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The East Coast Music Awards have released the shortlists for their 2015 awards, and Newfoundland has a fine showing across all genres.

In fact we’re up for 35 awards, which puts us in second place behind Nova Scotia, who havea whopping lead at 101 award nominations. (Is their music scene really three times more voluminous than ours, or are we just lazy or blasé about submitting to their awards?) Haligonian dance-rocker Rich Aucoin leads
the pack with 6 nominations.

As for the local leaders, no surprise there: Hey Rosetta and The Once each have three nominations – both of which are up for the Fan’s Choice Entertainer of the Year award. Hey Rosetta are also up for Song of the Year for “Kintsukuroi,” and for their work on that same song, Tim Baker and Adam Hogan are up for Songwriter of the Year. Kintsukuroi, by the way, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery using resin mixed with precious metals like gold.

For The Once, award nominations for Folk Recording of the Year and Group Recording of the Year came right on the heels of their Juno award nomination in
the category of Roots and Traditional Album of the Year. It’s one more blast of recognition in a year that’s seen them land a serious record label deal and embark on an international world tour.

Steve Maloney and the Wandering Kind are up for two awards as well – he has been shortlisted for the Rising Star category, an award category in which
he has already won this year, during the fall’s MusicNL awards. In between that award win and these ECMA nominations, Maloney was also shortlisted for – and runner-up for – The Overcast’s own Borealis Music Prize. Maloney’s second ECMA nomination this year is for the music video for his quiet gem of a song, “Morning Break,” shot by Heavyweather’s Adam Penney and Justin Davis.

The other local recognized in two categories is classical music innovator Rob Power, for both Classical Recording and Classical Composition of the Year. On the other end of the musical genre spectrum, 2 of 5 bands on the Loud Record Recording of the Year shortlist are local – keeping the city’s history of a solid heavy music scene alive and well. Both The Combine and Monsterbator are nominees this year.

Other music award nominees include The Secrets for Country Recording, Roz MacPhail for Electronic Recording, Sherman Downey and the Ambiguous Case for Group Recording, Duane Andrews & Craig Young for Roots/ Trad group, Matthew Byrne for Solo Trad, RocketRocketship for Rising Star, and Baytown for R&B Recording of the Year. The Thymes are also in the running for the music video of their catchy, creative song, “Lobotomy.”

The ECMAs also have a suite of industry awards, for which the following locals have been nominated; DC Design House & Jud Haynes in the Graphic Design
Category, Wallace Hammond in the Live Sound Engineer category, Kilbride Music in the Management category, Tom Power in the Media Person of the Year
category, Fred’s Records in the Music Merchant category, Scott Hammond in the Studio Engineer category, The Blue Room for Studio of the Year, and The Ship Pub for Venue of the Year.