My history with NXNE co-founder and programmer Yvonne Matsell goes back more than 20 years and my respect for her is boundless. The music industry has a notoriously high burn-out rate but Matsell is hardcore: “Live music is my true passion,” she says in her charming Welsh accent. “I love to see it performed and I love to see bands grow.”
You’d be hard pressed to find a local act of any stature that hasn’t been aided and abetted in some way by Matsell. A Toronto club booker since the late 1980s at Albert’s Hall, Ultrasound, Reverb/Holy Joe’s, Ted’s Wrecking Yard and now the El Mocambo, she’s given a leg up to Broken Social Scene, Metric, Sum 41, Billy Talent, Ron Sexsmith, Barenaked Ladies, Tea Party and Lowest of the Low, to name just a handful.
Sixteen years ago, NOW’s Michael Hollett tagged Matsell to help launch a northern equivalent of Austin’s South By Southwest music fest. Like the Texas town’s famous 6th Street, which is lined with live music clubs, Toronto’s Queen Street West is perfect for a club crawl of regal proportions.
“Toronto is made for this kind of festival,” says Matsell. “We’ve grown well beyond Queen Street to include Spadina and College and the far end of Queen West, and it’s good to see that people are willing to travel a bit.”
The live music component of NXNE kicks off tonight, with the first of more than 650 bands performing at 50 venues. This year, headliners include Iggy and the Stooges, X, Japandroids, the Ravonettes, Said the Whale, K-OS, Mudhoney, Timber Timbre, Besnard Lakes, De La Soul, and many, many more.
“This will be another great year for NXNE,” says Matsell confidently. “The excitement’s been building for weeks with the public. People are excited because NXNE is like the beginning of summer in the city. It’s always great to see people running around from gig to gig, it’s part of the buzz.”
Unlike the early days of the festival, Matsell no longer has to help sift through the first round of submissions, which number around 2,500 in an average year. Just coping with the not-so-short list and trying to craft cohesive bills for so many rooms and nights is a tall enough order.
It’s a testament to Toronto’s enormous appetite for live music that NXNE has flourished during a period when the music business as a whole has shrunk dramatically. Labels and publishing companies have contracted as sales have dropped off a cliff (down 37 per cent from 1999 – 2009 according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) due at least in part to illegal file sharing.
“Downloading really has been a blow to the industry,” says Matsell. “Some people are for it, some are dead set against it, personally I’d never do it.”
In the early years of NXNE I’d run into Matsell on Queen Street or in one of the clubs, manning her walkie talkie and putting out fires large and small. These days she sticks close to the El Mo checking in with venues in that vicinity.
“We have a ‘call-in’ early each evening where we check in with all the stage managers,” she explains. “Sometimes a band doesn’t make it across the border or hasn’t shown up for whatever reason so we have to make an instant decision whether to replace them with another act on a standby list. There’s always a lot of last-minute juggling.”
Five days from now, Matsell and the rest of the NXNE crew will be able to take a deep breath and pat each other on the back – in the meantime, let the good times roll!
WHERE/WHEN: The NXNE conference is headquartered at the Hyatt Regency Toronto; wristbands are $50 and provide access to all NXNE club shows and film screenings from Wednesday June 16 through Sunday June 20.
Photos by Christopher Jones
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The photos made me smile. Yvonne is a stalwart of the Toronto music scene — great to see her profiled here.
Years ago, when she was temporarily between gigs, the industry rallied around her and raised a sizeable sum to help get her over the hump. I can’t imagine that happening for anyone else and I can’t imagine a more deserving recipient. She is truly LOVED by her community.