Halifax’s Legendary Music Venue, The Carleton Celebrates 15th Anniversary
An interview with Mike Campbell
WRITTEN BY: KATIE GORDON // THE BOOM AT NOON
Halifax's beloved music venue and restaurant, The Carleton, is celebrating a major milestone this May as it marks its 15th anniversary. Back in 2008, former MuchMusic VJ, Mike Campbell opened the venue. The Carleton quickly became a cultural institution, an intimate listening room known for its impeccable sound quality, where artists and audiences alike can connect through the power of live music.
Mike Campbell (Photo: thecarleton.ca)
Over the past 15 years, the venue has faced many ups and downs. These include numerous national and local awards and accolades, as well as the construction of the adjacent Nova Centre. The latter nearly caused the venue to close before it was purchased by the current owner, Karen Spaulding in 2017. In an interview with Mike, The Carleton’s Programming Director, he reflects on the history of the legendary establishment and its impact on the Halifax music community and looks forward to what’s planned for the 15th-anniversary celebration.
Plan C
With Mike’s background in the music industry, you would think that opening a live music venue would be a natural fit, but Mike says that was not the original plan. “To be honest, it was more like a plan c. I'd finished working at MuchMusic at that point and I was bouncing around doing a bunch of other things,” he says. Mike, at the time, was booking talent for the National Art Centre’s Atlantic Scene Festival, producing JUNOFest and managing Joel Plaskett alongside Sherri Jones, but the income wasn’t consistent. “So I thought I'll just open a bar restaurant. How hard can that be? How hard can it be to find a bunch of money and just open a place? Like an idiot, I thought it was simple, but no, it was not simple. It was very difficult,” says Mike. At the corner of Argyle and Prince Street, the new restaurant opened in May 2008, taking over the former Carleton Hotel, which is the third oldest building in Halifax.
Mike says he originally only wanted to book one live music act a month.“I booked Joel Plaskett in May of 2008, and then in June, I booked Jill Barber and in July, I booked Steve Poltz,” he says. It wasn’t long after those shows that the global financial crisis was atop many people's minds. “We just started to book more acts because people would show up to see a show, whereas they wouldn't just show up to eat food and have drinks anymore. I kind of got sucked into making it a live music venue,” he adds.
Another band that comes to mind when you think of The Carleton is its former house band, The Carletones, led by Adam Baldwin and other members from Matt Mays’ band. Together, they played at the venue every Saturday for eight years. “I wanted the band associated with the bar, so we called the band The Carletones because I thought it was funny, and it is funny,” he smiles. “We’d pack the place and eventually, we just started filling in other days of the week.”
Legendary sound and listening room
One of the things that The Carleton is known for is its incredible sound system which was brought to life by Barry Hirtle, one of Mike’s high school football teammates. “I was a quarterback on the football team and Barry was a wide receiver who was like the fastest guy in PEI. And we had a terrible football team. I think we won one game all year,” says Mike. “We were at the end of one game and we were in our own endzone and I just made up a play and said, Barry, you go down, do a little fake and head back to the middle, from my own endzone, I'll hit you midfield - and I did it - right in the chest at full speed and he dropped the ball. So ever since then, I’ve told him he owes me. He started a sound company in Charlottetown called Hirtles Sound Solutions, and they do installations for churches and homes and all kinds of things,” he adds. When he was getting ready to open the bar, he decided to call in that favour Barry owed him. “I told him I needed a sound system for my bar that sounded exactly the same from different areas of the room, and I wanted it to somehow double as a PA system,” says Mike. “It’s an array system, it’s 360 degrees, which means it doesn’t have to be loud for everybody to hear it, but it also means that you can hear people talking from all over the place,” he says about the atypical sound system.
“The first act I had booked was Joel [Plaskett]. I was managing him at the time and he was playing solo. My greatest fear was that people would just talk through the show, which would have mortified me,” says Mike. “I got up on the stage and just said to people that as a courtesy to the artists, to please shut up, which is actually the language I was using at the time, which my partners weren’t too thrilled with,” he laughs. “Eventually, it became a speech and then I found out that the artists and people that came to the show really appreciated it,” he adds.
a changing city and music scene
Five years after The Carleton first opened, construction for the Nova Centre on Argyle Street would begin and would continue for several years, causing trouble for many business owners on the popular street. “Back in the day before I started, Argyle was the street in the city,” reminisces Mike. “That's where most of the clubs were. That's where all the foot traffic was. Over the years, they've chipped away at it. There is almost nowhere to park down there anymore and it took five years to build a convention centre, which was only supposed to take two and a half. Blasting twice a day for a year.” he adds. “They could charge this development $100,000 to block streets and easily distribute a portion of that to the various businesses to help. The only reason I hung on as long as I did is because I started a Patreon campaign,” says Mike, who launched the crowdfunding campaign in 2016 to help pay rent until construction was complete.
And city development isn’t the only thing that’s changed over the years, according to Mike. “I think the music scene here is a lot more fragmented than it used to be. When I first moved here, the Halifax Pop Explosion had just started and there was Sloan and Thrush Hermit and Jale, The Hardship Post and Eric’s Trip and all these other bands that were just here. So you go out any day of the week and see them,” he says. “I see lots of good bands. It's just not as cohesive and as complimentary as it used to be.”
