The Artesia Coffee House, one of the Sunshine Coast’s long-standing arts performance traditions, opens a new season at the Arts Centre in Sechelt on Friday, Jan. 31.
“It started in 2003, so we’re going into our eighteenth year,” said Linda Williams of the Coast Cultural Alliance (CCA), which has organized the monthly, January-to-May event since its inception. More precisely, it’s Williams herself – also the driving force behind the Gibsons Landing Jazz Festival, the Sunshine Coast Art Crawl, and the CCA’s busy website – who looks after things.
“It is a CCA project, but I put it on,” Williams told Coast Reporter. “I have a volunteer come from the CCA to do the door.” She also recruits partner Barry Taylor on occasion, if he’s not busy as a drummer for any of the local bands he plays with, to help set up tables. And Williams is not shy about asking patrons to help quickly stack chairs and tables at the end of the evening.
Artesia started out with shows from October to May in the basement at Sechelt’s Rockwood Lodge. “We called it The Cellar,” Williams said. “We hauled everything out and back in every week. It was always well-attended. Then in 2006 we moved into the Arts Centre.”
Booking the acts for the five annual shows is one of Williams’s many voluntary tasks. “I do it as time allows in my world,” she said. It’s not like she has to seek out performers. They seek her. “People email in saying they want to play. We try to keep it fair and open and try to emphasize having a young artist in each show. And a few years ago, we started incorporating a spoken-word artist, a poet of some kind. It doesn’t last too long and it gives the writers a brand new audience.”
The poet for the Jan. 31 show is Janice Williams (no relation to Linda). The event also is featuring two performers new to the Coast, singer-songwriter Ken Capron with some original tunes, and singer-pianist Patricia Burnett, who performs tributes to Carol King. Rounding out the evening is veteran local folksinger Joe Stanton.
The coffee-house setting is one performers really enjoy, said Williams, because unlike busier pub and restaurant venues, the audience is there just to hear them. “Often they say afterwards, ‘Wow, people were really listening to me.’”
The evening is structured in a pair of sets with an intermission, which many use to head to the kitchen for treats prepared by Trish Thompson or take in the paintings in the Doris Crowston Gallery’s latest exhibit.
Admission is $10, which pays for the professional sound technician and venue rental. Whatever remains is shared among the performers. The doors open at 6:45 p.m. and the show starts at 7:30.
