Great Island Wonder

For the love of music, for the love of all life, this February 14, whether you celebrate Valentine’s or V-Day, or however, simply, you mark another day of existence – there’ll be a special soundtrack coming from Allison Crowe.

A rare batch of “Great Island Wonder”, (named, also, for the love of bootlegs), is 18 song performances straight from the heart – and banter galore – captured by audio archivist John MacMillan in concert on Canada’s Denman Island a dozen years ago. This show, hosted by Denman’s Mélanie Bilodeau, offers a repast – an edible, audible, document of the artist’s solo repertoire at one delectable moment in time.

Album art was originally anticipated to be wholly cartographic in nature – however, with such an Hipgnotic foto now facing us, the song+ info will be mapped out solely on GIW’s back cover to be released with the music on 14.02.2017.

Album cover foto: Allison Crowe

Allison Crowe enters Last.fm Singer-Songwriter Group’s Hall of Fame

Allison Crowe's voted by some very discerning music-lovers into the "Singer-Songwriter of the Week" group's Hall of Fame on Last.fm (the world's largest online music catalogue and recommendation site).

The Canadian artist joins existing members in the:

HALL OF FAME

Allison Crowe
Annie Lennox
Billy Joel
Björk
Bob Dylan
Bob Marley
Bob Seger
Bono
Bruce Springsteen
Carole King
Cat Stevens
Conor Oberst
David Bowie
Donovan
Don Henley
Elton John
Eric Clapton
Freddie Mercury
George Harrison
Heather Nova
Herbert Grönemeyer
Jackson Browne
James Taylor
Jimi Hendrix
Joan Baez
John Denver
John Fogerty
John Lennon
John Mayer
John Mellencamp
Johnny Cash
Joni Mitchell
Kate Bush
Kurt Cobain
Leonard Cohen
Lou Reed
Mark Knopfler
Michael Stipe
Mick Jagger
Neil Diamond
Neil Finn
Neil Young
Nick Cave
Nick Drake
Paul McCartney
Paul Simon
Peter Gabriel
Phil Collins
PJ Harvey
Ray Davies
Reinhard Mey
Roger Waters
Ryan Adams
Sarah McLachlan
Sheryl Crow
Stevie Wonder
Sufjan Stevens
Tom Petty
Tom Waits
Tori Amos
Townes Van Zandt
Tracy Chapman
Udo Lindenberg
Van Morrison


Allison Crowe is ever grateful for the tremendous fan support and the international community that shares music, recommendations and appreciation of singer-songwriters – at home, in concert, and online.

Music, and sharing it with other people, is one of life's joys.

Love it! :)

Joni Mitchell: for the poses

I love Joni Mitchell ~ for her music, her integrity, her candour.

This entire transcribed chat - Joni interviewed by Cameron Crowe for Rolling Stone in 1979 - is a wonderful read. (Just watch for the occasional typo.) It's a candid reflection of the artist and person and a meditation on art and life.

Insightful, funny, sad, wise, there's lots to appreciate. Right now, after listening to the radio and catching some Canadian act doing a Dylan pastiche, well, this passage fits:

"There's only a certain amount of fine work in any idiom. The rest of it is just copyists. Regurgitation. Obvious rip-offs. Mingus has a song, 'If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There's Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats.' Sometimes I find myself sharing this point of view. He figured you don't settle for anything else but uniqueness. The name of the game to him - and to me - is to become a full individual. I remember a time when I was very flattered if somebody told me that I was a good as Peter, Paul and Mary. Or that I sounded like Judy Collins. Then one day I discovered I didn't want to be a second-rate anything. I have to remember to be compassionate. Otherwise it really pisses me off to hear somebody getting a whole lot of public roar and, 'Oh this is the newest and greatest,' when it's really just the greatest and newest copy. There are bands coming now that are really good. They're interesting; they've got some vitality and some fire, but - say they're Englishmen who sound like Bob Dylan. I listen to it and it's pleasant on the radio, but as an artist I say to myself, 'If you're that good, how come you can't be yourself?' "

Cruel and Unusual film-makers

Entertainment Weekly has an item on The Watchmen movie's director/producer team of Zack Snyder, Deborah Snyder, and Wesley Coller launching a website for their own Hollywood production company.

In the Lounge of Cruel and Unusual Films, the creative trio list their pop culture delights - movies, books and music. Sound-wise, they're digging the Jimi Hendrix version of "All Along the Watchtower" and Allison Crowe's Hallelujah cover.

Much as seeing a mountain of haggis in my local supermarket triggers memories, so, too, does this musical connection.

A few years back, a national Canadian news magazine, Macleans, interviewed Allison, asking her favourite, classic, jazz and rock recordings.

Her top classic rock picks included Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee" and the Hendrix version of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" - both tracks will be heard in the upcoming Watchmen movie.

Add to these, Cohen's song that's currently sweeping the world, recordings from some of my all-time fave singers, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, songwriters, and composers, and, the soundtrack alone appears worth the admission:

Desolation Row - My Chemical Romance
Unforgettable - Nat King Cole
The Times They Are A-Changin' - Bob Dylan
The Sound Of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel
Me & Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
I'm Your Boogie Man - KC & The Sunshine Band
You're My Thrill - Billie Holiday
Pruit Igoe & Prophecies - The Philip Glass Ensemble
Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen
All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix
Ride of the Valkyries - Budapest Symphony Orchestra
Pirate Jenny - Nina Simone* (*end credits of the "Tales From The Black Freighter" DVD).

The studio promises these iconic recordings "once heard in the context of the film, will never be thought of the same way again."

Here's wishing the Cruel and Unusual crew great success, and, sending big thanks, as well, for listening to, and sharing, Allison's music.

“An’ for every hung up person in the whole wide universe”

It's a mighty long time since another side of Bob Dylan had us gaze upon the chimes of freedom flashing. Decades, too, since there was blood on the tracks. The “idiot wind”, though, is still blowing like a circle around our skulls.

Allison Crowe is a new truth-seeker. She’s a writer of social conscience. One who believes in the power of music.

“To sing is to love and affirm, to fly and soar, to coast into the hearts of the people who listen, to tell them that life is to live, that love is there, that nothing is a promise, but that beauty exists, and must be hunted for and found,” wrote Joan Baez, musician and plenty more, when she was near the same age Allison Crowe is now.

’t’is high purpose, evermore today, “as we replace marble with plastic”.

The body of work this young Canadian artist is creating is remarkable and varied. Through a repertoire numbering dozens of original songs, she’s fulfilling her stated raison d’etre, making music that is "Soulful. Alive. Joyous. Grievous. Real. True.”

In a concert review this month, Jan DeGrass of the Coast Reporter notes: “In another piece, Crowe savaged the piano with a fierceness that turned our spines to noodles. The song was dedicated to a woman who gave a classical piano performance seen on YouTube only to find that her web audience offered tasteless and ignorant jokes in return. Don’t sugar coat it, Allison.”

No Mother Hubbard soft soap here. The song, Disease, is always riveting social commentary. (Even serving as inspiration to an online discussion of ‘great art’ and the elements of creation.) While unchanged lyrically, the song has grown more steeled musically through its life and release: “Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind.”

Captured in its raging glory, serendipitously on International Women's Day, March 8, 2008, also a fun date of Turtle Recording Studios 20th Anniversary Party in White Rock, B.C., Canada - by Engineer and Producer, Turtle's Larry Anschell - and Co-engineered by Brad Graham:

Disease