Summer Festivities

Summertime in Canada! How much can happen in such a short few months! It is so neat to see what your energy can do when staying in one spot, and Stanley Mission has simply stole my heart! Musician residencies are so great for a community, and there’s a fire lit in my soul to see music instruction continue it’s impact in Saskatchewan. Together with The Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society we’ve developed a mentorship program that will see training of community members to become the music instructors and leaders. The program is called CAMP, Cultural Arts Mentorship Programming, and there will soon be links, logos and program proposal descriptions coming at ya!!

The first show of the summer saw the my band open for Lyle Lovitt and Corb Lund at the Saskatchewan Jazz Festival on June 23rd. What an amazing evening, Lyle is such a down to earth fella! His whole team made us feel welcome and first class, it was so refreshing!! Hitting up a few of my favourite music festivals this year in Saskatchewan, we’ll be performing at the Napatak Ramble in La Ronge on July 6th with some of my favourite bands, namely The Sadies, The Gathering in Stanley Mission with Charlie Major on July 16th, Ness Creek on July 20th with Terra Lightfoot, Mariel Buckley and tons of other great acts, Amigos Cantina in Saskatoon on July 29th with Willie Watson, and lastly The Northern Lights Bluegrass and Old Tyme Music Festival outside of Big River, Sk on August 16th -18th. My fantastic band, consisting of Paula McGuigan on upright bass, Liza Holder on guitar and Lucas Goetz on pedal steel will be joining me on most of the show dates.

What a time to be alive! Although I’m extremely excited to perform these days and be along side some of my favourite musical compadres, I’m mainly driven to build music programming to make music lessons accessible to underserved communities, write grants to make this happen, and find musicians that are compatible to live and work with these communities. That being said, there is new music being written, and I’m hoping this winter to have enough energy to put into new recordings and videos. We shall see where the feathers fly!

I hope all is well in our world, wherever it may be! Drop me a line and tell me about it, collaboration is key in my world! Bye!