Gone Gone Beyond’s music has been described as “mesmerizing future folk”, blending together acoustic, world and electronic elements to create a unique, uplifting and expansive sound. Following the success of their LP “2030”, Gone Gone Beyond toured extensively around the United States and has played a range of festivals including Envision, Coachella, Lightning in a Bottle, Red Rocks and beyond.
The band have had their music featured on a number of films and television shows, including Netflix’s “First Kill” and recently released beloved single, Revolution, ahead of their next highly anticipated LP.
Gone Gone Beyond fans have attested to having downright spiritual experiences during their heartfelt live performances, where the band encourages the audience to slow down, tune in and dance into the stars.
Brett Dennen See the World (Mick Music) Brett Dennen is telling us to get out and see the world at a time when we need it more than ever. Flame-haired, six-foot-five, and with a singular gift for meditating on life’s most meaningful subjects with equal parts innocence and razor sharp wit, you know Dennen from his decade-plus career as a singer/songwriter. With a successful string of albums and four Top Ten AAA singles like “Make You Crazy,” “Wild Child,” and 2018’s “Already Gone,” which achieved his highest chart position yet, Dennen has cemented himself as a fixture in American folk music. What you may not know about Brett is that he did not set out to be a professional musician. It is a surprising revelation for someone who embodies the best of songwriting: singular storytelling, singability, and the unique capacity to hold up a mirror to our lives, our society, and the greater world.
Before all that, he was a painter — a skilled visual artist with a well-honed perspective and a style very much his own. Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that his lyrics have always seemed to bloom before one’s eyes, somehow both stark and colorful, intricately constructed and sweeping in their scope.
And before all that he was a young, avid outdoorsman who spent his childhood camping with his father in and around the Sierra Nevada Mountains, learning the intricacies of the natural world in his native California. Dennen’s greatest passion then and now has perhaps been the earth — and it was only as a camp counselor, in front of a roaring campfire with the wilderness unfolding in the background, that he fell in love with the idea of playing music. As an adult he has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, trekked in Nepal, and is a fierce advocate for environmental protection. He even wrote the new Smokey Bear theme song for Smokey’s 75th birthday.
In recent years, Brett Dennen has started to let the world in on his secrets. In 2017, he created the “Lift Series” and “Vacationer Series,” two annual tours wherein he combines shows in ski and beach towns with conservation initiatives and education in each locale. An avid skier and surfer as well as a conservationist, Dennen works with local organizations to spearhead beach clean-ups and educate young people to become climate stewards, driving awareness through his music and marrying just a few of his many sides in one effort to help drive positive change. He has also begun to sell some of the hundreds of paintings that accumulate in his California home; he has even let us all in on his artistic process through an Instagram video series called Paint and Play. He recently launched Dennen Goods Co., a lifestyle brand that aims to inspire.
Somewhere in all of that, there is still very much the music. Dennen’s next release, See The World, is due out July 23rd on Mick Music. Like the man, himself, the new album is potpourri of experiences and sometimes seeming contradictions. In the album opener and title track, Dennen sings of “diamond beaches” and “prism streams,” and reminds us that “You don’t have to be rich to get around / There are mansions growing out of the ground.” In the refrain, he urges “Days go by / Get out and see the world with your own eyes.”
In “Paul Newman Daytona Rolex,” we dive into Dennen’s signature witticisms. Over an insistent, light-hearted groove, he opens the song, “I never been accused of being fancy / I’m not stupid with my money honey, I could be stupid for free.” The song is ostensibly a love letter to a rare watch, one which Dennen does not, in fact, own. Really it is an irresistible, irreverent meditation on what we value as human beings. As Dennen puts it, “the things you can’t put a price on should be the things you value the most… to me it’s all about self worth and peace of mind.”
“Cayamo,” a song about the festival-on-a-cruise-ship of the same name is a musing on being overlooked as a musician. He sings, “I ain’t your rockabye / Or indie darling guy / Or the train wreck / That makes you feel better / ‘Bout your own life.” It is funny and biting and self-deprecating but, like all of Dennen’s work, it is infused with tremendous heart and an internal call for growth. He sings on, “Everyone has something / That no one else has / They should share it.”
