In its seventh year, Music Makes Meals presents a lineup of local talented musicians to raise funds for the Kamloops Food Bank.
Saturday, Nov. 10, three local bands — Solara, Matt Stanley & The Decoys and Henry Small Band — plus special guests No Sinner from Vancouver, will be playing a show at the Kamloops Convention Centre.
The event started six year ago, according to Kamloops This Week’s Dale Bass.
“The food bank in Kamloops was having significant problems,” Bass said. “We ran a story in our paper where the executive director said they may have to shut down.
“Two friends of mine [TRU alumni Joey Jack and local singer-songwriter Danie Pouliotte] e-mailed me and said, ‘We need to do something, let’s do it with music.’ We called up a few friends and put together the first Music Makes Meals night at The Blue Grotto, where we had been until this year.”
Henry Small, of the Henry Small Band, describes his live performance as “a bunch of guys getting together and having fun.”
Solara is a local world-music ensemble with an international feeling. Matt Stanley & The Decoys “is a younger band with old roots, coming out of the Tom Petty and Bob Dylan school, even they’re all in their twenties,” Small said.
Small got the headliner of the night, No Sinner “because he is awesome,” Bass said.
“Colleen Rennison, the lead singer, is the real deal, a combination of Janis Joplin with Amy Winehouse,” Small said.
Rennison is also a successful actress with appearances in movies such as The Story of Us, with Bruce Willis and TV series such as Stargate SG-1.
“Her persona on stage is very authentic and her band is very authentic, which is something that translates to the rest of the bands,” Small said.
For the first time this year, Music Makes Meals put together an album with a taste of the local music talent, including the performing bands, with funds going to the Kamloops Food Bank.
“We put out a call for musicians to send us their stuff,” Small said. “We got a really well balanced CD, which really shows off the amounts of talent we have in Kamloops, who are doing their own thing in so many different ways and styles.”
CDs, called Feed the Soul cost $10 and will be available at the concert, the food bank, Kamloops This Week offices, The Smorg, The Art We Are, the Golden Buddha and Caffe Motivo. The concert starts at 7:30 with tickets at $10 as well.
This was originally published on the independent student newspaper The Omega, while I was a Journalism exchange student at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in 2012. You can read more about this experience on my Spanish blog #fromkamloops. Read the article online on The Omega’s website or the print version on Pinterest. Headline photo by Eric Cairns.
Oriol Salvador 