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Busking For Change Montreal

March 3, 2010 in Blog, Show Reviews

Yesterday you may have noticed that your local busker’s had a little bit of a different aura surrounding them. You may have also noticed unusually large crowds of people gathering around to watch, along with green and red buckets that said War Child on the side. Well, if you hadn’t already guessed, these weren’t just your ordinary buskers. In fact, the buskers that you may have seen at Berri-UQAM and Place Des Arts metro stations and at various locations around the Eaton’s Center yesterday were some of Montreal’s finest musicians and pop stars, playing their hearts out for a very worthy cause.

That cause is War Child; an organization that raises funds and awareness and provides assistance to children around the world that have been affected by war. The event that you may have witnessed yesterday was called Busking for Change. From 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, at various locations around downtown Montreal, local bands and artists came out to play in an effort to raise money for War Child. We were there to see what was going down and to do our part in donating and we were so impressed by what we saw. Most people had no idea what was going on but were happy to donate to this cause and all of the artists were in top form playing for 15 minutes at a time at various times throughout the day. We got to see Amy Millan of Stars playing in the Eaton’s Center food court, with her friends Evan Cranley (of Stars & Broken Social Scene) and Liam O’Neil (of The Stills). Millan played a great version of the Stars classic “Calender Girl” while Cranley and O’Neil backed her up on trombone and sax. She also played a cover of Death Cab For Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into The Darkness”.

Jason Bajada put on a great performance, playing some of his own songs as well as a few covers. He played The Strokes’ “Last Night” along with a great version of MGMT’s “Electric Feel”. A few people nearby actually thought it was MGMT playing and were really excited about it. Winter Gloves played, Ladies of the Canyon played, Leif Vollebekk played and Amanda Mabro played. Patrick Krief, who you may remember as a former member of The Dears played with some special guests. Maia Davies of Ladies of the Canyon backed him up of acoustic guitar, and Justin Wright & J.P. Saint-Cyr of Sweet Mother Logic added their skillful cello playing to the mix.

All in all, the day was a huge success. The artists involved all seemed to be having a blast and the collections buckets seemed to fill quite rapidly with a mixture of small change and a few bills thrown in here and there. If you’d like to know what else you can do to help this cause we urge to visit War Child’s website which will give you all the information you need on how you can help. Also, if you happen to be passing by a Spring store, the shoe company has partnered up with War Child in an effort to have school’s built in places that desperately need them. Spring is selling a leather bracelet for only $5.00, with 100% of the profits going directly to War Child. You can find out more here. Finally, here are some photos from Busking For Change Montreal. – Greg Lozoff