Allison Crowe's Artist Subscription Launch

Allison Crowe’s artist “subscription” launches!

It’s a new way forward for independent music-makers and music-lovers on Bandcamp – which has hosted Allison’s music for years.

An artist can now share their own creative flow individually and directly (as well as being part of such global music-streaming subscription services as Spotify, Tidal and all).

This subscription, for $40 USD per year, gives you all the new music Allison Crowe creates – delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android. The music is available for continual streaming, and for permanent download (in your choice of digital audio formats).

By subscribing you also receive – as downloads and for streaming – all the music recordings from Rubenesque Records, Allison’s label: “Lisa’s Song + 6 Songs”; “secrets”; “Tidings”; “Live at Wood Hall”; “This Little Bird”; “Little Light”; “Spiral”; “Arthur/Up to the Mountain”; “Tidings Concert”; "Newfoundland Vinyl"; "Heavy Graces"; "Tarry Trousers"; "Souling"; "Newfoundland Vinyl II"; “Crowe: Covers, Live + Rare”; and "Songbook".

The universe as it unfolds also includes access to the Allison Crowe fan community, and a 15% discount on all physical merchandise eg. CDs, LPs (and things Allison’s yet to conceive or create).

The doors of perception are opening wider – Allison and Link, Rubenesque’s top dog, welcome you @ http://music.allisoncrowe.com/subscribe

Sylvan Hour Nears

“Sylvan Hour” arrives this Friday - May 1. Here’s the album’s front and back covers - and some word on a classic song collection:

 

 

Discover this music from a remarkable artist at a personal and creative crossroads in her life. “Sylvan Hour” is an album of songs bridging west and east, piano and guitar, then and now…

 

For fans of Allison Crowe at her purest, this is voice, one accompanying instrument – one take. Real-time performances in the sequence they’re played and sung by Allison in a log-home on Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada.

 

That afternoon the musician was in the midst of migrating from her birthplace of Nanaimo, BC, on Canada’s Pacific, to a new nest in Corner Brook, NL, on the Atlantic coast. Soon to fly east, Crowe bade farewell to those near and dear on western shores – including compatriot Kayla Schmah on Salt Spring, neighbouring Vancouver Island.

 

Decades earlier Schmah’s parents had made an epic trek to the Pacific Northwest from Central Canada – in a repurposed donut truck. Planting themselves in the Gulf Islands archipelago, they lived at first in a converted parachute in the woods. From the ground up the home-steaders then built a family dwelling out of Douglas Fir – their “sylvan castle”.

 

Allison and Kayla, as musicians had shared stages together from their teens onward (and, years later, becoming a film-scorer in Hollywood, Schmah brilliantly orchestrated and produced Crowe’s album “Spiral”.) Among the friends together on SSI this day was Ryan Adams (who, like Schmah was a recent graduate of Berklee College of Music and was en route to becoming an in-demand tv/film audio engineer in Los Angeles).

 

With mics and a laptop set-up in the living-room, Adams captured this set of the newest songs in Allison’s repertoire – originals including “Skeletons and Spirits”, “Running”, and “Silence” as well as a trio of covers (interpreting songs famously by Joni Mitchell, The Lovin' Spoonful and Aretha Franklin).

 

Also gorgeous, but differently so, essentially group versions of most of these songs were released near the end of that same year (2006) on Allison Crowe’s album “This Little Bird” (the title track a celebration of her migration). “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” is the sole sylvan session recording released before – it’s presented now within the full hour of music for all time.

 

Enjoy this most natural of talents – in this most natural of settings.

 

Unstable

Robert Plant, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Joe Cocker, Ann and Nancy Wilson (Heart), Eddie Vedder… visceral rock singers of legend.

 

Among Allison Crowe’s early studio recording experiences was a kind invitation from “Her Royal Majesty’s Records”, the label started by Canada’s own rock/punk/poet icon, Bif Naked. Naked’s manager and HRMR co-founder, music industry veteran Peter Karroll remarked upon first hearing the island-based musician: “She is reminiscent of some of the great women vocalists who shaped rock music in the late '60s and early '70s. Allison's emotional delivery is unique in today's music."

 

Here’s “Unstable” - one of the songs Allison Crowe performed in those days with her bandmates Dave Baird (bass) and Kevin Clevette (drums). It’s recorded in White Rock, BC’s Turtle studios by Larry Anschell (who’s captured music of Bif, Pearl Jam, Sarah McLachlan ++).

