daily play: record of the week club
Local musician and producer Mike Petkau has a new project. It’s called Record of the Week Club, and its premise is this: put three different musicians together in a room for an evening and have them create a track which will be mixed up in time for online release later that night. It happens every Wednesday, and this week will be the club’s fourth outing.
Visit the (super-fancy) site and you can stream the tracks or download them for just $0.99 or subscribe to the whole 16-track series as it comes for $13.95.
The tracks all have an urgent, off-the-cuff feel to them, for obvious reasons, but the production value is top notch — a testament to Petkau’s training and experience in studio production.
Petkau’s idea is been to smash together musicians of different genres who wouldn’t ordinarily play together, and I think he’s only really ventured into that territory in the last week where jazz pianist Jonathan Alexiuk was in the mix — otherwise the talent pool originates from the indie rock arena. Speaking of the talent pool, it’s been undeniably good, with the likes of Joe Silva, Ricardo Lopez (Oldfolks Home), Joel Klaverkamp (The Hummers), Dave Quanbury (Twilight Hotel) and Jack Jonasson (Novillero). It’s also been undeniably male. Petkau says he’s been working on bringing women into the mix, and I believe him, but I say: Work harder, buddy! Because so far you’ve had nine participants and none of them is female. Winnipeg has many, many awesome women musicians. My two favourite Winnipeg bands, Nathan and the Gorgon, are female-fronted and all-girl, respectively. Of course Nathan is major label now, but I would love, love, love to hear Alana, Julia and Jen from the Gorgon on RotWC. Or Eve from Vav Jungle or Jo from Anthem Red or some of the fab lady DJs in town like Mama Cutsworth or Mizz Brown.
Don’t disappoint me, Mr. Petkau! I know you’ll come through. RoTWC is a super great project and has so far in every other way been executed impeccably, from the music itself to the website to the user-friendliness of the track-buying process.
Tags: mike petkau, novillero, oldfolks home, record of the week club
Hey Jenny
I just stumbled onto your blog. First off, thanks for the support and good words! Second, I hope that your concern about not enough women being involved is been amply satiated.
I was fully aware of that issue developing once I started receiving applications, when 80% or more were male. Since those first 3, we’ve had a great cross-section of local female artists – including, funnily enough, some of the ones you mention in your blog.
Rock on!
Mike