Music

Musicians campaign for Hamilton's B.A. Johnston to win the Polaris Music Prize

by Dan MacRae

The hardest working troubadour in the Canadian music biz™ is up for the Polaris Music Prize and a small but dedicated campaign to ensure B.A. Johnston moves from Long List placement to Short List contender status has emerged.

Welcome to the #shortlistBA movement.

Could B.A. Johnston’s 2015 offering Shit Sucks score a decidedly suck-free spot on the trimmed down version of the Polaris contender slate? Lawton, who you may know from Ketamines/Century Palm/pissing off Canadian music industry types with flair and an ugly Tumblr layout, is armed with a hashtag backing Hamilton’s tune vending export. (Disclosure: Paul Lawton and AUX associated editor Jesse Locke are both members of the Toronto band Century Palm.)

Musicians and civilians alike have tweeted/retweeted their own #shortlistBA messages and we spoke with Lawton to score some details about his B.A. backing crusade. It’s fair to call it a crusade, right?

“I think crusade is an understatement, actually.” said Lawton while in our nation’s capital for Ottawa Explosion. “I woke up yesterday morning and I felt called from above to create a #shortlistBA hashtag campaign. So… I think it was divine inspiration. Maybe crusade is right. I am ready to burn my enemies in pursuit of this mission.”

It’s certainly not the first time that Lawton’s championed B.A. Four of the genre-melting maverick’s 40,000 releases (conservative estimate) came out via Lawton’s dearly departed Mammoth Cave Recording Co. label. Lawton reckons that Shit Sucks ranks as the best of his Mammoth Cave output.

“I’m surprised he wasn’t nominated earlier if I’m being completely honest,” notes the captain of the good ship #shortlistBA. “It was a welcome surprise for sure and when you look at the list, there’s a lot of great records every year on Polaris and it’s hard to look at a list with all the best records in Canada on it and kinda feel meh, but the fact that B.A. gets long listed represents the music underground in Canada and I think so many of that ilk are ready to take up this cause.”

With B.A. boosters spreading the word, Lawton says the #shortlistBA hashtag goes beyond a trending topic. Mind you, you probably gathered that during that divine inspiration and burning enemies talk from earlier.

“I feel really passionate about the guy and I love him and respect him so much that the least we can do is get the guy shortlisted and apparently a lot of people agree with me and that hashtag actually took off in a weird way i was not expecting,” offers Lawton.

“I think that what #shortlistBA represents is the opposite of how you feel when you see a Long List where every year, ‘oh, it is so obvious this record is going to be nominated for the Long List because it’s been on the cover of Exclaim! and on CBC Radio 3 24 hours a day and it’s Indie 88 and yadayadayada and they’ve got these big marketing dollars to push for these records to get your attention… And B.A. has none of that and he has your attention because he’s been playing and touring like 200 shows a year for over a decade on both coasts in cities that most of the other bands haven’t even gone to,” says Lawton. “He goes to Prince George BC more than once a year! How many times have Braids or Alvvays gone to play Prince George? I’m not putting anything against them, I’m just saying this is a Canadian music prize. How many of those bands are actually playing Canada in that amount of depth and with that much respect?”

Polaris Music Prize’s nomination and awarding criteria is “based solely on artistic merit without regard to genre, sales history, or label affiliation.”

Will Shit Sucks cuts like “Ikea Hotdog” and “Shitty Cat” ring out triumphantly at this fall’s swanky prize-placing gala? We’ll have to wait and see. For now, there’s #shortlistBA and it’s coming to a Twitter timeline near you.