Whether I'm Wrong

A performance of the topical song "Whether I'm Wrong" (the first video ever posted to Allison Crowe's YouTube channel):

Muruch + Music = Win, Win

There’s 10 days still to shake the world, and enter Muruch’s marvelous musical contest for your chance to win a copy of Allison Crowe’s “Newfoundland Vinyl” LP + d/l code – the collection of songs about which the veteran, West Virginia-based, music blogger says: "It has the timeless beauty of a classic folk album." (read the full review @ http://www.muruch.com/2013/07/allison-crowe-newfoundland-vinyl.html 

It’s fun, it’s simple, and you only live once! (unless you’re James Bond… or a cat)


For the scoop, visit Muruch’s reminder post - http://www.muruch.com/2013/07/giveaway-reminder-win-allison-crowes-new-album.html - and/or the original invitation to claim your prize music - http://www.muruch.com/2013/07/giveaway-win-1-of-5-allison-crowe-vinyl-lps-digital-downloads.html

Good luck/bon chance!!

Double Dip of Leonard Cohen Ballet News

Marvellous and mysterious blogger DrHGuy, miner of many Leonard Cohen-faceted diamonds, today presents a post de deux on Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the recent engagement of musician Allison Crowe - performing Cohen's "Hallelujah" with the RWB:

http://1heckofaguy.com/2012/06/16/allison-crowe-gets-the-pointe  +

http://drhguy.posterous.com/ballet-with-allison-crowe

Free! Music! Contest Salutes Creativity and Evolution

This weekend, Canada Day, “north of the 49th”, and Independence Day in America, marks the international launch of “Free! Music! Contest 2011”. Organizer Musikpiraten e.V., explains this year’s focus is on “free” as in “freedom” rather than in “free beer”. Considering the strong European flavour to the community involved, though, it’s win-win however you brew it.

"FreeMixter" is the motto of this event and, as that suggests, emphasis is on enabling remixes – via ccMixter, the remix portal where many artists, including such high-profile creators as the Beastie Boys, Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park), and DJ Vadim, release tracks that others can use to make new music.

Allison Crowe’s posted the vocal and piano tracks for "Spiral" to ccMixter, saying:

"Creative Commons is, in my opinion, the best way to license your music!

You can choose what you're most comfortable with, without someone choosing it for you - in a sense rendering it the most personalized, realistic and human way to do things - sharing art, and joining artists, all together from all around the world. That's what it's all about!

All the best with this year's Free! Music! Contest :) Can't wait to hear what happens!"

Allison Crowe is delighted and honoured to be designated Musical Patron for this year’s celebration of creativity – following previous F!M!C Patron, author, journalist and Boing Boing blogger Cory Doctorow, a prominent advocate of Creative Commons licensing, an increasingly welcome alternative to traditional copyright.

Artists, academics, everyone, in today’s evolving environment, can tune in, and turn on to the greater flexibility and compatibility with digital realities afforded by Creative Commons aka CC licensing.

Here’s to “The Power of Open”. Prost!

Love Connection

Fabio Mazzarella, Vladimiro Guindani and their team at Italy's Life Style Radio have a musical Valentine for everyone.


It's a free digital music compilation and includes Allison Crowe's much-loved song "What About You". Allison joins Hungry Lucy, The Dada Weathermen and others in this modern romantic music mix.

Fitting, no doubt, that St. Valentine was a Roman. Click on the album cover above, to reach the Life Style site where you can download the music and artwork of "Love Connection: Vol. 1" and share the amore!!

“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