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Symons sharing Saturday stage with Stewart

Prince George has grown into Evan Symons. The B.C. musician is based in Vancouver with a creative getaway on Texada Island, but he still considers P.G. home even though he left here in 1988 at the age of 25.

Prince George has grown into Evan Symons.

The B.C. musician is based in Vancouver with a creative getaway on Texada Island, but he still considers P.G. home even though he left here in 1988 at the age of 25.

At the time, there was little room for him to move, in a musical sense. The music scene was limited and the appetite for his brand of music - avant-garde rock - was empty. He had a band that tried it, in their best Frank Zappa / Captain Beefheart fashion. It was called Burndog Hyena and Citizen writer Mark Allen said, in those days, "the homegrown development of Burndog Hyena's brash, crude and powerful sound is nothing short of astounding."

Yet, Allen pointed out, they were selling lots of tickets by the standards of the day, and it wasn't long before Symons had to decide to either be content with that limited level of support or move on to a place where progressive modern music had a deeper fan base. Clearly he was good at this stuff.

He went to the Lower Mainland, but maintained ties to Prince George. His music wasn't the stuff of Top 40 radio, but he still managed to keep busy and derive a living from his music.

Meanwhile, Prince George evolved. Now, thanks to the coordinator skills and musicianship of Jeremy Stewart, there is an annual experimental music festival and a cadre of players who regularly perform the challenging forms of experimental music.

Symons was one of the solo guest stars of the 2013 edition of the festival, and he reformed Burndog Hyena for the 2014 event.

"It amazes me that a whole festival could emerge, especially in what in Canada would be called a small market," Symons said. "And it's really refreshing to see the pretty steady fan commitment, and the solid organization working behind the scenes. That has a lot to do with the great marketing skills of Jeremy Stewart, but it also has a lot to do with the Prince George citizens who appreciate this awesome little endeavor."

Symons and Stewart are playing a twin-bill concert together Saturday night at 7:30 inside the performance space at the newly launched Dreamland School of the Arts (1010 4th Ave.). The funds raised will help operate the upstart school where various musicians and other performance artists have gathered to teach in ways that develop instrument skills but also live collaboration and public performance skills for the students.

"The school is pretty cool," Symons said. "It's pretty wonderful that Jeremy and Erin [Stewart, his wife and musical colleague] have gotten themselves to a place where they can teach, do shows, and have a space for that. It's probably more sustainable in Prince George than most other urban places, land values being what they are. You'd have to have pretty deep pockets to do something like that in Vancouver, so you're lucky to have this happening here, and I definitely want to support that."

Symons was making several trips per year back to Prince George to visit family and friends. Sometimes music was involved, sometimes not. With the old band reforming for occasional gigs, he is feeling a renewed energy that affects his songwriting and inspires his efforts, he said.

The band also includes drummer Joe Bodner, who has also moved from Prince George (he lives in Courtenay now), guitarist Brian Halvorson who still resides in P.G., and Symons on bass.

"This group actually started in P.G. in about '83, lasted to about '86, we all went our separate ways and we restarted in about 2012," Symons said. "We reformed for a number of reasons. Probably the simplest reason was, I was in P.G. a lot and was having fun playing again with Brian, we had this thing with Joe way back, so why not put the pieces together?"

The benefits of age and experience are keeping the trio's sporadic convergences in a more sustainable perspective.

"From my point of view, we don't need to be a band that intends to dominate the world like I would have expected of us in our youth," Symons said. "I've toured a ton, I'm super into that, I haven't thrown out hope of monetary success from music, but what drives me is doing what I want to do. Not getting a No. 1 hit is not going to stop me from doing something I really enjoy, with people I enjoy doing it with."

All this musical restoration has also caused Symons some pleasant trips down the dusty backroads of memory. He recalled that there were few viable bands at all, of any genre, when he left Prince George. He listed some rock groups like Statue Park, Tongue In Groove, Urban Distress with Andy Beesley and Sweet Hostage as the few who bumped into Burndog Hyena regularly.

"I actually dug up some Sweet Hostage for Vancouver radio not long ago. I was on the Nardwar the Human Surviette Show, and Nardwar wanted to know what we were up against in P.G. back in the day. We found some Sweet Hostage online, so that was fun to play for Vancouver," Symons said.

To see Symons and Stewart on Saturday, tickets are $10 at the door.