Canadian award winner with a new album in December
Possessed of a powerful, slightly gritty singing voice and an ear for catchy melodies and instantly-accessible roots-pop arrangements, Amanda won a 2014 Canadian Folk Music Award for Aboriginal Songwriter of the Year and was nominated for a Juno. In September 2016 she received another Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for Aboriginal Songwriter of the Year.
Rheaume has released four albums – Holding Patterns (2016), Keep a Fire (2013), Light of Another Day (2011) and Acoustic Christmas (2009).
She quickly earned a reputation around Ottawa as a generous community-oriented artist and leader who co-organized the Babes4Breasts concerts and recording projects; spearheaded Ottawa’s Bluebird North songwriter showcases; performed for the troops in Afghanistan three times; raised money for the families of military personnel, and sold 6500 copies of a Christmas EP in Ottawa alone to raise money for Boys and Girls Clubs of Ottawa.
Rheaume has delivered her unique and soulful blend of folk-country-pop tinged tracks to audiences around the world, including Canada (coast to coast), the USA, Europe, the UK, Faroe Islands, Central America and beyond. She has opened for artists such as Emmylou Harris, K’Naan, Lucinda Williams, Larkin Poe, Andrew Combs and Ani DiFranco.
Her increasing success stems from her soulful ability to translate personal stories into messages, evoke a feeling of positivity, communicate the strength of those before her, and connect with her listeners.
With the release of Holding Patterns (2016), Amanda continues a long history of raising money and advocating change through her work as an artist – and this time, it’s personal.
With Holding Patterns, Amanda Rheaume returns to the personal like never before.
Produced by Ottawa singer-songwriter Jim Bryson, the album’s stand-out tracks include ‘The Day the Mountain Fell’, a true story Amanda’s grandfather told her about a second cousin in the 1950s who became known in media reports as a “miracle child”. This after surviving a landslide near Mount Hays in northern British Columbia, the flow of rock having lifted her crib above the debris. ‘The Wolf of Time’ inspired by an image Amanda’s grandfather invoked to remind people to get on with their dreams, was written following the recent death from leukemia of Amanda’s close friend and musical collaborator Fraser Holmes, aged 28.
Many of the other songs are deeply personal and vulnerable reflections on the end of Amanda’s troubled long-term relationship and the unique struggles faced when two women – socialized to be kind, avoid conflict and solve problems by talking them out – stay in a relationship that was doomed from the start because nobody wants to be mean enough to end it, and everyone wants to believe they can work it out if they just try hard enough – ‘Time to Land’ is about repeating the same relationship patterns over and over again and expecting a different result – and about deciding to let those patterns go.
In contrast, ‘Blood from a Stone’ is Amanda’s “F-You song”, her version of ‘You Oughta Know’.
For the song ‘Red Dress’, Amanda enlisted support from Juno Humanitarian Award winner Chantal Kreviazuk for a powerful statement about the role of intergenerational trauma and oppression in the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).
Written in a single evening and set to a gorgeous video featuring dancer Aria Evans, the song is, in part, a reaction to those who blame the victims themselves for the murders and disappearances – without considering how perceived “high risk behaviors” such as sex work or substance abuse are the direct result of Canada’s decades-long attempt at cultural genocide.
With ‘Red Dress’, Amanda makes the personal political, reflecting on how each disappeared woman has both a story of family struggle and a world of potential that was taken away.
Amanda Rheaume Trio · UK & Ireland Tour · January-February 2017
with Anders Drerup (pedal steel, electric guitar and vocals) & Anna Ruddick (bass)
JANUARY
Wed 11 Launceston, Cornwall No. 8 Café
Thu 12 Colyford, Devon The Wheelwright Inn
Fri 13 Torquay Midwinter Festival
Sat 14 Lewes The Con Club
Sun 15 -Tues 17 N. Ireland & Ireland TBC
Sat 21 Cockermouth, Cumbria Wild Zucchini
Sun 22 Haile, Cumbria Haile Village Hall
Mon 23 Edinburgh Traverse Theatre
Fri 27 East Yorkshire House Concert
Sat 28 South Woodchester, nr. Stroud The Convent
Sun 29 Marnhull, Dorset Marnhull Village Hall
Mon 30 London Green Note
FEBRUARY
Fri 3 Bewdley, Worcs. St. George’s Hall
Sat 4 Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincs. Town Hall
