Little Light - cover colored by moomki

Argentina-based visual artist moomki colorizes the b/w album/CD of Allison Crowe's "Little Light". In this very cool video, you can see the transformation of the cover imagery - which arises from a photo by Billie Woods, taken when Allison was visiting Pender Island, Canada for a concert. The music is "There Is" - the version from "This Little Bird".

Little Light

"Little Light" - the title song: "Walk backwards to see, if you can start where you were before/ break the locks to see, if there was ever really a door/ set fire to yourself, to see if there is anything to burn/ keep making mistakes, to see if there is anything to learn..."

Northern Lights

Next of Allison Crowe's albums is "Little Light", a 2008 release which is the most guitar-oriented song collection among her CDs. Opening up is the rustically shimmering "Northern Lights". Again Allison transmutes real life in this love song - inspired by sighting the Aurora Borealis. Lorette C. Luzajic, Toronto-based artist and culture-writer, calls it "the prettiest song that Sarah McLachlan never wrote."



Images of the Aurora Borealis - by adventurer and photographer David Cartier, captured mostly in the Yukon territory of Canada's North - accompany Allison Crowe's "Northern Lights" song in this video - combining to help bring home the wonder of it all :)

Choose to Be (Happy) - Allison Crowe

This afternoon, Allison went walking - here's what happened.

“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