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Feeling the Lovecoast

Squamish band gets biggest break of career at the Pemberton Music Festival
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Squamish band Lovecoast performed at the Pemberton Music Festival on Thursday, July 16. By Rob Loud for the Pemberton Music Festival

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a young band catching its biggest-ever break?

When Squamish indie band Lovecoast won the regional battle of the bands — Be the Best, Play the Fest — this dream came true and now they’ve performed at the Pemberton Music Festival.

Singer Danielle Sweeney says there were a lot of nerves at first.

“They’ve been so great to us. The festival organizers have been treating us as if we were a band they hired to be here,” Sweeney says.

“We’re getting the same perks as everyone else and it’s been a mind-blowing experience.”

Along with their set on the Bass Camp stage on Thursday, July 16, the band also won $5,000 in the competition in June.

The festival is a “super-positive experience,” Sweeney says.

"It’s like, ‘What? We get to go through here? No one’s going to get mad?’”

She adds that they’ve had access to people they wouldn’t normally get the chance to meet.

“We met other bands from Vancouver, the guys from the Gay Nineties and other people as well. It’s just been a fun weekend of being around cool people,” Sweeney says.

Still a relatively new band, Lovecoast has never been in a music event of this size.

“We’ve played weekend festivals with three other bands, something along those lines. This many people in Pemberton, it’s large scale,” Sweeney says.

When asked what it does for the band psychologically and in terms of their playing, Sweeney says it prepares them for bigger and better opportunities.

“After our set we got a lot of positive feedback from the sound guys and music people who have to do this all the time,” she says.

“It’s not an ego thing, I don’t mean it that way. It was just such a positive push for us. The reassurance that we’re doing the right thing and we can be successful as a group if we keep moving. It’s another thing to add to the resume.”

Sweeney says they will take away a lot from the Pemberton experience in terms of future performances.

“Stage-presence wise, we've been watching a lot of these other bands on huge stages. There is so much space to work with. We’re used to being on little bar stages where we’re shoulder to shoulder,” she says.

“We watch these other bands who have been doing this for years and we’re amazed by the stage presence they can have in such a big space. We watched Billy Talent and he had a box that he stands on to give himself another level. We’ve been noticing a lot of cool performance things.”

For interviews with other Sea to Sky performers at Pemberton — including Will Ross and Dakota Pearl — check out the next issue of Pique on Thursday, July 23, or visit www.piquenewsmagazine.com.