Brett Dennen doesn’t take his time on his beloved earth for granted. He is intent on exploring the world and exploring himself in the process. Hence, See The World. The album also happens to come at what we hope will be a turning point for all of us — where we all hope to be doing just what Brett wants for us — seeing the world. Quite tangible in the title track and the album as a whole is Dennen’s newest and greatest pursuit — that of father to his young son, Van, for whom this song was written. But it is also easy to imagine him writing it for all of us, gently encouraging us to pick up the paint brush, jump in the ocean, and climb whatever mountain lies in front of us. Peppered in equal parts with shrewd quips and vulnerable admissions, the album is ultimately an exploration of life’s deepest meaning. And that is certainly emblematic of Brett Dennen, who spans wide as both an artist and a human being — sometimes biting and somehow always generous of spirit — his arms out to meet you where you are. See The World is, in short, reflective of a life well-explored, a life well-pursued, and, we can hope, a life well-lived.
Red Light Cameras are a show-stopping rock band out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Led by powerhouse vocalist Amanda Machon, this band packs a punch and always has the dance floor moving as fans belt out the lyrics, singing along with one of the best front people you will ever see. The songs are catchy, the hooks infectious, and the beats will have you bouncing. It’s all the pop you need with some serious garage rock edge to blow you away!
Lucinda Williams’ music has gotten her through her darkest days. It’s been that way since growing up amid family chaos in the Deep South, as she recounts in her candid new memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I told You. Over the past two years, it’s been the force driving her recovery from a debilitating stroke she suffered on November 17, 2020, at age 67. Her masterful, multi-Grammy-winning songwriting has never deserted her. To wit, her stunning, sixteenth studio album, Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart, brims over with some of the best work of her career. And though Williams can no longer play her beloved guitar – a constant companion since age 12 – her distinctive vocals sound better than ever.
“I’m singing my ass off,” she told Vanity Fair in February, following her first European tour since 2019. The love emanating from audiences and her musical family onstage and in the studio exemplify the healing power of music, says Williams. In 2020, she spent a week in intensive care, followed by a month in rehab before returning home. The blood clot on the right side of her brain impaired the left side of her body’s motor skills, forcing her to relearn some of the most basic of activities, like walking. In July 2021, she played her first gig, opening for Jason Isbell at Red Rocks. She began seated in a wheelchair, but soon she was upright. “Just the energy of the audiences being so welcoming and warm and the band playing so great and being so supportive gave me so much strength,” Williams relates. “I figured, ‘Hell, all I have to do is stand up there and sing. How hard can that be?”
Soon after touring with Isbell, she returned to the studio. “Writing had been part of my rehabilitation,” says Williams. “It didn’t occur to me to stop and not do anything.” During those long months working with physical therapists and regaining mobility and strength, Williams turned to notebooks of partial lyrics and jotted down some new ideas. She also began collaborating on songs with her husband, manager, and co-producer Tom Overby. The pair’s successful collaborations on several tracks from Williams’ critically acclaimed previous effort, Good Souls Better Angels (released in 2020 and nominated for two Grammy Awards) opened her up to cowriting – “it just expands things,” Williams says.
But post-stroke, she had to revise her own songwriting process, since she could no longer play guitar. “My process has always been to come up with some lyrics, then get the guitar and come up with a melody and some kind of structure,” Williams relates. “Once I get that, then I’d go back and edit the lyrics and add more. Pretty much like when you write and revise a story, except the guitar is added to it. It was very rare that I’d ever write all the lyrics completely without the guitar.”
As they worked on new songs, Williams and Overby enlisted New York singer-songwriterJesse Malin, whose 2019 album, Sunset Kids, they co-produced. Williams’ longtime roadmanager, Travis Stephens, a veteran guitarist in several Nashville bands, also jumped in to help. “Like Jesse, Travis is a singer and a songwriter, so he threw his bit in and that led to the co-writing of some songs,” says Williams. “I was comfortable writing with them. Jesse knows me pretty well now, so he was able to anticipate certain things when we worked together – the same with Tom and Travis. I could contribute the melody and all.”
Recording sessions began in November 2021 and – as Williams’ strength increased, continued into 2022. She and Overby rejoined Ray Kennedy, coproducer and engineer of her landmark Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998), with whom she reunited to cut Good Souls Better Angels. In addition to Williams’ longtime touring guitarist Stuart Mathis, joining the mix were drummer Steve Ferrone (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers), keyboardist Reese Wynans (the Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble vet who appeared on Essence), bassist Steve Mackey (Dolly Parton), and pedal steel/guitarist Doug Pettibone, who played with Williams earlier in her career. “Since I couldn’t teach the band the songs on guitar, I would sing it to give an idea of the feel and the vibe,” says Williams. “We’d do it a few times until we got the right groove. It was really challenging because I wasn’t playing guitar. But sometimes when things are challenging like that, good stuff can come out of it.”
