Jill Barber revives the past while embracing the future in livestream from the Palomar
Singer-songwriter resurrects a legendary Vancouver supper club through the magic of cutting-edge virtual technology
Live Nation presents Jill Barber’s livestream from the Palomar on November 20 at 6 pm
JILL BARBER has always moved easily between genres, the East Van-based singer-songwriter as comfortable with smokey jazz and classic country as she is French chanson and radio-ready pop.
But no matter what style she channels, her songs always have the glow of nostalgia--the same retro obsession that’s fuelled her fashion looks, be that black liquid eyeliner, beehive chignons, or drop-dead cocktail dresses.
Now, though, to fully resurrect the past, Barber has had to fully embrace the future. She’ll perform a livestreamed show from inside an XR-generated Palomar Supper Club--a long-gone venue that’s a fabled part of Vancouver’s entertainment history. And the high-tech feat is giving her new inspiration after some dark pandemic months of artistic limbo.
The Toronto-born artist has been diving headfirst into the complex world of virtual reality that will allow her to sing on the storied Palomar Supper Club stage, and surround her with her Phantom Band and ghostly clientele.
“I am an old soul for sure,” Barber begins, talking to Stir on a break from rehearsals in front of a green screen. “As a musician, there's so much to take inspiration from with older music, and I’m attracted to my record collection--I’m a nostalgic kind of person. So there are qualities to older music and ideas of 1930s nightclubs that I think are romantic and that I want to keep alive.
The ghost venue as it will look, generated by Shocap Entertainment.
“But at the same time I’m not so old-fashioned that working in CGI is out of the question. I guess I enjoy the combination of my love of vintage with my interest in technology. I love the idea that we can go back in time at the same time as we’re going into the future.”
A lot of the show has been inspired by the lore and mystique around the Palomar Supper Club itself. It opened at Burrard and Georgia streets in 1937, a year before the more well-known haunt The Cave. Decked out in Art Deco white panels, it hosted the likes of Billie Holliday, Peggy Lee, and the Ink Spots, with a dancefloor crowded with people decked out in their best dinner jackets and sequinned dresses. But in the 1950s, it closed down and eventually met with the wrecking ball; cue the anonymous glass tower and groundfloor retail space you see on the corner across from the Hotel Vancouver.
Barber says she learned about the venue in Vancouver After Dark: The Wild History of a City’s Nightlife, written by Aaron Chapman. The local historian and raconteur will make a special appearance during the concert and provide the audience with a bit of back story on the legendary venue.
Barber and Live Nation Canada have teamed with Shocap Entertainment, a company that will harness real-time visual effects for the show. Her band, performing in front of her, will wear motion-capture devices, so technicians can conjure their ghostly avatars behind her.
The now-demolished Palomar Supper Club, as pictured in Vancouver After Dark. Photo Tom Carter Archives
With selections from her back catalogue rearranged for a jazz trio, Barber plans to use her imagination to transport her from the green screen room to the Palomar.
“I can draw on the experience of playing cool, smokey, dark nightclubs--I can tap into my own experiences for that. I’m just putting a lot of trust into the process. She says this with a laugh, but dig a little deeper and it’s clear the monthslong project has meant a lot of work for the mother of two.
Barber loves the idea of inhabiting an old-world jazz haunt--especially one that few living Vancouverites know ever existed. And she’s loved delving into the history of the venue, talking to the few existing octogenarians who remember what it was like. But she also finds the idea of bringing back a lost concert venue poignant in these second-wave days of social isolation.
“In this time of venues being locked or shutting down, it just feels so exciting to be resurrecting an old venue, and resurrecting live music in a venue, when that’s being cut off for so many people,” she muses.
COVID-19 has taken a brutal toll on live musicians, and Barber hasn’t escaped the pain. Early on, she admits candidly, she struggled.
“When the world changed it was shocking and I felt, like, total grief--what felt like the loss of my career as I knew it,” she says. “It was the loss of something you thought would always be there. And I hit some really low places in terms of mental health and dealing with the loss of live touring; it’s just been such a huge part of my life.
“But I’ve turned things around for myself,” she emphasizes. “The solution was just to get creative about how to continue performing and obviously a lot of that meant going online. Rather than fear screens and technology, I started to feel like I wanted to embrace those opportunities.”
After the initial shock and numbness wore off, Barber’s first forays were simple Zoom concerts, singing and playing her guitar from her East Side living room--lively, interactive, and surprisingly intimate events that convinced her of the potential of virtual performance.
“The funny thing is that, in some ways, a Zoom concert can be even more intimate,” she marvels. “It’s just me in my home performing through a screen, rather than to someone, say, 30 rows back.
“I’m happy to say that I used to think, before I did my first online show, I wouldn’t have dreamed that it could be satisfying, but I’ve realized the only essential ingredients to that connections are human beings and music,” Barber continues, then hesitates before stressing: “I might even go further to say it’s even more meaningful.”
Barber has turned things around enough, in fact, that she’s become one of the busiest local musicians online, and has even performed some live, limited-audience shows, with outdoor gigs at Agassiz’s Holberg Farm in August and a recent mini-tour on Vancouver Island. “That was the first time I uttered the word tour in eight months,” she quips.
Still, nothing so far comes close to the scale of using virtual reality to raise the Palomar from the dead.
“If someone had tapped me on the shoulder earlier this year and said ‘You’ll be playing with a virtual band in a virtual venue,’ I wouldn’t have believed it,” she says with another laugh. “It would have sounded post-apocalyptic!”
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In the end Barber’s retro live-from-the-Palomar livestream may be quite the opposite: a hopeful sign of a brighter future.
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