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/

Sunday Sojourn

Wake up you sleepy heads… for adventure, even on a lazy Sunday afternoon. “No Matter the Battle” pits Allison Crowe and Band, film-scorer Kayla Schmah, and cinema magician Georges Méliès against the moon’s inhabitants – and we’re all aboard:

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.

"Hold Back" + "Effortless" Ciné

“Cinema changed him and he changed cinema,” Agnès Varda, the great Ixelles (Brussels)-born French photographer and film director, says of cultural confrère, French-Swiss director/screenwriter/critic, Jean-Luc Godard. 

JLG’s short “Une femme coquette” is filmed in Geneva with credits to Hans Lucas (a nom de guerre the ground-breaking iconoclast used also for writings in ‘Cahier du Cinéma’). It’s rarely exhibited and seen until its recent sharing online with the world by Australian cinéaste and critic Dave Hesler. (Gracias, Nina, for flagging the original now available in full via YouTube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzpFi0uBmzs and elsewhere.) 

This early (1955) creation of Godard, as excerpted here, finds its images meeting new sound – from Canadian musician Allison Crowe. “Hold Back” is recorded by Crowe herself at home in Corner Brook, NL. The ciné song’s lyricism reveals “an heart of mystery and some fears faced”.

“Effortless” is recorded by Ryan Adams in a log-home of Crowe’s friends on Salt Spring Island, BC. “Trying not to try so hard” is the puzzle.

Tidings

"Tidings" music for the season and all time - and no need, even, to get up and flip the record over. Enjoy:

Enjoy all 29 songs - sacred and secular, trad to modern - now open on Allison’s Musical Advent Calendar further down this webpage and also @ http://allisoncrowe.com/MusicalAdventCalendar2016.html

Peace :)

O Holy Night - Day 29 on the Musical Advent Calendar

“O Holy Night” completes the Musical Advent Calendar for 2016. On Christmas Day Allison Crowe delivers this much-loved, traditional, carol – music by Adolphe C. Adam (1803-1856) and words: Placide Cappeau, 1847 (Minuit, chrétiens, c'est l'heure solennelle); translated from French to English by John S. Dwight (1812-1893):

(Hear the “Tidings” album version @ http://music.allisoncrowe.com/track/o-holy-night)

Enjoy all 29 songs - sacred and secular, trad to modern - now open on Allison’s Musical Advent Calendar @ http://allisoncrowe.com/MusicalAdventCalendar2016.html

Whether I'm Wrong - Day 22 on Musical Advent Calendar

Day 22 on the Musical Advent Calendar opens on this song from Allison Crowe – featured by the UNESCO-endorsed ‘New Songs for Peace’ project – “Whether I’m Wrong”:

Whether I'm Wrong - Allison Crowe live-in-the-studio from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

Mark each day through Christmas with a new song on Allison’s Musical Advent Calendar @ http://allisoncrowe.com/MusicalAdventCalendar2016.html

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

You All Haunt Me - Allison Crowe and Band

"You All Haunt Me" opens the debut album from Allison Crowe and Band: "Introducing / Heirs + Grievances".

More on this new double-album of music - and the band's concert tour - coming soon.

http://music.allisoncrowe.com  +  http://allisoncrowe.com

Allison Crowe with Band: Revolution on its Way

Allison Crowe, the amazing Nanaimo, Vancouver Island-born musician, home in Newfoundland for a decade now, is here in British Columbia this month to resume the launch of a new band and creative phase.

In the record-melting heat of this Summer, Crowe (vocals, piano, guitar, bodhran, fiddle) and bandmates Billie Woods (guitar, vox), Celine Greb (cello, vox) and Dave Baird (bass) performed their first shows. The group’s hybrid of Canadiana, Celtic, jazz, roots, folk, soul and original rock is next on-stage: October 23 in Sidney’s Charlie White Theatre; October 30 at Nanaimo’s Port Theatre; and November 13 at Vancouver’s St. James Hall. (NB “Tidings”, Allison Crowe’s Christmastime concert series, resumes next year in BC.)

