Much has happened in the last few weeks. Rob and I both enjoyed seeing a bit of the Vancouver Folk Festival. Our very talented friend Leonard Sumner (and Aboriginal Music Program friend) performed at the festival this year. Unfortunately I missed his performance but Rob luckily was able to catch it. I also went on a trip with my good friend Cheryl to Hawaii for a week and stayed at her most amazing Aunt’s house. It was interesting going away somewhere and not performing any gigs. I had a lot of fun and brought a small travel guitar with me, which I sang with in the sun while tiny geckos walked across my feet.
Rob and I are excited to announce that we have some awesome gigs coming up in August! This Sunday we’ll be performing at the Tsleil-Waututh Salish Sea Summer Gathering (set time tb confirmed) in the evening at Cates Park/Whey-ah-Wichen, North Vancouver. This week we’ll also be wrapping up more mixing. We’ve started conversations about mastering, too, which kind of blows my mind. That’s it for now. Talk soon!
I feel like it’s been a while. In the space of time were I haven’t blogged to you Sister Says has been in the studio recording percussion and also mixing. We’ve also been performing shows and going to shows. We had fun performing Aboriginal Day/Summer Solstice at Trout Lake Park (Rob also performed with our lovely and talented friend Candace Curr earlier on that day) and at Fan Club later on, at St. Andrew’s Wesley Church at Jazz Vespers for Vancouver Jazz Fest and at Car Free Days on Commercial Drive. It was good times getting a chance to listen to some of the other performers at Car Free Days, and to also attend Hilary Grist and Dominique Fricot’s (past guests on our Meet the Collective Podcast) Dual Release show with The Lion The Bear The Fox, and catch Dawn Pemberton and her band and also Star Captains perform at Vancouver Jazz Fest on Canada Day. Rob watched The Matinee on Canada Day and he might go to Kraftwerk tonight….whoo a lot of shows and a lot of inspiration for us. More picking away at the album (almost there!)…I talk about album artwork later on today with our graphic designer. Can’t wait to see what ideas she’s come up with!
Photo description (from left to right and top to bottom): Some of the percussion instruments we used at the studio, Trout Lake park during Aboriginal Day and Summer Solstice, shot of Fan Club after our set, shot of our set up before going on at St. Andrew’s Wesley Church for Jazz Vespers
Rob and I found out a little while ago that a show we were on (individually as artists) called Live from the Hundred Years Cafe isnominatedfor a Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorkton Film Fest for its jazz episode featuring Andrea Menard, moi, David Larocque and MJ Dandeneau! We also found out that Live from the Hundred Years Cafe is nominated for a Rockie Award at the Banff World Media Fest in June for Best Music and Variety. Live from the Hundred Years Cafe is a show on APTN that features talented Indigenous musicians from various backgrounds in music. It was a blast to be on the show.
Also… the album is coming along! Currently keyboards are being mixed and I’ll be back in the studio soon to add bgs. After that (we don’t think that we’ll be adding any more instrumentation) all songs will be mixed and mastered.
Liquorice tea pre-practising bgs. Yep that’s a fork.
Acoustic guitar tracks by Lonny Eagleton were recorded last night. What a guitar player! More new main vocal tracks have been added to tracks, as well, this week. I’ve been experimenting more with singing softer, with less force and more breathe. Very fun…
A new Meet the Collective Podcast is coming out soon:
Rob and I sat down the other weekend together to record a podcast to fill you in on what we’ve been up to and to just talk. That podcast will be released early April, sooo soon! We look forward to booking our next new guest.
So….we’ve been in the studio recording and we’ll be back in the studio next week. Rob has some words he’d like to share with you about New York, too. I think I’ve been vicariously living through Rob, and his wife, Tina’s, New York experience this past while. I was having some Patti Smith moments and shared with them a poem Patti had written about New York. Then I started looking through the book I have of hers…Just Kids.
I saw this post (below) up on an art blog, where Patti Smith is talked about, and am trying to figure out if it’s actually something Patti Smith made or said. Apparently it’s from her exhibition Camera Solo. Either way, I think the quote below is something really special.
From Patti Smith’s Camera Solo Exhibit?
I went to see St. Vincent last Tuesday, with Reneltta, a talented artist and very good friend of mine. She’s back for a little bit from a tour she’s been in of Night, a moving theatre piece. Seeing St. Vincent was so great. I saw her a while back opening for Arcade Fire, at Deer Lake Park, when her first album Marry Me, just came out. Ever since seeing her I’ve been a huge fan and thought she was an exceptional vocalist, guitar player, and songwriter. It was really interesting to see how much her stage presence has transformed and changed. There was choreography, stories about making angel wings out of garbage can lids, and a character she assumed. That was another part of the show I enjoyed, quite a bit. Over the months I’ve participated in an ensemble with actors, writers and dancers. I’ve been inspired by the performance aspect of making music. I really don’t know how, if I was to integrate it into a music performance, it would happen; but I think subconsciously what I’ve learned is something that will shine through, even in a small way.
A lot of reflection has happened with the making of our second album: 1.Because of the time in between of not being the studio, and 2. Because of the new experiences Rob, the band, our producer, and I have all gone through while making the album. As much as Rob and I are pushing to have the album out earlier this year, we’re beginning to understand that the extra time we took allowed for the process of finding ourselves in the album. We’re thrilled with the tracks. We feel like it just keeps getting better and better.
Happy Friday, everyone! While Rob’s away in NY for about a week, with his wife Tina, much of the Sister Says album is being edited. We have more vocal/guitar/keyboard sessions coming up. I’ve finally had the opportunity this week to work more on booking promo things for our upcoming album (new photos, researching videographers for a video/etc), which has been great. This week I also had the opportunity of working with some amazing, talented, youth for their performance at the Gathering Our Voices (GOV) event, at the Orpheum, in Vancouver. The GOV event was an amazing talent show filled with mainly dance and music performances, showcasing youth all over Canada. This was something I did with the Full Circle Ensemble, I’m part of, which is an ensemble of artists in various disciplines such as theatre, film, music, dance, and writing. We work on workshops for youth, put together projects to present, and appear at theatre/art shows, and sometimes other events where we speak and perform. With the GOV youth our job was warming them up pre-performance, through theatre/vocal warm-ups.
Back to Sister Says….we can’t wait to get back into the studio and book more shows…things are coming along!
Rob and I met up this week with producer and studio engineer Dave Meszaros to come up with some planning around finishing the recording of our second album and to also check out Dave’s new recording space in North Vancouver. It was very nice!
Next week I jump back into the studio to record final vocals for our tracks. I’m really looking forward to it…. We’ll be recording more guitar tracks too, soon.
Also, look out for summer performance dates for Sister Says. We have a few already booked, which we’ll post soon in our event listings:)
xo
Gillian
Rob checking out the new studio space in North Van
Rob and I recorded demos in our home studio last weekend…we worked on “You can’t go back” and some more on another song we had previously recorded a demo of. We use the demos as a way to map out parts of our songs and for the rest of our bandmates to do the same. It’s always fun breaking apart songs and putting them back together. Taking out parts, replacing parts, adding new sounds, adding new rhythms….
We’ve been working on finishing the recording of (or most of the recording of) “Suspect Number One,” a song that will be on our second album. We’re so happy with the results so far. Yesterday Rob and I spent some time listening and watching our producer Dave mix. I added some more harmonies. This Sunday there is more mixing to be had + Rob adding final bass tracks.
SISTER SAYS 