Friday, August 17, 2007

Raw Guts and Giggles

INTRODUCTION #2
KIM BARLOW
A musician from the Yukon whom I heard for the first time at the South Country Fair. She plays banjo, guitar, and cello to name a few. She has a small town feel with all the charm of the backwood, plaid shirts and hunters. If you think you know what kind of music she makes, then the next song will change your mind...and the next...and the next. An odd duck (in a very good way), she is honest to the point most people start squirming and then turns around and makes you laugh your head off. I am left feeling that although she lives in her "igloo" in 23 hours of darkness without a fashion magazine or celeb gossip rag in site, she is a far cry more cooler than all of us city folk put together.

She was my first cyber stalking love!

Listen to Kim Barlow on MySpace

Stabbingly Drop-Jaw Fantastical

I am not one for listening to recorded music. I have better things to do, and as I have discovered early on, I cannot listen to music and do anything else at the same time. I am compelled to sit and listen, in the same way I am compelled to be still in front of a painting or work of art.

Live music is another thing. I have become entranced with certain musicians I have heard live. There haven't been many, but when I take a shine to one, I am likely to go into cyber stalking mode.

INTRODUCTION #1
VEDA HILLE.
Hailing from Vancouver,I first heard her in Albert in a tent at the South Country Fair. How can I describe her? Eclectic, fantastical, staggering in the array of unusual lyrics, melodies, piano compositions, and sounds. Truly an unusual oddity that has me hooked like a wandering goat lost in the Himalayas without a teat to suckle on.

Listen to Veda Hille on MySpace


Lyrics to her Tuktoyaktuk Hymn written after spending time up on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, at the uppermost edge of Canada in Tuktoyaktuk, a small Inuvialuit community. The song's bridge sends shivers down my spine everytime...

Jesus, where'er Thy people meet,
There they behold thy mercy seat;
Where'er they seek Thee Thou art found,
And every place is hallowed ground.

Tuktoyaktuk, plain dirt roads;
They all lead to Thy wooden house;
Lord, we have built this house for Thee,
On frozen ground by northern sea.

The winter's dark is cold and long;
We call Thee Lord, we bid Thee come,
White crosses in our graveyard stand;
Protect us in Thy willful land.

From sudden storm
Guns that jam
Alcohol
Late spring break up
Thin ice
Rogue bear
Engine failure, engine failure
Failure, failure

Lord, we are few, but Thou art near;
Nor short Thine arm, nor deaf Thine ear;
O rend the heavens, come quickly down,
And make a thousand hearts Thine own.

Tuktoyaktuk Amen