Five And Dime has been a part of Saint John’s upswing as a cultural hub over the last year. As a new bar and venue located uptown, it has played a crucial role in the Quality Block Party music festival and provided a fresh performance space for bands and music enthusiasts. Now they’re making it possible to take the Five And Dime musical experience home with you with Vol 1. of their Live @ the Five compilation album.
The album is features thirteen original tracks from New Brunswick bands and musicians who have performed at Five And Dime over the past year, professionally recorded and mastered by award-winning audio engineer Tim Davidson.
“I think it’s the first compilation of local music on vinyl in decades, if not forever,” says Five And Dime owner Jody Kliffer.
“It was a creative project that I wanted to do as a means of celebrating local music. I guess the goals were twofold. One, to have a snapshot in time of what was happening in terms of local music in Saint John in 2017 – the year that we had the ECMAs, Quality Block, E2L Jam, Area 506, etc. There was a buzz here that people will be talking about for many years. I wanted to have something to document a bit of that. Two, I wanted to contribute to the ongoing evolution of the local music scene in our own small way.”
“I’m a firm believer that a music scene doesn’t need to only happen in big cities. It can happen anywhere with the right energy at the roots of it. Seattle; Halifax; Macon, Georgia; Haight-Ashbury; Greenwich Village; Nashville; etc. are all examples of small towns or neighbourhoods that had vibrant music scenes. It’s a good research project to figure out exactly what happened in those places to create a great music scene, but my bet is that there were as many cool bands/musicians as there were good places that wanted to host them and record them.”
The album includes tracks from Three Sheet, Jamie Comeau (ft. McKayla Arseneau), Jessica Rhaye, Dan Verner, Sebastien Fleet, Sadie, Julie Doiron, Mike MacDonald, Fox Farm, Joel Leblanc, and James McDonald and Franky Sanche as well as artwork by the extremely talented Pamela Marie Pierce.
The albums will be selling for $28.00 plus tax and will be available for purchase at the Five and Dime in Uptown Saint John. Kliffer says they’ll also be accepting orders online and are looking at the possibility of distributing via local record stores.