Rehearsal today! Woot!               Allison Crowe foto

Between concert dates the band is in sessions at Turtle studios in White Rock, BC with engineer/producer Larry Anschell (Pearl Jam, Bif Naked, Sarah McLachlan). Several of Allison Crowe’s 15 album releases, including the classics “Tidings” and “Live at Wood Hall”, have been captured by Anschell and his audio team.

Capping more than a decade of primarily solo touring and recording, Crowe has three releases coming this season.

"Muruch.com Presents: Allison Crowe”, out this week via Bandcamp, is a 21-song anthology and playlist curated by one of the first, and now longest-running, legal-mp3 music websites. The West Virginia-based culture blog gathers its personal favourites from her recorded repertoire explaining: “Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Crowe has long been Muruch’s musical mascot, so it seemed fitting to celebrate her music along with Muruch.com’s 15th anniversary.”

 October 20, 2015 brings the release of “Newfoundland Vinyl 3” (on Bandcamp, iTunes et al), newest in the acclaimed series of albums refreshing folk, traditional, and popular music of Canada’s Atlantic coast. Waltzes, parlour songs, rousing tunes of land and sea emerge from Crowe’s role as Musical Director with Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador’s hit show, “Newfoundland Vinyl”, at the annual Gros Morne Theatre Festival.

Allison Crowe’s bond with the TNL family, and the region’s wonderful musicians and actors, provides inspiration as well for “Souling (Bonus Tracks Edition)” out this October 27 (worldwide through all major digital outlets). Expanding upon 2014’s singular all-acappella collection of sacred and traditional Christmas carols she performs – acappella and with choral-focus – select songs of heart and hearth from the popular songbook.

Concert, recording, and other Allison Crowe news is found on the artist’s original website @ http://allisoncrowe.com soon to merge with a band site currently @ http://www.allisoncrowe.com/wordpress

Summer, swims, and friends

Summer, swims, and friends.

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

Phoenix

“Phoenix” rises next from Allison Crowe’s “Sylvan Hour”. Snow fell on Newfoundland, Canada this week – and, even in the cold and dark, we’re witness to irrepressible spirit and positive strength. Inspiration!


Phoenix from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

It’s said that “Meet John Doe” represents an attempt by Frank Capra, the great Italian-born American film director, (known for more care-free populist classics - “It Happened One Night”, “It’s a Wonderful Life” and others), to “work out his own fears and questions” about the future of the people. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story, this 1941 movie stars Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Edward Arnold and, as “The Colonel”, Walter Brennan (who rails against “the heelots” – the “greedy-guts’’ in our society, as Buffy Sainte-Marie calls them.)

http://music.allisoncrowe.com/track/phoenix-sh 

Northern Lights

Rustically shimmering, "Northern Lights" opens up Allison Crowe's "Little Light" album. Real life transmutes into this song of love - inspired by the beauty in the skies above, and, especially, during those Summers spent in Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland.


Northern Lights from Allison Crowe on Vimeo.

It’s a song Allison Crowe's carried with her from Canada to perform at the 'John Lennon Northern Lights Festival' in Durness, Scotland.

http://music.allisoncrowe.com/track/northern-lights

Accompanying the music, Yukon-based David Cartier, Sr. shares his wondrous photographs of the Aurora Borealis on flickr @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcartiersr/sets/72157594420812359

Here's what David says about this source of inspiration:

" When men lack a sense of awe, There will be disaster "
- - - - Lao Tzu --- The Tao Teh Ching

“Awe is what THIS is all about!!

The Aurora is an experience of breathtaking beauty... the viewing makes you feel like you are connected integrally with an amazing cosmic force ..... Aurora watching is as addictive as any drug and a whole lot more satisfying. Once you become addicted, you stay out all night, lose sleep, forget about social commitments, nearly get wind burned and frostbit and it's all, deeply, worth it!!