And it certainly did! The band rocks out on the album’s jubilant opening track “Let’s Get the Band Back Together,” which features a gang of background singers, including Margo Price and Buddy Miller. Inspired by “that need for community after all the isolation of the pandemic,” Williams offers, the song is “about getting old friends together again who’d drifted apart.” Price also joins her on the bluesy protest “This Is Not My Town.”
The evocative “New York Comeback” also includes guest vocalists – Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa. A Lucinda Williams fan, Springsteen joined her onstage in London a few years back, and he and Scialfa had wanted to contribute to a Williams album for some time. With Wynans on B3 and the Pettibone-Mathis guitar attack, the musical setting perfectly matches the theme of “Comeback,” as well as on the catchy story-song “Rock N’ Roll Heart,” to which Springsteen and Scialfa also contributed vocals. Says Williams, “Having Bruce and Patti on these songs feels really great. It’s just so cool!”
Another musical hero of Williams, the late Tom Petty is the subject of the elegiac “Stolen Moments.” Williams, who’d toured with Petty in 1999, played his last Hollywood Bowl shows before his sudden death in October 2017. “Tom was a down to earth, sweet, loving person, and I miss his music but I miss him more,” she relates. “I wrote this song after he passed away. I was just heartbroken, and I’m still reeling.”
Another fallen musician, Bob Stinson, founding lead guitarist of the Replacements, inspired “Hum’s Liquor.” “Tom came up with that,” says Williams, of her husband, a Minneapolis native who lived near the liquor store. Overby witnessed from his window Stinson’s daily morning visits, which eventually cut the former Replacement’s life short. “It haunted me,” Overby relates, “and when I read Bob Mehr’s biography of the band and learned about his childhood abuse, it explained a lot.” Tommy Stinson added vocals to the track, which “was really emotional,” says Williams. “We told him it’s a tribute to his brother,” Overby adds, and “Tommy loved the song.” (The album is dedicated to Bob Stinson, “a true rock n roll heart.”)
Williams’ own rock n roll life is reflected in several of the album’s most moving ballads. The bittersweet “Last Call for the Truth” finds her asking for “one more taste of my lost youth,” while on “Jukebox,” her corner-bar Wurlitzer with “Patsy Cline and Muddy Waters” offers solace when she’s “going crazy with the sound of my own voice.” Angel Olsen contributes backing vocals on the latter, and vocalist Siobhan Maher Kennedy appears on the former. The haunting “Where the Song Will Find Me” is beautifully orchestrated with layers of violin and cello, played and arranged by Lawrence Rothman. And the ode to perseverance, “Never Gonna Fade Away,” is – like Williams’ live performances – further testimony to the redemptive power of music.
Through all the hardships Williams faced in 2020 – a destructive tornado damaging hernew home in Nashville, being sidelined by the pandemic, and then the catastrophic stroke – her music kept her going and continues to bring her more laurels. The past year has seen Williams honored by BMI for her songwriting, her induction into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame, and a Grammy Week tribute at the Troubadour, with her songs performed by a diversity of Americana artists. She duetted with Willie Nelson on Billy Joe Shaver’s “Live Forever,” which won a Grammy in February for Best Country Performance. On her birthday in January she performed at a sold-out show in Belfast, Ireland. “I was so glad I was there when I turned 70,” she relates. “The audience sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ Travis brought a birthday cake out onstage, and we took it on the bus and all had a piece of cake. Afterwards, I was so inspired I started writing a song about Northern Ireland.”
As she promises on the powerful last track of Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart–one of the best albums of her career–Lucinda Williams is “never gonna fade away.”
You don’t sell over two million copies of your debut album without some serious hard work, and Australian singer/songwriter Vance Joy has never been shy of major elbow grease. When Vance Joy first cut his teeth performing at open mic nights in Melbourne, he was feeding on a diet of artists like The Pogues and Paul Kelly. By 2013 he was ready to introduce the world to his ukulele-led charm ‘Riptide’, which became an instant global classic. The connection and journey his music was about to have on the world in years to come was an unexpected reward to the young songwriter.
