Songwriters to tour Atlantic Canada before ECMAs

Several Atlantic Canadian songwriters will travel across the region in February, performing nine shows in the lead up to this year's East Coast Music Awards.

New this year, The ECMA Songwriters Tour, will give five musicians one from each of the Atlantic Provinces, with a fifth from Cape Breton the opportunity to showcase the songs they wrote during last year's SOCAN Song House.

The tour will also allow the songwriters to "collaborate in a unique way," the East Coast Music Association's executive director, Andy McLean, told CBC's Mainstreet PEI.

The tour, he explained, has been two years in the making and is being put on by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) and the Atlantic Presenters Association.

"I'm very excited about this," McLean said.

This all began in 2015, when the East Coast Music Association and SOCAN developed the SOCAN Song House. The two-day event, held in St. John's, Nfld., brought together a dozen songwriters from Atlantic Canada to write and learn together.

'Great new tunes'

Based on the success of its first edition, McLean said, it was held again last year just prior to the awards ceremony.

That's when McLean came up with the idea of taking the "great new tunes" the songwriters wrote during the Song House on tour.

The association, he said, sat down with SOCAN and the Atlantic Presenters Association, and decided to featurea songwriter from each of the five regions the association represents.

They are: Mike Biggar, New Brunswick; Jordan Musycsyn, Cape Breton; Jon Pike, Newfoundland and Labrador; Ian Sherwood, Nova Scotia; and Andrew Waite, Prince Edward Island.

They will perform at soft-seat theatres across the region in February.

"We're very proud to be able to offer this opportunity," McLean said. "It's a continuation of the creative process that starts at the Song House."

The 2017 edition of the East Coast Music Awards, which take place in Saint John at the end of April, will also include a Song House. McLean said he hopes the tour will repeat again next year.