Every human being who can manage it should make a pilgrimage to the subarctic auroral zone in order to see and feel this at least once in their life.

Many of these were taken with an amazing old Russian Kiev-19 35mm SLR. This camera , which I still use for night sky photos, NEVER freezes up or has any shutter problems in the cold, even at minus 60!! The more expensive Japanese and German cameras which I own always, or at least often, stop functioning in the deep cold.”

Montreal

On Allison Crowe’s first cross-Canada tour, a dozen years ago now, she and her trio (Dave Baird on bass, Kevin Clevette on drums) performed at Upstairs, a jazz club below-ground in Vieux-Montréal – Old Montréal, Quebec.

Dear friends - nos copains, Gerry, Gilles-Mathieu et autres – introduced us to the delights of this French-Canadian city – the tasty smoked-salmon spread, the maple pies in Côte des Neiges Farmers Market, the Tam-Tams of Mont Royal, and Brother Andre’s heart at home still, above it all, in St. Joseph’s Oratory.

Forest fires raging in the province’s James Bay region screened the city – not in clouds of thick smoke, but, in a sepia-tint making all appear antiqued, dream-like as if in aged photographs or cinema reels.

So, come on, follow the alley down, take the steps to be greeted with a song, “Montreal”, from Allison’s album “secrets” – music.allisoncrowe.com/track/montreal - produced by Rainer Willeke - accompanied by Hedy Lamarr and Charles Boyer in a turn from “Algiers”, a 1938 film directed by John Cromwell. 

Tonight Will Be Fine on Cohencentric

Cohencentric blogs “DrHGuy” and “1 Heck of a Guy” recently saw curtains drop on their years of entertaining and illuminating the world via their creator’s singular “pastiche of posts with song, dance, snappy chatter, and notes on prose, poesy, love, lust, life, & Leonard Cohen”.

Happily, the stage-lights are shining again on the fruits of love’s labour from Allan Showalter, “arguably the greatest living Cohen expert” – and we see these two websites have re-emerged in a union that promises to delight like 'tea and oranges that come all the way from China'.

Suited now as “Cohencentric: Leonard Cohen Considered” the blog is curating its more than 14,000 pieces previously posted, and adding new items. Here, Allison Crowe’s cover of “Tonight Will Be Fine” is re-framed:

Joy

Joy - from Allison Crowe - O Holy Night (Tidings)

For the Roses - Joni Mitchell Birthday Tribute

November 7 – today – we celebrate the birthday of Joni Mitchell, Renaissance woman of heart and mind.

 Joni’s “For the Roses” is performed by Allison Crowe in tribute.

Souling

Allison Crowe’s gorgeous voice brings tidings of comfort and joy with “Souling” – her 11th full album release.

 

The artist, one of our greatest living musicians, singer-songwriters and performers, has always created authentic music – free from the aural air-brush that represents so much of what is sold today as pop, rock, folk et al.

 

With her newest song set, Allison's voice is heard, again without the corporate music industry’s standard processing and effects, and wholly a cappella.

 

The songs themselves have a purity of expression – a 21st century take on music of faith and spirit – sounds and themes aired by carollers and soulers of old.

 

The fuller story is coming later this All Souls Day. Here now are the songs…

 

 

                  

16 Songs

“16 Songs” now showing in your home theatre – on any size screen. Allison Crowe’s century-spanning mashup of great music and movies is a global cultural festival that can be enjoyed in “Couch Mode” – which, its host site, Vimeo, explains is: “The chillest way to watch all your favorite Vimeo videos from the comfort of your couch, Lay-Z-Boy® or any other plush sitting apparatus.”

Steep the tea, brew the coffee, mull the wine, pour anything that you wish to enjoy this golden hour+ http://vimeo.com/couchmode/album/3076464/sort:preset/106154608

And, if your player doesn't show this player - you can find  "16 Songs” directly @ http://vimeo.com/album/3076464