The accompanying visual is excerpted from an experimental 1928 film version of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Directed and photographed by James Sibley Watson, Jr. – it’s a cinematic adaptation Watson co-wrote with Melville Webber (who also designed the sets for this American avant-garde piece). An early scenario for the film was written by poet and essayist+ e.e. cummings.

Crayon and Ink - Allison Crowe's National TV Debut

This Winter’s been an epic adventure on a couple of fronts - digging out of snowdrifts, and rooting through musical archives to unearth audio and video gems.

A word-of-mouth sensation in western Canada since her teens, Allison Crowe made her first national television appearance on the Vicki Gabereau show in January, 2002.

Here's the live-in-the-studio performance that introduced a country to this amazing musician. Show host is Vicki Gabereau ~ Canada's "Queen of Chat" (northern counterpart to such American talk-show hosts as Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey.)

Allison Crowe is accompanied on "Crayon and Ink" by bassist Dave Baird and drummer Kevin Clevette. The song appears on Crowe's debut EP, "Lisa's Song + 6 Songs".

Running

“Sylvan Hour” nears this Spring. Simply gorgeous. Gorgeously simple. It's an album of Allison Crowe music simultaneously familiar and revelatory.

“Running” is one of 13 coming attractions in this traveling fair of song. Drawing us into the Big Top is “Betty Boop’s Crazy Inventions” – calliope and all - helping get the point across. 

Celebrating Al Pittman

April 11, today, marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of legendary Canadian writer Al Pittman (who passed away in 2001). Born in St. Leonard's, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, the cherished poet and playwright grew up in Corner Brook – home to musician Allison Crowe.



30 for 60 from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

From Pittman’s 1999 selection of poetry, “Thirty for Sixty”, Newfoundland’s “Man of 1000 Songs” Ron Hynes set words to music – and a tradition of artistic regeneration is on deck once again here with Allison’s take on this elegiac hybrid.

Minus 15

“-15 degrees Celsius... Methinks I'll wait a bit to do any gardening, just in case” tweets @Allison_Crowe

 

Hallelujah Considered

Allison Crowe’s singular interpretation of “Hallelujah” was first released on record in 2003. The Leonard Cohen classic has been covered hundreds of times since – by country acts, pop idols, crooners, swooners and more. Allison’s rare, visceral, artistry remains timeless and, today, “Cohencentric: Leonard Cohen Considered” places in its firmament this iconic video - one of the world's most-loved versions of the song (filmed live-in-the-studio of Canada’s Turtle Recording):

http://cohencentric.com/2015/04/08/video-allison-crowe-performs-hallelujah-by-leonard-cohen

Hallelujah - Allison Crowe performs Leonard Cohen from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

Home Studio Hazards

The many dangers of the kitchen recording studio. (crockpot not included) - tweets @Allison_Crowe



(the cat in black is Johnny Cash)

Circular Reasoning

“Circular Reasoning” from Allison Crowe’s upcoming “Sylvan Hour” album here joins Betty Boop through the looking-glass. Allison’s wonderland of song finds reflection in a visual pool of classic animation from Fleischer Studios.

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things”. Get cracking with this musical Easter egg: http://music.allisoncrowe.com

Newfoundland Vinyl in the MOCM

The Museum of Canadian Music is kindly featuring Allison Crowe’s “Newfoundland Vinyl” LP @
http://citizenfreak.com/titles/324683-crowe-allison-newfoundland-vinyl



The MOCM, curated and maintained by its founder Robert Williston and a core team, explains the mission of “the website is about the artists, the music, and the country of Canada that has produced such an enormous quantity of excellent off-the-radar titles that so many collectors worldwide are onto; but the general public has still not really caught onto - yet... the music on this site should satisfy the more refined connoisseur of Canadian music, especially when spinning vinyl is not so convenient for a world on the go...”

Williston’s amassed the “largest private collection of Canadian music artifacts on earth” – and is making this cultural treasure – over 90,000 individual artifacts and roughly one million Canadian songs collected – public via the MOCM site.

The museum’s domain - Citizenfreak.com – “honors a hometown Calgary band, the 49th Parallel, who recorded the cool single Citizen Freak in 1968”.

You can enjoy Allison’s music now found in the MOCM – and, this Easter weekend, hop down the rabbit-hole of Canadian music!