08.10.2008 Tegan and Sara / Declan de Barra Under The Volcano Festival

Under the Volcano is one of Vancouver's gem annual festivals. It's a grass-roots festival focusing on social change with live performances, workshops and all sorts of socio-political information booths. It's run mainly by volunteers and the price of admission is on a sliding scale ($10-$20, students and people with jobs respectively). In my opinion, best of all, it's held in Cates Park, surrounded by trees and a waterfront, an absolutely beautiful location.

I arrived to catch the tail end of Flores de Alegria's set. They're an all female mariachi band from Vancouver. I think that's what they said they were from. Crowd seemed to enjoy it. Then again some people in the crowd seemed to enjoy just about anything.



Declan de Barra was the lead singer of an Australian band called Clann Zu. They actually played this very same festival in 2004. Unbeknownst to me at the time, that was also their final show ever. This time around, Declan would play without the accompaniment of a backing band. Almost fittingly, he started his set with a Clann Zu song, from Bethlehem to Jenin, a song he did not play during the 2004 show. He played mostly songs from his solo album plus a few traditional Irish songs. I chatted with him for a bit after his gig. He said that he was working on a second solo album and was thinking of going back to recording maybe in September. I asked if he could play "One Bedroom Apartment" (a Clann Zu song) during his next set. He said he would if he could remember the words. I wasn't trying to be "one of those guys", but i was running out of conversation material, plus I have seen youtube videos of him performing it post-CZ.

On my way to see Declan's second set, I took in a bit of Sherman Austin's set. He sort of resembles a Ice-T in a way. He rapped about police brutality and social oppression on top of beats and even while playing bass at the same time. Impressive.

De Barra's second set was by the Waterfront and was brought about by the cancellation of another act. De Barra performed a completely different set with sailboats and blue skies in the background. Toward the end of his set, he played a request from the first set, Apple Tree, which is on his myspace page right now. True to his word, he obliged me by closing out his set with an acapella version of "One Bedroom Apartment."


Declan Singing "One Bedroom Apartment"




Hometown favourites, Tegan and Sara, started their set while Declan was ending his. Yep, the applause in the middle of that video was for Tegan and Sara, playing about 200 meters away. They started with "Dark Come Soon" but stopped about 20 seconds in order to adjust their monitors. This pretty much set the tone for their entire 40 min set. There were actually a couple of songs which were stopped abruptly due mostly to the relaxed vibe. I've said this before, but half the fun of a Tegan and Sara show is the onstage banter and interaction (bickering) between the two sisters. It makes them very relatable if you've ever had a sibling. Although, the set was billed as "acoustic", it was in fact pretty much just a regular show, just without a drummer. Their setlist was typical of their previous tour, but was everything you could ask for in a non-headlining slot.


Probably My Favourite Part of T+S's Set. (User: Nataliex33)


$20/$10