Vance Joy (born James Keogh) consolidated on that first impression with further anthems ‘Mess is Mine’, ‘Georgia’ and ‘Fire and the Flood’. Those hits all found a home on the 2014’s debut ’dream your life away’. Vance Joy spent 2013 and 2014 playing clubs around the world before the album was released which then saw him surface everywhere from singing on the American Idol Season Final to being handpicked to open Taylor Swift’s 1989 World Tour, festivals from Lollapalooza in Chicago and South America, to Coachella, Splendour in the Grass and the AFL Grand Final. After his successful Sold Out 2016 ‘Fire and The Flood’ North American theatre run, and Australian performances at the Sydney Opera House, Margaret Court Arena and Riverstage he took a well-earned rest.
Come July 2017 – Vance Joy kicked off the campaign for his Sophomore album ‘Nation of Two’ with the lead single ‘Lay It On Me’ showing it was destined to be another successful album. The track was followed six months later with the album and follow up single ‘Saturday Sun’, a tune so good that he held up delivering Nation of Two to ensure it made the cut.
The success of ‘Nation of Two’ saw Vance Joy tour the world throughout 2018 on the ‘Nation of Two World Tour’ ranging in venues from Arena’s across Canada, Amphitheatres in North America including the famous Red Rocks, the first Latin American headline shows, theatres across Europe and Arena’s across Australia including two sold-out hometown shows at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena. November 2018, the end of the 83 date World Tour, Vance Joy had yet another offer to tour with one of the worlds biggest female artists. P!NK extended an offer for Vance Joy to join her European stadium run on her Beautiful Trauma World Tour. Summer 2019 saw Vance Joy and band join her biggest tour to date and enjoy an extensive run of Stadium shows across Europe before taking another well-earned break to work on album number three.
It’s no surprise that listeners all over the world connect to Vance Joys intimate yet anthemic songwriting. His lyrics take you on a journey that will reach out and hold you for a delicate moment. Bringing together a unique, charming mix of folk music with pop influences, these songs capture the familiar pulse of everyday experiences in a unique and celebratory manner.
Raashan Ahmad’s Love and Happiness Party is a Santa Fe institution, celebrating its 6th year as one of the city’s most beloved events. This soul, funk, and Motown get down is renowned for its vibrant energy and diverse crowd, drawing partygoers from every corner of the city. Held at various locations, the party is always packed with people of all backgrounds, coming together to dance to new and classic soul and funk originals and remixes.
At the helm of this musical journey is Raashan Ahmad, a resident DJ voted “Best DJ” multiple times, and resident DJ Ride, along with a lineup of guest DJs bringing their infectious passion for music to every set, creating a night of music, joy, love & happiness!
Nick Mulvey is an English musician, singer and songwriter. He played the hang as a founding member of the band Portico Quartet. In 2011 he started his career as a singer-songwriter releasing the EPs The Trellis (2012) and Fever to the Form (2013) and his studio album First Mind in 2014 which received a Mercury Music Prize nomination. His second album, Wake Up Now, was released on 8 September 2017.
“I’M THE MESSENGER,” MAVIS STAPLES SAYS ON THE EVE OF HER 80THBIRTHDAY. “THAT’S MY JOB—IT HAS BEEN FOR MY WHOLE LIFE—AND I CAN’T JUST GIVE UP WHILE THE STRUGGLE’S STILL ALIVE. WE’VE GOT MORE WORK TO DO, SO I’M GOING TO KEEP ON GETTING STRONGER AND KEEP ON DELIVERING MY MESSAGE EVERY SINGLE DAY.”
That message—a clarion call to love, to faith, to justice, to brotherhood, to joy—lies at the heart of ‘We Get By,’ Staples’ spectacular twelfth studio album and first full-length collaboration with multi-GRAMMY Award-winner Ben Harper. Backed by her longtime touring band, Staples breathes extraordinary life into Harper’s compositions on the record, delivering roof-raising performances with both a youthful vigor and a commanding maturity. The arrangements here are spare but weighty, matched by Harper’s suitably lean and thoughtful production, and Staples seizes the opportunity to showcase her remarkable and continued evolution as an artist, one still growing and exploring more than half a century into her storied career. ‘We Get By’ is undoubtedly a timely collection, arriving such as it does in the face of deep social divisions and heightened political tensions, but like everything Staples touches, it’s also larger than any particular moment, a timeless appeal to the better angels of our nature that’s universal in its reach and unwavering in its assurance of better things to come.
