But, still

“But, still”. Allison Crowe with Link – a work in progress. 

"Soulful. Alive. Joyous. Grievous. Real, true, music is what I want to make," says Allison. That is all. 

https://allisoncrowe.bandcamp.com/

Celebrating avec "Montreal"

Long story short - this is a beautiful cover of my song ‘Montreal’ by a wonderful student and singer in Dorval (musicians of L'école Dorval-Jean XXIII).

Short story long (and rambling): So writing songs (for me, anyways) can be a weird thing - and can feel like no one will ever hear you, or care, or connect with how deeply you feel what you're saying - but then you kind of have to accept that maybe that doesn't matter, and it is in that instant only about what the creation for you means right then - and maybe that's all it'll ever be, it's absolutely possible no one will care, and so you just do it anyway, because it's what you do.

Maybe after you write it, it doesn't matter what it means to you, it isn't about yourself at all, it's about what someone else can take away from it, heal, commiserate, rage, sing or laugh along - and you put every emotion you have in to whatever you're saying in one moment - but then that time passes, A LOT OF TIME PASSES VERY QUICKLY, and everything takes on different meanings. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's funny, sometimes it makes you cry.

Students in Dorval are celebrating 375 years of Montreal, and this is a young woman singing a verse and chorus of my song ‘Montreal’, and I can honestly say that a) i never saw that coming b) i don't actually know what to say so i am saying too much and c) I'm crying.

Allison Crowe's ABC

Knowing your ABCs has been a musical joy ever since the Jackson 5. Now, updated with her debut band release, “Heirs + Grievances” is Allison Crowe’s ABC list of songs @ http://allisoncrowe.com/ABC.html

Allison Crowe - illustration by boki.b - Vienna + Buenos Aires

This page links to the artist’s full repertoire – over 159 unique song recordings released over 26 albums, singles, EPs and compilations (and still more tunes not yet recorded). Original songs, interpretations, a cappella, piano, guitar, solo and band tunes, traditional, alternative, sea shanties, hymns, carols and aires. Allison Crowe’s body of work encompasses rock, folk, jazz, Canadiana, Celtic, and soul among many-splendoured genres. Hers is a remarkable, singular, oeuvre and a voice without peer in popular music this century. Show you what it’s all about…

Counting on ABCers from American Bandstand, The Jackson 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho7796-au8U

Ready to rock and roll

The albums are all finished and ready to go for the tour starting next week!! woot woot!

Allison Crowe @ https://www.instagram.com/allison_crowe

            #newmusic #tour #europeantour #music

Fun Ahead

This is me being excited about all the cool stuff going on - SEEMINGLY ALL THIS WEEK ALL AT ONCE - some of which is truly 15 years in the making... can't wait to share with you all as it happens! First up, a super fun show on Saturday the 13th with TNL at the Arts and Culture Centre in Corner Brook - come see us! We're a lot of fun.


Allison Crowe @ https://www.instagram.com/p/BBoQ171tSTx

The Christmas Song

“The Christmas Song” brings us together ’round the musical hearth. Yule know this tune penned by Mel Torme and Robert Wells. It’s paired here with the Fleischer Studios 1936 Color Classics animated short “Christmas Comes But Once a Year”.

The Christmas Song from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

This a cappella performance is on Allison Crowe’s just-released “Souling (Bonus Tracks Edition)” – an album which expands upon a cherished release of last Christmas. To “Souling” Crowe’s added one more traditional carol plus characteristically distinct colourings of secular songs popularized by Elvis, Eartha Kitt, Louis & Ella, Nat King Cole and Stevie Wonder among others: http://music.allisoncrowe.com/album/souling-bonus-tracks-edition

Allison Crowe is on Muruch.com's Top 10 albums of 2015 - twice!

Murúch, the pioneering blog that’s been sharing music and culture notes with the world since 1999, has been making a list – and checking it twice for releases from Allison Crowe.

“Muruch.com’s Top Albums of 2015” is coming to town – online you can enjoy all twenty discerning picks via playlists and widgets from Spotify, Bandcamp and Soundcloud @ http://www.muruch.com/2015/12/2015albums.html



"Allison’s supernaturally agile and exquisite voice is especially stunning" on Sylvan Hour

Clocking the top ten albums of the year, Murúch’s fine hand points to “Sylvan Hour” at #10. “Recorded live in a log-cabin in the Canadian wilderness during a cross-country journey, Allison Crowe’s new album, Sylvan Hour, may be her best yet… Allison’s extraordinary voice is in its purest state accompanied only by guitar and piano,” says the site’s original review. “The music seems to rise from deep with her chest, sometimes ripping out of her throat in full roar, other times being restrained and shaped with the skill of a master sculptor. Sylvan Hour is truly a masterpiece.” http://www.muruch.com/2015/05/allisoncrowe-sylvanhour.html

2015 is the year that Murúch branched out into music supervision – curating, assembling and releasing a collection of visual art, music and spoken word poetry to benefit RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network organization and helpline originally created by Tori Amos. “Muruch.com for RAINN” features contributions from two dozen artists including: Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, My Brightest Diamond, Pamela Means, Jen Hopper, Poe, Johnette Napolitano and Allison @ http://www.muruch.com/2015/11/rainnbenefit.html

Murúch has long been a champion of independent creators and, in a range of music genres, has an history of supporting new and left-of-centre artists who’ve gone on to broader public appreciation - acts such as Gaba Kulka, Amanda Palmer, She & Him, Lorde and Soak.