On top of that, Mike says it’s an uphill battle trying to appeal to younger audiences, adding that he started seeing fewer universities booking live entertainment in the early 2000s when he was finishing up on Going Coastal. “Between high school and university, that was when you'd see bands. Now, none of that. Kids aren’t listening to music the same way they don't care about live music. It's not in their blood,” says Mike. “I don't know what it is. I don't know how to change it - I wish it did. But as long as we can capture some younger people to come out, then maybe we can still have some kind of a scene here,” he adds, saying it’s not just the younger generation who have dialled back in their live music consumption. “It's very difficult to get people in Halifax to come out and see something that they don't already know.”
can’t Miss Acts
Every Tuesday, Mike sends a newsletter from The Carleton that shares announcements and relevant stories and occasionally introduces subscribers to relatively unknown acts that, according to Mike, you can’t miss. “I try not to do that often, but on occasion, there's something really good that I really need to flag that this is going to be a good one,” says Mike. “Bones UK is an example, Steve Poltz is another one and I booked July Talk at a time when nobody heard of them,” he says. Mike clearly remembers the band’s agent calling him and asking if the band could play The Carleton on a random Wednesday in April. “I said nobody's gonna come. It's the middle of the week. Nobody's ever heard of the band, even if it was free,” says Mike. “The agent says, ‘Look - they're also filmmakers and they make their own videos and they've just produced the first video for the first single from this new record. I'm gonna send you the link; take a look at the video and if you don't want to book the band, then I'll leave you alone,” he remembers. The music video was for Paper Girl. “I got about 30 seconds into the part where Leah starts singing in the song and I said, ‘I’m booking 'em!’” he laughs. A few weeks ahead of their date at the Carleton, Mike stopped to see the band perform at Lee’s Palace. “I found Leah at the end of the night and introduced myself and said, ‘I'm gonna sell out this Halifax show for you.’ When they got in town and they walked into a packed room and people knew their songs, they were singing, and the band went nuts,” he exclaims. That show ended up being the band's first show they ever sold out outside of Toronto. To this day, whenever the band is on stage performing and knows Mike is in the crowd, they’ll give him a shout-out.
It was a similar situation when he first booked Steve Poltz. “At the time, I knew he's the best,” he says, “I'm going to put him in the room for three nights and I'm going to charge $10. I booked him in May. Maybe we'll get 20 people out on the first night, but I know the second night we'll get 50 people out and by the third night, we'll get 80 people,” he adds. He also offered a money-back guarantee that if you didn’t think it was worth $10, Mike would refund you out of his own wallet, and it wouldn’t come out of Steve’s cut. Today, he plays The Carleton twice a year, playing three to five shows while he’s in town and has played the venue more than any other act aside from the house band, The Carletones. “ I've never seen [Steve Poltz] do the same show twice, not even close, so you can come to see him every night. You have absolutely no idea what you're gonna get.”
The Halifax Urban Folk Festival
In 2010, Mike launched the Halifax Urban Folk Festival (HUFF), which started as a one-club showcase and has grown over the years to include several venues in Halifax and Dartmouth and feature musicians from all over the world.
Each year, the festival features “all-star” bands made up of local musicians to play alongside headliners. Mike has booked many artists to play The Carleton over the years but says booking artists for HUFF is extra special. “When you get a yes from Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub or Matthew Sweet, that's a big deal,” says Mike. “I still have a text from Matt Mays, where I'm like, ‘Are you going to be around Labour Day weekend? Matthew Sweet needs a guitar player.’ All I get is all caps screaming and yelling, ‘If you don't let me play guitar from Matthew Sweet, I will never speak to you again!’ he laughs, adding that Matt also got to play with Norman Blake. Another one that sticks out to Mike is booking John K. Samson of The Weakerthans. “I’d been bugging him for years, and I’d known him for a long time, but he doesn't like to do much anymore. I finally managed to get a message to him and he was like, ‘alright, I'll come out and do it.’ That was a huge deal to me,” adds Mike.
Sometimes Mike even helps curate the setlist. “Being involved in that creative process is hugely satisfying, especially after all the shit I've been through over the years and having to sell the place and almost losing my house. When I’m standing in the room when that all-star band is playing and it's happening, there’s nothing better than to go and sit there and go, this place would not be here if I didn't do it and then give myself a little pat on the back and turn away so the staff can't see me crying in the corner, looking at [Jim] Cuddy and [Greg] Keelor or someone on the stage and just overwhelmed by the enormity of it because nobody knows unless you've been through that shit. It's impossible to describe how fucking ridiculous and hard it is. It's so hard. But somebody's gotta do it and that’s enough.”
The lineup for HUFF this year is yet to be announced, but it will be held from September 24 to October 1, 2023.
Celebrating 15 years
May 2023 is the official 15th anniversary of The Carleton, but Mike decided to celebrate all year long. Guests who have been playing since the beginning will be making appearances, including Jill Barber, Skydiggers, Lennie Gallant, The Stanfields and Myles Goodwyn/Matt Minglewood/Bryan Potvin trio to name a few. Mike promises more anniversary shows are on the way. “I'm sucking people in slowly but surely,” says Mike.
An artist and fan favourite venue
Widely known as the best music venue east of Montreal, The Carleton has won several national and local awards. “We've won the best small venue in Canada twice in 2017 and 2022 - we've got the respect of our peers, so that says we’re doing something right - or people like us for whatever reason,” says Mike. “I'm not sure when we're allowed to start using the term the legendary,” he laughs. “I’m happy the room is here because if it weren’t, it would leave a huge hole. We need that shit in Halifax and we’re blessed with a lot of musical talent. Hopefully, it'll carry on for more years.”
To see the full list of events happening at The Carleton, visit its website or subscribe to Mike’s weekly newsletter.
