July 2021 Cover: Letter from the Editor

Photo credit Gina Brass www.ginabrass.com

Wow! Hard to believe that our "month off" is over and here we are again with another issue chock-full of Saskatchewan talent. I put it in quotations because even thoug we didn't do a full issue of features last month we were still faithfully working and writing on things nonetheless.

At any rate, I'm proud to have The Garrys on our cover this month! I can remember first seeing The Garry's in a small club on Broadway Ave in Saskatoon called Vangelis (you may not recognize this name because the club now goes by the name The Black Cat). The girls were opening for Terra Lightfoot. Terra was still pretty much a little known indie act at the time so there was maybe ten people in the audience - including me, The Garrys, a few appreciative fans and Vangelis' staff. It was still an awesome show and, as you know, Terra has since gone onto much greater critical acclaim and I've seen her a few more times since then playing to much larger crowds than that night at Vangelis. Once she was playing the EA Rawlinson Centre for the Arts right here in P.A. and the other time was headlining the main stage at Ness Creek

In the meantime, The Garrys have still been going strong and are getting ready, after a pandemic that seemingly has gone on forever, to play Ness Creek this year themselves. I also saw them play Chesterfest in P.A. back in 2019 so it's been interesting seeing how things have come full circle and how they have evolved their sound and style. The Garrys brand of darker surf rock is something I've found intriguing since the very first time I saw them so I'm super stoked that Will was able to catch them and write the fantastic piece you'll find inside the pages of this month's zine!

NSMZ is about the music and giving support to local bands and also tackling the tough issues. We've got great pieces on New Dawn Drum Group and we've also chosen to "reprint" Marty Ballentyne’s piece that we originally put out when we first heard about the remains of 215 residential school children found near Kamloops called "There Can Be No Reconciliation Without Reckoning". We at NSMZ stand with our indigenous friends and readers during this time of great sorrow. We are allies and are here to listen.

At any rate, I'd like to personally thank all the artists that worked with us this month on the features we chose to print. I'm also proud of all the NSMZ staff from Deanna with some of our pics to Will, Mark A, Mark H, Dara and, of course, Helen. And thanks to all our readers and supporters who faithfully share our work to their extended friend groups. We're all a team. We're all in this to support each other.

For those unfamiliar with our format, once you exit this article, scroll down to see all the other articles in our virtual "issue".

-Scott Roos

(Managing Editor)