The blog’s profound understanding, and sharing, of music by Allison Crowe is so constant and resonant that Murúch, launched 15 years ago in West Virginia, sails o’er the bounding cultural main with a bi-coastal Canuck at the bow as musical mascot.



Curated collection of Allison Crowe's Greatest Makes Muruch's Top Albums of 2015

Capping more than a decade’s worth of releases by Crowe as a, primarily, solo artist, #3 on the Top Albums of the year list is a joint expedition across frontiers, the blog’s newest curation: “Muruch.com Presents: Allison Crowe”: “this spectacular, career-spanning collection features Allison Crowe’s most magnificent original songs as well as her mesmeric interpretation of ‘Hallelujah’ and other classic covers. Muruch.com also created the album’s cover art from photographs taken by our Editor in Newgrange, Ireland.” http://www.muruch.com/2015/10/allisoncrowealbum.html

Tune in, turn on and voyage this holiday season and beyond with the year’s finest albums – from Allison Crowe, Beth May, Alessia Cara, Rhiannen Giddens, Brandi Carlile and more - as chosen by Murúch.

Arthur - Allison Crowe Band - 30.06.2015 bootleg #3

"Arthur", third song in the bootleg video collection of Leslie Colly, brings together Arthurian notions with ruminations on aging and the bonds of love.

Allison Crowe (vocals, piano) is joined by bandmates Billie Woods (guitar), Celine Greb (cello) and Dave Baird (bass) – live from All Saints by-the-Sea, in the musical hot-house of Salt Spring Island, BC.

 

Summer, swims, and friends

Summer, swims, and friends.

Circular Reasoning - Comes 'round Again

“Circular Reasoning” spins here with a 1933 and 1/3 Betty Boop classic from Fleischer Studios.

Musical time starts counting again with Allison Crowe’s “Sylvan Hour” wonderland: http://music.allisoncrowe.com/track/circular-reasoning-sh


Circular Reasoning from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

“Sylvan Hour is truly a masterpiece” says pioneering culture blog Muruch. (http://www.muruch.com/2015/05/allisoncrowe-sylvanhour.html)

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.

Skeletons and Spirits

Clock strikes 12 for the second time in a “Sylvan Hour” selection – awakening Allison Crowe’s “Skeletons and Spirits” in this recording from Salt Spring Island’s sylvan castle:

          

In 1933 Ladislas Starewitch and his daughter, Irene, produced and directed "Fetiche Mascotte" – in English “The Mascot” – and it’s an excerpt from this classic film seen here with Allison’s musical performance.

Skeletons and Spirits - Sylvan Hour from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

Stop-motion animation pioneer and imaginative genius Władysław Starewicz was born in 1882 in Moscow, Russia to Polish parents. Following the October Revolution of 1917, he resettled in France –adopting the name Ladislas Starewitch (or Starevitch). Creator of the first puppet-animated film, he’s legendary for his use of insects and other animals as film protagonists and for his fantastic, inventive, techniques.

Starewitch died in 1965 while working on “Comme chien et chat” (“Like Dog and Cat”). Since 1991, his granddaughter, Léona Béatrice, together with her husband, François Martin, has been restoring and bringing to the world his wonderfully artful films: http://starewitch.pagesperso-orange.fr

This Little Bird

Chiming from “Sylvan Hour”, Allison Crowe’s newest, classic, release is “This Little Bird”. Born on the Pacific, in the Harbour City of Nanaimo, BC, Canada – Crowe migrated to lovely Corner Brook, Newfoundland, on Atlantic shores right after recording this batch of songs. The bi-coastal musician’s creative flight shows she’s made good on her promise: “This little bird’s gonna see the good life has to offer / and how you can give your heart and still feel free”.


This Little Bird from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

Accompanying Allison Crowe’s music on this video journey are scenes from “The Song of the Birds” – 1935 entry in the ‘Color Classics’ animation series of Fleischer Studios.

          

There Is

There Is from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

“There Is” – time for the next revolution of Allison Crowe’s “Sylvan Hour”. For visuals we cut once more to “The Chase”. Michèle Morgan and Robert Cummings seek a way out in this 1940s film noir.

A Case of You

A Case of You from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

Allison Crowe uncorks vintage “A Case of You” – off her “Sylvan Hour” album – with passion and artistry recognizing two great Canadian musical inspirations intertwined in the song – its writer, Joni Mitchell, and muse, Leonard Cohen. Cinematically, Frank Borzage directs the adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” –scenes hear featuring the film’s leading stars Helen Hayes, Gary Cooper and Adolphe Menjou.

Effortless

“Effortless” sailing from Allison Crowe's "Sylvan Hour" into scenes from “The Chase”, a 1946 film noir – screenplay by Philip Yordan based on Cornell Woolrich's novel, “The Black Path of Fear”. Directed by Arthur D. Ripley, produced by Seymour Nebenzal, the movie’s stars appearing here are French actress Michèle Morgan and American Robert Cummings.

“Sylvan Hour is truly a masterpiece"

“Sylvan Hour is truly a masterpiece” says pioneering culture blog Muruch.

“Allison Crowe’s new album… may be her best yet.”

Read the full review – and experience the music @ http://www.muruch.com/2015/05/allisoncrowe-sylvanhour.html 

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. 

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.