LOCATION HAS BEEN CHANGED TO THE WOLF"S DEN.

 

Start: 8 p.m.

Tickets:$30

Juno Award winners Melanie Doane and Lynn Miles plus critically acclaimed songwriters Catherine MacLellan and  local singer songwriter Karen Romanchuk will be playing a special unplugged performance, sharing stories and singing songs.

 

Melanie Doane — http://www.melaniedoane.com/

http://www.myspace.com/melaniedoane

Talented singer, remarkable songwriter, and gifted musician - all these and more are Melanie Doane, a Juno-Award winning gem originally from Halifax, NS, Canada. Her songs have been featured in such hit TV shows as Brothers and Sisters ("Good Gifts"), Buffy The Vampire Slayer ("I Can't Take My Eye's Off You"), and Dawson's Creek ("Bionic"), and her albums have spawned multiple top 40 hits in Canada including "Adam's Rib", "Still Desire You", "Waiting For The Tide", "Goliath" and "Happy Homemaker". Her brand new studio album A THOUSAND NIGHTS will be released on JULY 1, preceded by the digital release of the single "Songbird", a duet featuring vocals by Blue Rodeo front man Jim Cuddy, on JUNE 3.

Catherine  MacLellan —http://www.catherinemaclellan.com/

http://www.myspace.com/catherinemaclellan

It is Catherine MacLellan's voice that strikes you first. Pure and haunting, it caresses softly, insinuating itself into your heart, and just won't let go. Then, the subtle strengths of her deeply confessional, powerfully poetic songs emerge, revealing hidden layers with every listen. It is this combination that makes Church Bell Blues, MacLellan's sophomore album, a bona fide roots music gem. The disc was released independently on the East Coast last year, but Catherine's recent signing to True North Records will bring it much wider exposure. "It's great that this one is being given more life," says the P.E.I.-raised, now Halifax-based songstress. "I really respect Bernie [Finkelstein] and all the artists he's signed, so I feel very lucky."

MacLellan's immense vocal and songwriting talents are no secret to music lovers in the Maritimes. Her potential was first displayed in the group The New Drifts and then on her 2004 solo debut Dark Dream Midnight, but Church Bell Blues ups the ante considerably. It is a sparse and intimate record, one that gently fuses folk and country strains with graceful ease. The disc is clearly focused on Catherine's compelling voice and expressive acoustic guitar, and both are neatly framed by the empathetic production of longtime collaborator James Phillips. "He's a guy I pretty much started playing music with when I started trying to do this for a living, back in 2000," Catherine recalls. "We were musical partners in The New Drifts, and James helped on my first solo album. I think it is really important to be close to the people you're working with, and this is definitely a team effort." This dynamic duo arranged the songs together, with Phillips adding fluent electric guitar and background vocals.

The track "The Long Way Home" typifies their musical kinship, via vocal harmonies and the lovely interplay of electric and acoustic guitar. "I love the sound of the two instruments together, and James is such an amazing player," says Catherine. On Church Bell Blues, the pair were, in her phrase, going for "a living room kind of feel," a mission neatly accomplished here. Such a sonic setting allows the potent poeticism of MacLellan's lyrics to breathe and bloom. The opener, "Dreams Dissolve," tells of "a long year of trying to stay afloat," and it sets the tone for an album infused with a mood of wintry melancholy, but devoid of self-pity. These are songs written during a period of personal turmoil, as Catherine candidly acknowledges. "With this album I was just finding a way to communicate my sadness and my feeling that I couldn't necessarily express directly to people. I wrote most of these songs in the winter or the fall, when everything is dying and really quiet. It definitely represents that mood." The title tune sports a jaunty melody while addressing her anxiety over getting married with customary eloquence. "I'd just found out I was pregnant [with daughter Isabel] and I had all these thoughts; 'Are we doing the right thing, are we headed down the right path?" So I guess it seemed to be the whole theme of the album, or the theme of my life at that time."

 

Lynn Miles — http://www.lynnmilesmusic.com

 Born outside Montreal in Sweetsburg, Quebec, Lynn Miles grew up in a musical home. Her father played the harmonica and listened to his jazz collection while her mother was a lover of both opera and country music. Miles’ mother recalled once that she knew when Lynn had finally fallen asleep in her crib: Lynn stopped singing. During her elementary school years, Miles learned guitar, violin, flute and piano. She began performing in public at around the age of sixteen and when she was in her early twenties she studied with an opera singer to strengthen her voice and enrolled for a time at Carleton University in Ottawa where she studied classical music history and theory. Years later, Miles put this training to good use while serving as a voice teacher at the Ottawa Folklore Center. While at the center, she taught voice to many students including a then fourteen-year-old Alanis Morrisette. The lessons came just prior to the making of Morrisette’s first album. 

Though Miles had been writing her own songs since the age of 10, she didn’t end up recording any of her own material until 1987 when she cut 9 original compositions for a demo at Happyrock Studio in Ottawa. An avid reader and music-lover, those early recordings were inspired by the books she loved to read, and the music she listened to on the radio.
Miles continues to draw inspiration from music and literature to this day. On her latest album (Love Sweet Love) for example, the opening track, “Flames of Love,” was inspired by a long period of reading Sufi poetry. "I’m fascinated by the way the Sufis write about love," Miles says. "Their love is spiritual, and I reinterpreted it and wrote ‘Flames of Love,’ about jumping in the fire, Lynn Miles letting go and not being afraid and letting it get hot and not caring about what other people think. Just really going for it." The idea – and the song itself – is exhilarating and exciting, yet full of hidden corners and alleyways from where the joy can be blindsided without notice. But as Miles notes, "You don't learn from happiness."
 

Karen Romanchuk — http://www.myspace.com/karenromanchuk — is a local country singer-songwriter who has just been added to the bill for the Lethbridge show.
She has a new EP out called Shine and is becomng a prominent face  on the Lethbridge music scene