“The talent that is just floating around our city is fantastic,” Shannon Butler offers.

She’s right, of course, but unless you’re particularly well-plugged in, some of the incredible musicians working in St. Albert might evade your detection. Which is something Butler is helping to change: as an owner & director of Glasshouse Kitchen | Bar, she’s been bringing that talent in to perform for weekly live music nights, offering her patrons intimate, Friday night shows with no cover.

“Some of these people are amazing and you have no idea,” she continues. “You come in and people are blown away. We’ve had artists that have opened for Meghan Trainor, that have performed with Kenny Chesney—they've got some traction themselves, and yet here they are, singing for us.”

The live music nights began a few years back. During peak Pandemic, both musicians and restaurants found a strange, unfortunate kinship: their livelihoods were disrupted. As restrictions began to lift, programming regular performances seemed like a win-win to Butler: a way of supporting local artists and bringing new clientele into Glasshouse, which had rebranded in 2020.

“We thought, ‘what could we do to support the local community during this time?’” she recalls. “How can we appeal to another demographic, to bring people in and give them something new that they haven't experienced here before?”

Butler admits she didn’t have many connections in the world of music, but once she started asking around, filling those Friday nights didn’t take too much effort.

“I started asking around, and it was easier than expected: now they're pretty much approaching me versus me approaching them,” she says. “A lot of them lost their traction during Covid. … so they were more than happy to come to our sleepy little restaurant at the time and do a set from 6:30 to 9:30, and they could still go do a gig at night. So it was kind of a balance of both worlds.”

The music Glasshouse programs isn’t limited to a particular genre—February’s performers include alt-county stalwart Joe Nolan and pop-soul performer Carmen Lucia, among others—though Butler notes that smaller groups or solo artists have proven the best fit in the space.

“It's been fun to watch the dynamics," she says. “Sometimes it's just people enjoying their dinner and a few people in the lounge paying attention. Sometimes it's families: you see little girls running around in dresses and dancing, so mom and dad get up … it changes every Friday. But we've really gained traction … we are definitely seeing the growth shifts for those particular [Friday Night] reservations. It's nice to see.”

It’s been nice for the artists as well: Butler notes they’ve had performers eager to return over the last few years.

“We have some that are on the road, they're recording, they're doing different things, but when they are in town, they'll shoot me a note,” she grins. “It's really become a bit of a ‘You supported me during this time, so we're gonna give back to you.’ I love it personally.”

Article Written by: Paul Blinov

For more information on Glasshouse’s live music nights, go to glasshousekitchenbar.com/live-music.

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