Joni's got a new compilation of songs, Songs of a Prarie Girl -- songs about Canada and her childhood, including Urge for Going. Reminded me immediately of another prarie girl - Connie Kaldor -- who has has long written and sung to and about the Canadian Prarie. One of These Days and Moonlight Grocery are among my most favorite albums.
Take a listen to a lesser-known Canadian woman from the Prarie!
San Francisco Chronicle interview with Joni Mitchell about her retirement from music:
On this afternoon, she talks about how she developed her style, but the most essential quality of a songwriter, she suggests, may be mental toughness. Like Bob Dylan and fellow Canadian Neil Young, Mitchell has fallen in and out of favor over the years. She has been revered, imitated -- and ridiculed for being esoteric and out of touch.Ultimately, she was not tough enough. "Everything in my later career, with few exceptions, has been compared unfavorably to my early work," she says, matter-of-factly. "I've done 16 records hearing people say, 'You're not as good as you used to be. Finally, I said, 'OK, I agree with you.' "
Mitchell announced she was leaving the music business in 2002 and hasn't looked back. "My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb," she says, explaining her decision. "Most of the art created in this particular culture is shallow and shocking, and I can't create music for this social climate."
She pauses. In conversation, she is outspoken, funny, self-deprecating and stimulating. But she doesn't find anything funny about the topic at hand. "There's not much room for subtleties today. It's the shallow, flashy heart that grabs the attention; chase scenes, atrocities."
She doesn't have the same opinion of her songs that us fans do. About Both Sides Now she says:
Even after all this time, she doesn't understand all the excitement over the song. "I thought 'Both Sides Now' was a failure, so what do I know?" she says, smiling. "I was not a good judge of my early material; none of it sounded all that good to me. That's why I wanted to keep moving forward."
Certainly the songwriter is going to have a different perspective on a song, but that sounds like she is trying to distance herself from her past, her early years, the years that everyone compares her current songs to. I understand that. Mitchell has long bemoaned fans and critics wanting her to "paint A Starry Night again, man" (from Miles of Aisles). On that live album she went into a long story about artists repeating themselves. Certainly her affinity is more for painters than songwriters.
Not a big po boy fan, but I sat up and listened to this relatively new Canadian trio's serving of acoustic blues they write themselves. Sound is authentic and radical at the same time.
Their first cd was released last year and they plan another one for this summer.
What is in that Northern water, I want to know?
More fresh singer/songwriters from Canada: Amy Campbell
I hear influences of Joni Mitchell and Ani DiFranco -- but like so many new singers I've heard lately, very much her own woman, her own songs, singing new melodies and lyrics for the new century in the same old world.
Listen to songs at New Music Canada.
Buy her CD Architecture: Live at the Opera House on CD Baby.
Read a resounding review at the Estrogen Zone of her music and CD.
I unearthed two treasures, Canadian treasures:
New Canadian Music posts full length songs. Both new and old Canadian singer/songwriters.
and
RootsMusicCanada does the same for folk, Celtic, Latin American, African, and just about every genre of roots music (except blues! I wonder what my friend Johnny V thinks about that!).
Aren't you curious what Canadians do with bluegrass and "Latin American" music? Doesn't a singer named A Girl Named Sue singing A Homicidal Love Song intrigue you?
Leonard Cohen is 70? How is this possible? Okay, so I'm not a hardcore Leonard Cohen fan, but I know Suzanne (and played it badly on the guitar!) and remember that photo of him and Joni (the Canadian folk singers!) at a music festival in the 1960s. There's certainly plenty on the web to taste his music, lyrics, poetry, art. Go and eat.