Evan Newman dwells with the quandary of musicians concerned about the climate crisis

Evan Newman is the Managing Director of Outside Music. Outside Music is an independent record label roster that includes a number of award-winning artists. It's one of the leading independent distributers in Canada. Some of the artists Outside Music has worked with include Jill Barber, The Weather Station, Rose Cousins, Aidan Knight, and Justin Rutledge. In 2019, Outside Music launched Next Door Records, a new label designed to provide equitable support and creative freedom to their songwriting community. I spoke with Evan about Next Door's mandate, and what it means for fostering work that engages with the politics of our climate emergency. In a condition of crisis, what can musicians do, beyond what they're doing: writing songs? Can they use what Evan describes as their "stature" to not only move audiences, but also encourage movement at the policy level to respond to carbon-intensive human activities, like how folks get to shows, how they get their music, and whether they're producing all kinds of plastic waste at those shows? Evan runs Outside Music with the passion of a fan. In this conversation he talks about how the rationale for who they work with does come down to who they're inspired by, the music they feel really needs to be heard. Part of this is also built on the faith that, as he says here, "music can enact change." If it's true that--and I agree with him on this point--the overwhelming deluge of information from news and other sources isn't necessarily communicating the urgency of eco-catastrophe, then music might need to not only move people, but move into a place of mobilizing people. The way it does that it through communicating a language of feeling: speaking to peoples' anger, anxiety, their stress and even their solipsism; letting them into the conversation about what climate politics should look like. As an educator in the music business program at the Nova Scotia Community College, he says he's working with young people who are attuned to the reality of the climate crisis, and curious about how to craft a way of working with artists that is environmentally ethical. He clearly derives some hope from knowing that these folks are working to figure out ways of changing an industry that, in his words, is still necessarily "tethered to capitalism." The mere fact that a new generation is entering the conversation about how music and climate change, arts and commerce, the environment and consumerism, means that transformation could become easier to imagine. I'll be discussing these issues with Evan, along with Shannon Miedema, Kim Fry, Joanna Bull, Waye Mason and Braden Lam this Wednesday, April 26th at Halifax's Central Library. The free event is titled "Changing the Tune on Climate," and will feature a number of performances by artists like Akuakultre, T. Thomason, The Gilberts, and Kristen Martell. We hope you'll attend... it will be a celebration of music, and an interesting discussion of environmental justice. Changing the Tune event info: https://halifax.bibliocommons.com/events/6418a052b4a2bc5b7ac1bbb9