Here are your Indie Award winners in the roots and related genres
Sarah MacDougall was the big winner at the Indie Awards on Saturday night.“Wait a minute,” you’re thinking. “Weren’t the Indies on Saturday night? Didn’t I see a post from Sarah MacDougall about that? How come Roots Music Canada is only telling us about them now?”
Why yes, they did take place on Saturday, and thank goodness for Sarah MacDougall because without her, we might never have known the Indies even happened! We scoured the internet Monday looking for a list of winners, but we could not find it anywhere on the Canadian Music Week web site or anywhere else, and there was no news release on the news release page. We went over to check out our friends at Exclaim.ca, who have a much longer publishing history and larger audience than us here at Roots Music Canada and deep roots with CMW’s core demographic. If anybody was sent the winners list, surely it would be them. But nope. Nothing in their news feed either. After we made a call to CMW’s office, we finally found the list on the Indies page on Tuesday – with Jeremy Dutcher’s name spelled wrong.
Last year on the site, we discussed the relevance of CMW for roots artists, and their lack of promotion for their own award winners – in all genres – certainly adds to questions about that relevance.
Nonetheless, we are thrilled to be able to celebrate the Indie Award winners here at Roots Music Canada. Here are the winners that roots fans will want to know about – either because they are roots artists, they come from a background in roots music, or their music embodies values that many roots fans embrace.
Artist of the Year
Lindi Ortega
Group of the Year
The Dead South
Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year
Jeremy Dutcher
RAP/R&B Artist or Group of the Year
Shad
Rock Artist or Group of the Year
The Trews
Singer-Songwriter Artist or Group of the Year
Sarah MacDougall
Songwriter of the Year
Sarah MacDougall
Video of the Year
Tim Hicks – “The Worst Kind” (feat. Lindsay Ell)
