The Cap and Shivering Songs Hosts the ‘Queen Street Crawl’

In their pursuit of bringing a fun night of good music to Fredericton’s streets, The Cap and Shivering Songs hosted the Queen Street Crawl, a pub crawl that hasn’t been replicated since the 90s.

The organizer Paul Hayes, an intern at The Cap, explained the idea came from his boss, Zach Atkinson. They were thinking of hosting a mini festival, and this was finally possible with some leftover funding from Shivering Songs, a company that hosts music festivals during the winter. The purpose was to bring revenue to the local venues and provide a fun night of diverse music.

 The Queen Street Crawl took place Thursday, March 30th.

The event consisted of different bands and musicians playing in seven venues all over Queen Street. The venues were the Monarch Night Club, The Cap, Broken Record Bar, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Par 94, Wilsers, and The Tipsy Muse.

Hayes explained that it wasn’t hard to get all the business on board with the project.

“I think everyone was just excited because it was a free event, and we were bringing business to them,” said Hayes.

About 550 people planned to attend. The organizers were expecting around 50 people to come to the different venues every hour. Each venue was going to host different genres of music, encouraging people to move around and see which one they liked the best.

Sinclair Green attended the Queen Street Crawl. She said she found out about it through a friend who is heavily in the music scene. Green was taking her first stop at the Broken Record Bar but was planning on stopping by the Monarch and the other venues to check the different bands. She says she wished she knew which bands were playing at each venue to plan her evening better; nonetheless, she was looking forward to moving around the venues and discovering new artists.

“My expectations [of the event] is to see artists I haven’t seen before, to get mix and pot, of like all the bands around here,” said Green.

The performance started at 7:30 p.m. and would last until 10:30 p.m., with each hour switching to a new performer or band.

Magnus Labillois performed at the Broken Record pub. Labillois said he got contacted by the organizer Paul Hayes, who is also an old friend and bandmate. Labillois performed by himself, but he’s also in a couple of bands as a guitarist. His genre of music can be described as alternative rock/punk rock.

“It’s a cool idea just having that many artists, all over the place in terms of style, and all in the same street you know?” said Labillois. “It’s great for the artist, great for the venues in the community.”

The performances soon became crowded, so people would wait outside to get into the shows, and they would gather around the coat check trying to enter.

Kevin Garnett said he had a great time. Garnett went to three venues and was amused by the different bands.

“My favorite spot was the Monarch. There was a really cool techno band I really enjoyed,” said Garnett.“This is the first time I’ve ever been to that kind of pub crawl music festival; I would definitely do it again.”