This Friday, Steam Whistle Brewing is hosting Unsigned #24 at the John St. Roundhouse in Toronto. With concerts happening year-round in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, the Unsigned Series has become an excellent showcase for emerging Canadian talent that also manages to attract diverse audiences while raising money for charity.

Started in 2007, the Unsigned Series is the brainchild of Matt Weed, Special Events Manager at Steam Whistle. “We’ve got this amazing room here as our venue,” says Weed. “We were doing a lot of fundraisers and a lot of corporate events and weddings and stuff like that. Me and my colleague Chris, we’re both really avid music fans, and we were like, ‘We’ve really got to get some concerts down here.’”

With that simple idea, Weed went about crafting an event that he would love as a music fan while also complimenting his company’s brand. Explains Weed: “We wanted something that fit the space and fit the brand, so it needed to be Canadian and it needed to be independent and it needed to be sort of an interesting new take. We didn’t want to just have Led Zeppelin cover bands or something like that; we wanted to get something in there that was new and fresh.”

Five years later, Weed and his Steam Whistle colleagues have put on 23 shows in Toronto, four in Calgary, one in Edmonton, and two in Vancouver, all showcasing some of Canada’s best up-and-coming bands and artists from a wide array of genres.

“We’ve been really blessed with partnering with some really great Canadian acts that have gone on to some really great things,” says Weed. “One of the high points for me was one of the bands that played our third Unsigned called Rural Alberta Advantage. I got a chance a few years ago to go down to Coachella and they were playing there. I got to see a band that we had in our room with 200 people playing down at one the biggest music festivals in the world. That was really amazing.”

“He seems to always put together great line-ups,” comments Mike Silvestre, lead singer of Toronto band Babe, who will be playing Unsigned #24. “When you’re able to be involved in a show that you know is run by good people, and usually has bands that kind of represent the same things and are striving for the same things musically, then getting asked to play a show like that is a compliment.”

Even with the proceeds going to charity, Weed understands that young bands need to make a living. “We’re not asking them to play for free because their music is their business. So they all get paid even though we donate all the door money to charity. Likewise, we sell their merch for them at no commission so they can sell their albums, t-shirts, and stuff like that to the fans.”

In each location, Steam Whistle teams up with a local charity that blends well with the Unsigned Series. In Toronto, proceeds to go to the Artists’ Health Alliance, which helps artists avoid or cope with injuries that impact their ability to make money through their art. To date, the Unsigned Series has raised over $70,000 for the Artists’ Health Alliance. In Calgary, the money was used to help a local radio station while in Vancouver money raised by Unsigned went to Solidarity Rocks, an artists-run organization that partners artists in Canada and Cuba and provides instruments and equipment for Cuban rock musicians.

This Friday’s show features electro-pop artist Digits, who has been making waves in Europe over the last year, along with Toronto bands Babe and Beta Frontiers. “As bands are coming up these days, it’s tricky for them to get noticed,” says Weed. “It’s hard to get above the buzz when there are huge marketing departments throwing money behind bands that, in many people’s minds, aren’t worth listening to and a lot of the really amazing, more DIY stuff, they don’t have the huge budgets to cut through the clutter.  We do what we can to help introduce them some new ears and play somewhere where they might not have played before.”

Head over to Canadian Musician’s Facebook page for a chance to win two tickets to Unsigned #24 plus Steam Whistle merchandise, brewery tours passes, and a one year subscription to Canadian Musician magazine.

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