“When I first started reading the lyrics Ben wrote for me, I said to myself, ‘My God, he’s saying everything that needs to be said right now,’” Staples remembers. “But the songs were also true to my journey and the stories I’ve been singing all my life. There’s a spirituality and an honesty to Ben’s writing that took me back to church.”
Hailed by NPR as “one of America’s defining voices of freedom and peace,” Staples is the kind of once-in-a-generation artist whose impact on music and culture would be difficult to overstate. She’s both a Blues and a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer; a civil rights icon; a GRAMMY Award-winner; a chart-topping soul/gospel/R&B pioneer; a National Arts Awards Lifetime Achievement recipient; and a Kennedy Center honoree. She marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., performed at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, and sang in Barack Obama’s White House. She’s collaborated with everyone from Prince and Bob Dylan to Arcade Fire and Hozier, blown away countless festivalgoers from Newport Folk and Glastonbury to Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, performed with The Band at The Last Waltz, and graced the airwaves on Fallon, Colbert, Ellen, Austin City Limits, Jools Holland, the GRAMMYs, and more. At a time when most artists begin to wind down, Staples ramped things up, releasing a trio of critically acclaimed albums in her 70’s with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy that prompted Pitchfork to rave that “her voice has only gained texture and power over the years” and People to proclaim that she “provides the comfort of a higher power.” In between records with Tweedy, Staples teamed up with a slew of other younger artists—Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Nick Cave, Valerie June, tUnE-yArDs, and M. Ward among others—for ‘Livin’ On A High Note,’ an album The Boston Globe called “stunningly fresh and cutting edge” and which first introduced her to Harper.
“Ben wrote a song for that album called “Love and Trust,’” explains Staples. “When he said he that he wanted to produce me, I told him, ‘Well shucks, if you write another song like that, count me in.’” Harper did more than write just another song, instead penning an entire album of emotionally riveting and spiritually uplifting tracks that hit Staples directly in the heart. The tunes fit her like a glove—due in no small part to the decades Harper spent listening to Staples’s music, both with The Staple Singers and as a solo artist—and Staples found herself fighting back tears as she fell in love with the beauty and sincerity of those early stripped down demos.
“I come from a family of Mavis fans,” explains Harper, “so her music has been woven into the fabric of my life from the very start. When I got the call for this gig, it felt like my entire career, everything I’d ever written, had been pre-production for this.” Leading up to the recording sessions, Harper sat in the audience for several of Staples’ concerts, approaching her performances now as a student more than a fan. As brilliant as Staples’ studio output was over the years, Harper came to understand the stage as her home and her touring band as her family, and capturing as much of that spirit as possible seemed like the obvious approach for ‘We Get By.’
“There’s so much soul and Muscle Shoals in that band,” explains Harper. “They’ve got a specific chemistry that I recognized instantly. When you have a guitar player like Rick Holmstrom, a bass player like Jeff Turmes, a drummer like Stephen Hodges, and a vocalist like Donny Gerrard all supporting the voice of the century, why would you ever want to go outside of that foundation?”
With Harper at the helm, the band recorded everything live at Henson Studio in Hollywood, CA, capturing the kind of powerhouse energy and deep pocket grooves that have come to define Staples’ legendary concerts. While Harper had a distinct vision for the sound of the record, he purposely kept his demos to skeletal sketches, leaving space for Mavis and the band to interpret and give flight to his songs in the inimitable way that only they could.
“The more I’ve produced over the years, the more I’ve heightened my sensitivity to what different artists require,” reflects Harper. “Every artist and every album is different. With Mavis, sometimes the most important thing you can do is press record and just get the hell out of the way.”
The record opens with the stirring “Change,” which finds Staples proclaiming, “Say it loud say it clear / Gotta change around here” over a simmering, fuzzed-out guitar line. It’s a song focused as much internally as it is externally, and after one listen, it’s plain to see why Staples and Harper referred to the studio’s vocal booth as the “prayer room.”
Staples’ performance is hypnotic, holy even, restrained in its delivery but relentless in its urgency, and it lays the groundwork for an album that insists on joy and communal celebration without pulling any punches or sugarcoating any ugly truths. The funky “Anytime” looks fearlessly to the future, while the rousing “Brothers and Sisters” is a call for action in the face of injustice, and the gritty “Stronger” promises there’s no power in this world greater than our love for one another.
