Jo Beattie

About me:

COLDSNAP 2009 was a roaring success for Prince George!Thanks to all of the artists, volunteers and sponsors!! It was a huge lot of fun and inspiration for us all.It sort of helped publicity wise that it was actually AGAIN AS IN 2008 a massive coldsnap weather wise too but the brave northerners made it out to everything! A big highlight this year was the all day youth workshop led by Rachelle Van Zanten with The Sadies and Rob Szabo being great sports and helping out touching a whole wack of young aspiring musicians.Check out picture galleries at www.coldsnapfestival.com I am from the UK having emigrated to Canada on a big adventure in 1977 after university. I came to work in Prince George, BC as a Frontier Apostle for Bishop O'Grady in the Catholic School system on a 2 year teaching contract. Met my husband during this time, thankfully happily married ever since. We have luckily lived in gorgeous places across Canada and the UK. I have 3 children and I am thankful to say I still teach with great enjoyment BUT looking forward someday to moving to Pender Island. I began promoting young Christian rock bands in the UK in 1986 and that saw the birth of Calico Concerts. When we returned to live in Canada I continued to promote but as it happened I ventured into the big wide world of folk/roots.In 1995 A chance encounter via Peter Gzowski from CBC led to meeting Laura Smith, most excellent singer songwriter from her then home of Halifax. She was on her first cross country tour and we added Prince George to her list.This concert was the first big event to be held at the Canfor Theatre at our new University of Northern BC.The foray continued....and continues. This evolved into being involved in particular with 2 passionate volunteer interests as co-founder of our folkfest and as a DJ for CFUR FM Radio based at the University of Northern BC. My folk/roots programme is called Off The Beaten Track.www.cfur.ca and will be resumed in 08 when time allows. MySpace is a practical and easy way to explore many musicians.I subscribe to MySpace due to being a dj and in my capacity as the AD of our very cool music festival in Prince George. We began the Prince George Folkfest in 2003 with much determination, a shoe string budget, great volunteer and community support and a big desire by many to put our city of Prince George on the national map in a positive light. So far we have had 6 successful events with out of town musicians such as Bruce Cockburn,The Sadies, Sarah Harmer, Alpha Yaya Diallo,Matthew Good, Sisters Euclid,Corb Lund, Amy Millan, Chad VanGaalen, Martyn Joseph,The Paperboys,Don Ross, Eccodek, Sweatshop Union,Ruthie Foster,Kiran Ahluwalia, Spirit of The West and many more.Local musicians have been very supportive especially Shae Morin, Navaz, Out of Alba, Clann Cara,The Pucks, Jeremy Stewart, Matt Robinson. A move to the winter happened January 26-Feb 2nd 2008 with the COLDSNAP MUSIC FESTIVAL ..a great success! I am pleased to promote a group I am part of called www.wrad.ca which represents many excellent music festivals in Western Canada.A quick tool for musicians. Jo Beattie