Sun Belt: Cabalcor – A Curatorial Statement by Club PuSh Curator Tim Carlson

December 11, 2014

At Club PuSh, you can catch startling, experimental performances in a casual, social setting. Set at Performance Works on Granville Island, Club PuSh is a cabaret-style theatre where you can grab a few drinks, sit back and enjoy a great show. Club PuSh Co-Curator Tim Carlson provides an inside look into Sun Belt: Cabalcor, which is also our PuSh Passholder Appreciation Night.

Slighting a committed fanbase, Rick Maddocks put his late, great Vancouver band The Beige (which appeared at Club PuSh in 2009) on ice to fly off to warmer climes (Spain, Chile, Tucson) and pursue new sonic opportunities.

Fortunately for myself and other stakeholders who were fully invested in the former, Maddocks gathered some intel and formed a new interdisciplinary group, Sun Belt, that delivers dividends. Cabalcor (Anvil Press) is a book/album package that takes an allegorical look at tar sands development through a surreal heat-wave of songs, images and text. It ain’t purty, but it sure sounds fantastic.

I’ve seen Sun Belt — Maddocks with Jon Wood (Flophouse Jr., Herald Nix), Paul Rigby (Mavis Staples) and Stephen Lyons (Fond of Tigers) — experimenting with these tunes, bubbling up crude and wild, in various underground haunts over the past year and their explorations get richer with each listening.

At Club PuSh, Sun Belt will be stretching out with performer Nita Bowerman, poet Brad Cran, writer Calvin Wharton and other guest readers performing passages from the book along with projected images.

Cabalcor will take you beyond where the news cycle and op-ed hits the wall and you land on the other side — where things might not be as they seem but are illuminated by some brilliant music.

Tim Carlson
Artistic Producer & Club PuSh Co-Curator
Theatre Conspiracy

Catch this innovative performance by Sun Belt on February 1, 8pm, at Club PuSh (Performance Works on Granville Island). Join us beforehand at 7pm for a free screening of Kiss the Rabbit, the PuSh Festival’s documentary about its 10th anniversary. The whole evening is our PuSh Passholder Appreciation Night – so if you have a PuSh Pass, book a free ticket! Or buy tickets here.

Tim Carlson is a playwright and the artistic producer at Theatre Conspiracy. He is currently leading the creation of Foreign Radical, a documentary-based work with game play elements, about privacy in the age of cyber surveillance. It premieres at The Cultch in April 2015. His most recent show, Extraction, won the Rio Tinto Alcan Award (2013). He continues to collaborate with Tanya Marquardt and Mallory Catlett on Stray (formerly Duets for One, Club PuSh 2014). He is a co-curator for Club PuSh, which Theatre Conspiracy co-founded with the PuSh Festival in 2009.