Two of this region's favourite music acts have won the first round of the playoffs in the CBC Radio Searchlight competition.
Vanderhoof band Rosewood's Diary and Prince George singer-songwriter William Kuklis were both voted into the second round, as was Fort St. John duo Twin Peaks.
The other first-round acts with close local ties did not make it through the initial voting period. Those were Dawn Boudreau, Kym Gouchie, Daniel Cook and Evan Symons. (If anyone knows of other local connections, please email that information to [email protected].)
For Kuklis, it's the second time he's tossed his songs into CBC's powerful beam.
"I love Searchlight," he said. "As a musician it's always hard to find an outlet where you can reach out and try to touch the entire country, and Searchlight offers this. It starts out small and regional, allowing you to build momentum within your community then with luck and religious-esque voting support, it exposes your music to the rest of the province and eventually the rest of the country. Now that sounds pretty flowery, and it is, but hey, I'm a songwriter."
From his accumulated Searchlight experience, Kuklis recommends artists involved work the social media channels at every reasonable opportunity, especially if you move past the first round. For acts like our northern second-round survivors, Facebook and Twitter and online voting is actually an advantage, in his mind.
"We are lucky to live in a smaller community that is so supportive to their artists," he said. "The people in our community actually care about local people doing well, and if you don't care please vote anyway, it's good for the community. I think that I have an easier time reaching out to almost everyone in the north. How do you reach out to all of Toronto?"
Kuklis was one of the local artists given a mainstage performance set during the Canada Winter Games music festival, and he has been on the Nancy O's stage too, recently. It has been a productive year for him as a singer-songwriter and he has his online fingers crossed that CBC will be the next platform on which he succeeds.
"Now things really start speeding up," said a written statement from the Searchlight organizers. "From the 3,333 bands that entered Searchlight, 545 talented acts have moved on to the regional semi-finals. Now it's up to fans to decide the regional finalists."
Online voting continues until noon (Prince George time) on Monday. That will determine each region's Top 10 acts. Our three northern B.C. entrants can be found under the Kelowna-Radio West heading.
Eventually, the shortlist will be whittled so short the finalists will go to a panel of judges for crowning the ultimate winner. The panel includes Dan Boeckner (Divine Fits, Handsome Furs member), singer-songwriter Jenn Grant and rapper Saukrates.
Everything is laid out at www.cbc.ca/searchlight.
