Last month we traveled to Fredericton, NB to attend the East Coast Music Awards. As many of you know, we have a long history of east cost music. Jay grew up in Cape Breton, Lived in Halifax and started his musical career there. His first band was with Juno award winning artist, Rose Cousins. Jay and Rose played together, wrote music together and formed a band with Joyce Saunders and Benn Ross on Drums. Side note, Benn Ross was a drummer for bands like Thrush Hermit (Joel Plasket’s band). He then played with a number of other bands including the Blues Rock band Servo, Caledonia and a many others.
We attended the ECMA’s representing home in Cape Breton. As Kenzie MacNeil said, “The Home of our Hearts, Cape Breton.” Cape Breton will always be home and it was incredible to represent such a proud culture.
Two ECMA Awards for Autopilot
We digress. We were nominated for 3 ECMA’s, Group of the Year, Electronic Album of the Year and Rising Start Award. We had no idea if we would receive any awards, but we wanted to be part of the experience. We played live on ECMA radio and recorded a live performance for Roger’s TV which will air in the Fall of 2022.
So, here is the story. There were two awards shows, the big show the first night and the smaller show the last night. The first night, we were nominated for Group of the Year and did not win, we were up against some incredible acts from the east coast.
The last day of the conference was the day of the final awards show. We had a flight out of Fredericton at 3:30pm. We went to the show, again, not anticipating any awards but had to know for sure. We waited and waited…and waited while other awards were announced. We were getting late and knew we had to rush to get the plane. We said, lets wait for ONE more award. At that point, it was the Rising Start Award and we waited. Guess what, we won!
After our speech, we RUSHED out and hopping a cab to get to the airport, a very very slow cab. We arrived late at the airport. While we were in the car, we got a text saying we won Electronic album of The Year! DAM!
When we got to the airport the lady at the Porter airlines desk was not happy we were late and lectured us on this fact. As Sloan Said, we rolled our eyes.
The Experience was incredible and in the end, we received two awards. Something we’ll never forget.