Day-long concert rattles concert-circuit conventions, collects money for charity

“I have the experience of often playing with bands where I am the only woman in the entire lineup” – Nicole Bilyea

Walk around downtown Guelph and often you will be hard-pressed to find a concert flyer or (even rarer) a marquee packed with names boasting performances from female musicians.

Playing in local bluegrass-folk group Your Neck of the Woods, it’s an experience that mandolin/guitar player and vocalist Nicole Bilyea is well acquainted with.

“As a musician in Guelph I’ve wanted to see more female-bodied/female-identified musicians performing around town,” Bilyea told The Ontarion. “I have the experience of often playing with bands where I am the only woman in the entire lineup (other than our drummer, Julia [Stead]).”

In response to that reality, coupled with some charitable intentions, Bilyea teamed up with Spencer Shewen – a concert promoter from local booking company Fortnight Productions – to assemble a marathon concert experience titled “100 Mile Riot” on Jan. 21.

Featuring 14 acts from female identified and female-bodied musicians, with only 10 minutes spanning between each set, the stage featured performances from spoken word artists, singer-songwriters, beat boxing, and DJs throughout the day.

“I’ve been to many, many festivals and shows where there are only male performers, and it’s just sort of taken for granted. It’s not really something that most people would even notice, so I wanted to make a point of having this 12 hour festival packed to the brim,” Bilyea said.

Gathering a wide range of performers, Bilyea felt a need to display the diversity of talent among female-bodied and female-identified performers.

“I think that a lot of the time, music made by women is sort of marginalized into being ‘chick music,’ or that it’s something separate and is not as well respected or having that immediate universal thing that’s sort of granted to a lot of male musicians,” said Bilyea. “I wanted there to be an opportunity for up-and-coming female-identified musicians to have a stage where other booking agents and promoters are going to be so that they can get some recognition and hopefully through this be able to book more around town, as well as just appreciate some of the bigger names that have come from Guelph or that operate out of Guelph such as Rouge and Sheezer.”

One of the highlights of the event for Bilyea was when Sarah Mangle performed.

“Before she started she addressed why she wanted to play, what she thought of the event, and she addressed the fact that the reason why we don’t see more female-bodied, female-identified, racialized, queer, etc. musicians performing around town – or at least not with the prevalence that they exist on the house show circuit is that we don’t make it a welcoming enough place for them, and she hoped that the booking people who were there, venue owners, and etc. would think about that,” she said. “And I think they did.”

An executive member of the University of Guelph’s V-Day chapter, which provided other executive members to work doors and other members to helm an information table, Bilyea was also concerned about making the event as inclusive as possible.

“I hope that it felt inclusive and that no one felt excluded,” she said. “It’s always tricky organizing things that are woman-centered, especially when we are working within the V-Day campaign, which often uses language associating women with vaginas. But not all women have vaginas and I hope that any trans-women that may have heard about the event and wanted to perform would have felt that they could.”

V-Day is a global movement to end violence against women and girls inspired by activist/playwright Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues.

100 Mile Riot also served as a promotional outlet for V-Day, and more specifically, the U of G chapter, which is also organizing campus productions of The Vagina Monologues and sister play, A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer (MMRP) this semester.

Emily McRoberts is the co-director of this year’s Vagina Monologues production, alongside Hilda Nouri.

“We rely on events like the 100 Mile Riot to fundraise and run our productions,” said McRoberts. “However, we also receive some funding from the student body through a small CSA fee each semester, which means that most of the funds from events like these go directly to our benefactors– The Wellness Centre at the University of Guelph and Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis.”

The event was beneficial to V-Day and its associated productions for more than just fundraising, though. It also served to raise awareness of the events in the community.

“V-Day events tend to be very well attended,” said McRoberts. “We do want to try to reach out to a more diverse community this year. Events like the 100 Mile Riot are an effort to raise the profile of V-Day in our community, as we try to engage with different groups, especially as we recognize that the campaign would accomplish more if more men were involved.”

All of the revenue from 100 Mile Riot is being combined with earnings from The Vagina Monologues and MMRP and then being split between the local Women in Crisis Centre and Wellness Centre. 10 per cent will also be directed to women in Haiti, where sexual violence against women has been a major issue long preceding the 2010 earthquake, through a program organized by the international V-Day campaign. Many locally organized events and fundraisers through V-Day affiliates around the world contribute to this fund.

Before presenting its productions of Eve Ensler’s plays, the U of G V-Day chapter will be putting together a second volume of Saturday Night: Untold Stories of Sexual Assault in Guelph, a zine-formatted collection of anonymous personal accounts from people that have experienced sexual assault. In preparation, the group will be organizing off-campus workshops to provide support as well as guidance throughout the process. Those who are interested can contact Nicole Bilyea.

They will also be holding a “Slut Slam,” a sexy storytelling event, at some point in March.

The Vagina Monologues are set to take place on Feb. 10 and 11, with MMRP to follow in March.

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