Mae Moore has many claims to fame.
As a recording artist, she was a major label success story, scoring nine top-40 hits, two Juno nominations and two SOCAN Awards for commercial radio airplay. As an indie artist, she has most recently garnered Canadian Folk Music Award nominations for Solo Artist of the Year and English Songwriter of the Year.
She continues to attract a sizable fan-base to both her live shows and recordings. And as a personality, Mae is Canada’s quintessential bohemian, a musician, painter, and longtime environmentalist who has lived all over Canada and who now makes her home on an organic farm and heritage orchard in British Columbia’s Gulf Islands.
All of these facets of Mae come together like never before on her new project, Folklore, a collection of songs inspired by Mae’s varied experiences living in different parts of the country. It was released in conjunction with a companion book featuring 30 of Mae’s acclaimed landscape paintings.
Folklore is a bountiful harvest, rich in color and texture and substance. The song Folklore explores the decisions one makes in life and how these decisions form one’s own folklore.
Love is Shattered is the heartbreaking acknowledgement that important friendships can indeed be lost. Tom Thomson’s Mandolin is born of the legend and mystery surrounding the life, the death and the music of famed artist Tom Thompson. The voice, the poetry, the music, is what we look for, what we need to form our own folklore.
Mae is renowned for her mature and sophisticated mixture of pop, folk and jazz music, and her sound has been captured on this recording by Joby Baker (Cowboy Junkies), who produced Alex Cuba’s Grammy-nominated and Latin Grammy-winning third album.
The new mix is an atmospheric and slightly percussive blend of jazzy folk-roots with a subtle European feel to it. The core lineup sees Marc Atkinson (The Bills, Marc Atkinson Trio) on guitar, Daniel Lapp on trumpet and flugelhorn, Rick May on bass, Scott Sheerin on soprano sax, Joby Baker on drums, bass, piano and strings and of course Mae with her signature guitar sound and dulcimer.
For details, see www.maemoore.com.
Mae Moore performs Aug. 16 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Filberg Park in Comox in the fourth of five Filberg Summer Concert Series presentations. Impossible Bird closes the series Aug. 23.
Tickets are sold at Blue Heron Books, Comox Videos N More, Bop City, Long and McQuade and Laughing Oyster. Children 12 and younger get in for free.
For more information, visit www.filberg.com.
— Filberg Heritage Lodge and Park