog but at this very moment I am exhausted and need to get a good night's rest. I promise to write about this once I've had time to catch up on sleep and reflect on all that has happened.

For the past three weeks, I put my entire life on hold trying to save Ear to the Ground. Many of you who were in touch with me during this period are aware of how much energy, time and money I invested into this project. I even put food and sleep on hold during the most crucial days of the past three weeks, doing everything I could to make this festival happen. I had convinced myself that if I gave 150%, I would be able to save our festival. I was wrong. Many of you angels warned me that I may not succeed in saving the festival from it's financial troubles but I still persisted. You see, I have often learned in my past that true magic sometimes happens during the toughest and most challenging moments. Miracles can sometimes happen but not this time around. The real breaking moment came to me today when I was notified that one of our headliner's booking agents cancelled three of our most important acts in the festival lineup for the Opera House, only two days before the festival launch was to happen. It's awful to think that we were so close to succeeding in making this festival happen, only to have one agent decide the entire future of our event in one brief phonecall. At this point, I have decided to close this chapter of my life and move on to bigger and better things both as a songwriter and as a performer. I know that I did the very best job I could considering the challenging circumstances and just like any problems I've faced in my life, it's now time to move on and move forward. I know that this experience has been a huge period of learning and personal growth for me and that sometimes the best lessons in life are learned during our periods of great struggle and pain. I thank each and every one of you who have been supporting me over the past little while. Your encouragement has been wonderful. I cannot thank you enough for believing in me and helping me in every way that you did. I also want to thank the performers who I have worked so closely with over the past bunch of months. You have been an absolute pleasure to work with and a huge source of inspiration!

With that being said, I will write about my Ear to the Ground experience on my blog in the next little while but I want to take some time to think about all that has happened and reflect on it all before I write. That way we can all learn something valuable from this experience. I will also be giving you an update of my upcoming performances in the next few days as lots is in the works right now for this week and beyond...Lots is happening and I promise that you'll get all the details very soon.

Love Rozalind

http://www.rozalindmacphail.com/