Save the Sky Dragon

Below is a message sent to members of Sky Dragon’s Facebook Group, please take a moment to have a look & see if you can offer any of the support they’re in need of… It would be a damn shame to lose another part of the arts community in Hamilton’s Downtown.

Cheers.

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Hello Friends,

Apologies for the lateness of this update, and many thanks to everyone
who came out to the meeting held last Sunday at the Sky Dragon
Centre. Your concern, passion, emotion and ideas were invaluable, and
the meeting went a long way toward buoying the spirits of Coop members
and supporters. Thanks also to all those people who have phoned and
emailed with suggested solutions and offers of support. These
communications have been warmly received, and every suggestion is
being considered in turn (there’s a lot of them!).

The situation as it stands is that the Coop is still looking for a
first mortgage, in the amount of $270,000. In addition, the Coop
needs help with some expenses concerning building appraisal, legal and
accounting fees. The deadline for Teacher’s pulling the mortgage
remains April 18th, which is a tight timeline.

Presented at the meeting on Sunday was the idea that the Coop needs to
undergo structural changes in order to ensure its long-term financial
viability, to improve its effectiveness, and to better involve the
community. These changes involve modifying the Coop model and opening
it up to different stakeholder groups, including community members and
partner organizations. This process will take months to complete, but
it needs to start now.

The most significant next step in the campaign will be a larger, more
structured community meeting. At this meeting, the Coop’s vision and
operating history will be presented in detail, along with the
structural challenges it has faced and continues to face. Coop board
members will explain the various aspects of the Sky Dragon project,
and reveal a plan for its renewal, growth and sustainability. Most
importantly, community members will be asked to contribute their ideas
and to help the board collectively generate solutions.

Immediately, the Save the Dragon Campaign could use the following
help:

1) A $270,000 first mortgage (provided by one person, ten people, 20
people, etc….)

2) Pro-bono legal and accounting help

3) Financial Donations (we will be confirming their status for
charitable receipts shortly)

4) Help putting up posters and handing out flyers for the Community
Meeting

5) Help disseminating update emails

6) Volunteer help for upcoming events, including the May 1st Mayday
Festival, the April 17th & 19th Halton Eco-Fest, and other Centre
projects as needed

7) Tangible ways in which the Coop can be supported (know anyone who
wants to buy some locally roasted Fair Trade / Organic Coffee? ☺)

8) Becoming a member of the new Coop! (details TBA at the Community
Meeting)

If you are able to help with any of the above items, please don’t
hesitate to contact the Coop. We will return your email or pone
message as quickly as we are able.

Right now some of the most important things you could do are to tell
as many people as you can about the event below, try to come out to it
yourself, or volunteer to help organize it. We need folks to help us
set up the event and promote it, artists to decorate it, musicians to
play at it, and volunteers to help it run…

Save the Dragon

Monday March 29
Ricca’s Furniture Building
228 James St. North, Hamilton

7 pm to 9 pm

Presentations by Sky Dragon boardmembers, community consultation, art, music, refreshments. All are invited, all voices welcome.

Recording Update #6

FINALLY!!  It’s time for a brand new recording update.

We ‘re humming along on the base tracks now, with only three more songs to get laid down, so we’ll be moving forward onto overdubs real soon.  We’ve got some awesome guests lined up to lend us a hand for some of these, including our good friends Nate Powers (MC Undun), Tarek Ajak (Mother Tareka-Peak Soil), Sam Klass (Hood Klass Perri), and plenty more.

There’s a whole lot of new sounds, for those who’ve only heard the Busride EP, or even the Live recording from Pepper Jack Café, things are sounding remarkably different these days.  As far as the audio updates (which you can dig at subcollective.ca/recording.html or our ReverbNation Page), we’ve got brand new versions of both “New Funk” & “Sorta Like I’m Flyin’”.  It’s mostly just cleaned up guitar and keys tracks, but there’s plenty more on the way.

If you’ve not already done so, please go to subcollective.ca/contact.html and join our mailing list.  We’ve got a bit of a “Thank You” for those that do, in the form of a free download, an album preview studio jam, never before heard by human ears (besides our own).

Lastly, a massive Cheers! out to all of you that came out to the SuperCrawl after-party at Sky Dragon last week!  We had an awesome night, and we hope you dug the additional members, Sam & Tarek on guitar & sax respectively.  We got an opportunity to wander through and dig some of the crawl, and I must say how happy I was to see so many folks out supporting the event despite the weather.  It goes to show the support the people of Hamilton have for their city & arts community.  Well done!

If you have photos and the like you want to share with us, feel free to send them to us at subcollective.ca@gmail.com

Cheers!

Mayday

Big thanks out to Kevin & all at Sky Dragon/Mayday Magazine for putting together another great day!

I myself got there just before Ijo Vudu Dance group got started.  If you missed it, these folks had half the street moving (in near unison) along to their beat.

There were plenty of other performers throughout the day, including the Human Race (a one man noise machine), Weakgenes, Lee Reed, & the Rhyme Travellers, which features our friend & & collective member, Nate (aka MC Unudun).

Alongside the music, there was live mural painting (which was awesome to watch evolve), as well as some scattered art throughout the street.  

The Subterraneans closed off the night (and would’ve kept going if they hadn’t wanted to take the stage down from under us).  Thanks to the crowd that stuck around right to the end, and to Undun & Lefspek from the Rhyme Travellers for helping us out on a couple songs!

There are plenty more photos from the day (though none of the band, so if you’ve got some let us know!), you can dig at thesubterraneans.ca or see all of them on our Facebook Page.

We should have download cards by the end of the day, so if you’d like to get a copy of our (likely) last show at the Pepper Jack Café, come out to our next show and get yourself one!  We’ll be offering them out on a pay-what-you’re-able basis, so please help us out as best you can, and I’ll get Abbey to hug you.  If you’re outside the area, but would still like a download, email us at thesubterraneansmusic@gmail.com and we’ll sort out a reasonably simple solution (we hope to have online purchasing directly on the website soon).

We got two more songs recorded last night, so we’re that much closer to having an album proper.  Lot’s of work to do yet, but it’s starting to come together…

Dig.