Pandemic helped change musician’s perspective

By Lethbridge Herald on October 2, 2025.

Al Beeber
Lethbridge Herald

When the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 shut down the live music industry, Ann Vriend wasn’t going to let it cost her what she loved doing in addition to the income she earned from performing. 

The award-winning Edmonton-based blues and soul musician on a Sunday in April of 2020 staged an outdoor concert on her porch in the impoverished city neighbourhood of McCauley. 

A week later she was joined by other singers, who, while practising social distancing, engaged the neighbourhood in another free performance. Soon their shows began attracting hundreds of people from other areas in the city and during the first year of COVID restrictions, the  musicians performed about 60 shows, polishing their act. 

That led them to the stages of major festivals in Alberta and B.C., including the Edmonton Folk Festival, where they earned the emerging artist award. Fast forward to 2025 and the ensemble now known as AV and the Inner City is releasing its first EP on Friday, two weeks before they hit the Owl Acoustic Lounge for a show on Oct. 17. 

While the group has released singles, this will be the first collection of music they’ve  created. Vriend is looking forward to the Lethbridge show after many years away from local stages. 

While COVID temporarily killed the business of performing music, the pandemic couldn’t destroy the purpose behind creating music and the relationship humankind has with it, Vriend said in a phone interview this week. 

COVID  didn’t “really change the fundamentals of music, and why people love it, why people need it and why we make it,” said Vriend. While reflecting on the importance of music, Vriend noted that recordings have only been made and sold for 105 years. “It’s really a small blip in time, so maybe we’re just sort going back to it being an organic thing people do.” 

 The socially distanced porch concerts let Vriend and her bandmates still make music and explore their creativity in other ways. 

“It was not planned,” Vriend said of the group.  In fact, she’d planned to continue touring and release a new solo album in 2020. And for a number of reasons, she wasn’t interested in creating music to be streamed 

“My heart was not into that,” she recalled. “It was just supposed to be this temporary thing” but the performances started growing new opportunities emerging. “We ended up getting some gigs at festivals.” 

With the EP coming out, they hope that music will reach more people and festivals.