It’s impossible to listen to a voice like Staples’ without contemplating all she’s been through in her life—the album cover features a heartrending Gordon Parks photo that speaks to the casual cruelty of racial segregation in 1950’s Alabama—but it only serves to make her optimism and resilience that much more inspiring and contagious. There is darkness and doubt on the album to be sure (the spirit of Pops Staples informs the mournful “Heavy On My Mind,” which recognizes that some wounds never heal, while the poignant “Never Needed Anyone” stings with the pain of lingering regret) but it’s consistently overpowered by hope and conviction. “Been holding on too long to let go / Running too hard to slow down / Believing too deep to not have faith,” Staples confesses on the soulful “One More Change To Make.” In that sense, the album’s title is more than just an observation. When Staples and Harper join forces to sing “We Get By,” it’s a prayer, a promise, an invitation.
“I sing because I want to leave people feeling better than I found them,” Staples concludes. “I want them to walk away with a positive message in their hearts, feeling stronger than they felt before. I’m singing to myself for those same reasons, too.” Even the messenger needs a reminder every now and then.
Florida-born multidisciplinary artist Hayden Anhedonia serves as the architect behind the world of Ethel Cain. After years of releasing various projects at home in the panhandle while teaching herself to produce, she moved to Indiana and singlehandedly wrote, produced and mixed her EP Inbred from the basement of the old church she lived in. Inbred was released in 2021 receiving critical acclaim from Pitchfork, Paper Mag, TheFADER, Billboard, NYLON, Vice, The Line Of Best Fit, and Vanity Fair France.
Following over four years of meticulously constructing her debut album and the graphic visuals that accompanies it, Preacher’s Daughter, was released in May 2022 catching the eyes of The New York Times, Vogue, NPR, W Magazine, V Magazine, Givenchy, Miu Miu and Calvin Klein. Cain then embarked on her first ever headline tour playing sold out shows across the US, Canada and Europe, walking in New York & Paris Fashion week, and closing out the year opening for Florence + the Machine in Denver, which led to the wide release of their live duet performance of “Morning Elvis.”
Cain continued to tour around the world in 2023 including performances at Coachella, Outside Lands, Reading & Leeds, Roskilde, Rock en Seine, among many other festivals and headline shows in the US, Mexico, Australia, and Europe. Cain will play a very select number of special shows in 2024 while working on new music.
Elisapie was born and raised in Salluit, a small village in Nunavik (the northern region of Quebec). In this community, accessible only by plane, Elisapie was raised by an extended caring, yet slightly dysfunctional, adoptive family. Growing up there she lived through the loss of cousins who ended their lives, experienced young love, witnessed first hand the effects of colonialism, and danced the night away at the village’s community center.
As a teenager, Elisapie began performing on stage with her uncles, who were themselves members of a famous Inuit rock ’n’ roll band named Sugluk (also known as Salluit Band). During the same time, she worked at TNI, the village’s radio station which broadcast all over Nunavik, and managed to secure an interview with Metallica at age 15. She moved to Montreal as a bright and ambitious young woman to study and, ultimately, pursue a career in music. Since then, her work has always integrated Inuit themes and rock music. Today, Elisapie is an emblematic Canadian Inuk singer-songwriter.
Since winning her first Juno Award in 2005 with Taima, her band at the time, Elisapie’s body of work has been frequently praised. Her 2018 album The Ballad of the Runaway Girl was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, earned her numerous Félix Awards, and received a nomination at the Junos. Following this critically acclaimed album, Elisapie performed with the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal to the invitation of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, at the SummerStage Festival in New York City’s Central Park and in the NPR office for her own Tiny Desk Session, as well as in several venues and festivals locally and internationally.
On September 15th 2023, Elisapie released Inuktitut, her fourth solo record. On this album, the Inuk artist covers ten classic rock and pop songs ranging from the 1960’s to the 90’s translated into Inuktitut, her mother tongue. The result is an emotional, autobiographical soundtrack where each song is associated to a loved one or an intimate story.
Aside from her musical career, Elisapie is known for her acting roles in the TV series Motel Paradis and the experimental 2023 movie VFC. She has also graced the covers of magazines like Châtelaine and Elle Québec. A devoted activist, Elisapie created and produced the first Canada-wide broadcast TV show to celebrate the National Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Elisapie’s unconditional attachment to her territory and her language, Inuktitut, remains at the core of her creative journey. This millenary language embodies the harshness of the environment and the wild beauty of the Inuit territory. Always surrounded by the best musicians from the Montreal indie and folk scenes, Elisapie makes her culture resonate with finesse by mixing modernity and tradition.
