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Greg Bouchard, left, Theo Mathien, Gabrielle Lefort and Amie Watson are the hosts of the Midnight Poutine Podcast, a weekly podcast playing music by independent bands that will be performing in the city.
Photograph by: Marie-France Coallier , The Gazette
MONTREAL - It?s an idea so simple that it?s brilliant: A weekly podcast that previews indie musicians?s local shows by playing their music.
It?s called the Midnight Poutine Weekend Playlist (or just ?Midnight Poutine Podcast?), and this week it?s releasing its 300th episode.
The format is simple: After a little ?hello Internet, salut cyberspace? greeting, there is a series of songs from local and visiting artists playing in Montreal?s smaller venues over the coming week, a bit of background about them, and a mention of where they?re playing. Not only is it a way to discover new music, but if you hear something you like you know where you can see the artist perform live.
Only lesser-known indie artists get included here. You won?t hear about shows at the Bell Centre or Place des Arts, but places like Divan Orange and Le Cagibi. Episode 299 featured artists like Young Galaxy, Forgotten Fix, Gambletron and a band whose name is just three exclamation points. They?re the kind of artists who won?t get airplay on top 40 radio stations, so often the only place to discover them is here.
?I started it out of mostly personal reasons,? said Jeremy Morris, who launched the hour-long podcast in June 2006 with John MacFarlane, a former Gazette writer and editor. ?I was new to the city at the time. I wanted to know what was happing in the music scene.?
One week, while compiling a list of upcoming shows for the blog, Morris decided to take free-to-download songs from those artists and string them together in an MP3 file. The next week, he added recordings of himself introducing the songs, and a podcast was born.
?It was a way to experience Montreal for me,? Morris said.
When he had his first child in 2007, he couldn?t go out to see the shows, but doing the podcast offered him a way to feel connected to the music scene without leaving home.
Morris and MacFarlane both left the podcast when they moved away, but a new group of young music enthusiasts has picked up the reins in their place. Gregory Bouchard, Amie Watson, Theo Mathien and Gabrielle Lefort record the show once a week (plus five special episodes during Pop Montreal week) in a small room in Mathien?s apartment in Pointe St-Charles. These four didn?t know each other before the website and its podcast brought them together.
?This is a third or fourth job for some of us,? said Mathien, 34, a PhD student in music composition at Universit? de Montr?al. There?s no salary for this job, and it?s really done as a labour of love. When asked why they do it, they point to Morris, who put his heart and soul into the weekly production, many times single-handedly, until he moved to Madison, Wis., last July.
?When you?ve done it for a little bit of time it starts to feel like even though you don?t get a sense of who your audience is, they?re sort of there and you feel an obligation,? Morris said.
?We all feel like we owe it to Jer to continue,? Mathien said.
?He had such a great talent at making people interested in what he was saying,? said Bouchard, 29, a PhD student in history at McGill.
The show has a laid-back feeling to it, with a bit of lighthearted conversation between the hosts.
?We try to strike a balance between banter and information,? Mathien said.
?We?re looking for stuff no one else is playing,? said Watson, 26, a freelance writer who also runs cooking classes out of her house. ?Sometimes I?ll go to the second band or the third band on a bill.?
Though many of the songs get downloaded from artists? websites to be included in the podcast, many of them are sent to the podcast by the artists, their labels or their publicists looking to promote their upcoming shows.
?We have a pretty good reputation based on our connection to local labels and shows,? said Lefort, 24, a freelancer who?s hoping to get a job in the music industry.
Nevertheless, each episode ends with a disclaimer that they will pull a song from the podcast if the artist objects to it being there. Morris said that kind of request only happened once in those 300 episodes, and it was from a nervous label, not an angry artist.
Even the people who create the podcast aren?t sure how many people listen to it. There aren?t many comments left on the website. One statistic suggested a number around 7,000 people, but that was for page views, not downloads.
But it doesn?t matter. They?re still compelled to do this.
?There?s nothing else quite like this in Montreal,? Bouchard said. ?If we stopped doing this, I would be annoyed that there isn?t another podcast like this to listen to.?
Midnight Poutine Weekend Playlist Episode 300, featuring live performances from Ohara and Sea Oleena, a special original birthday song and a message from Morris, should be available at midnightpoutine.ca by Thursday. The podcast is also organizing a barbecue at Jeanne-Mance Park, at Duluth and Esplanade Aves., Saturday at 3 p.m.
sfaguy@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: fagstein
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