Award-winning Vancouver writer Ivan Coyote has teamed up with popular singer-songwriter Kate Reid on the indie circuit.
Their performances will combine Coyote’s moving and often hilarious adult storytelling with Reid’s poignant songs at the Sid Williams Theatre in Courtenay on Nov. 26.
Ivan Coyote (www.ivanecoyote.com) was born and raised in a large working class Irish Catholic family in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. An amazing and prolific performer as well as teacher, Ivan weaves humour and hard-hitting homocore reality into a series of interconnected stories that touch on topics such as gender identity, class, growing up gay in a small northern town and kitchen table family memoirs.
Coyote was 2011’s Carol Shields Writer-In-Residence at the University of Winnipeg and is an award-winning author of six collections of short stories, one novel, three CDs and four short films. She has toured extensively during the past 15 years and has become an audience favourite at storytelling, spoken word, poetry, writer's and music festivals from Anchorage to Amsterdam.
The audience then continues to be charmed by Vancouver-based Kate Reid (www.katereid.net), an artistic-coming-of age performer and one of Canada’s funniest, sharpest new talents and whip-smart wordsmiths.
With a dynamic stage presence, Reid leaves her audiences laughing, crying and pumping their fists in delighted, singalong solidarity.
Reid was born in Cambridge, Ont., and raised on a 200-acre hobby farm in nearby Ayr. The teenaged Reid learned guitar with an Eagles songbook and a harmonica while listening to Neil Young’s Heart of Gold.
Her early influences were Bob Dylan and John Denver, although it was Joni Mitchell who inspired her to sing. She cites some of her other influences from folk, country and rock genres alike: Ferron, Ani Difranco, Tracy Chapman, Indigo Girls, Ridley Bent, k.d. lang, Johnny Cash, Peter, Paul and Mary, Dixie Chicks, Allman Brothers, along with comediennes like Ellen DeGeneres and Margaret Cho.
“I grew up in a very dysfunctional family, and, while I won’t go into the gory details, there were some dark periods in my childhood that were reflected in some of my lyrics.”
What pulled her through was discovering that she could write and perform; sing and make people laugh.
Given the all-persuasions crowd drawn to her performances, Kate is doing it for the ladies and everyone else with a yen for her fiery performances and rare ability to slide from laugh-out-loud singalongs to intense tales about the price some pay in staying true to their own trailblazing sexual identities.
Reid was voted Favourite Canadian Folk Music Award, nominated for Best New/Emerging Artist of the Year in 2009 and was nominated by the Toronto Independent Music Awards for the Best Acoustic Album in 2010.
Reid continues to build her audience by touring across the country and in the U.S. She’ll be unapologetically flying the flag whether performing for large festival audiences, in clubs, house concerts or Pride events.
“I definitely like shaking up opinions and perceptions," she says. "And yet, it seems that my lyrics resonate with people from all walks of life, because the songs aren’t really about being queer, they are about being human.
"I also love seeing people howl, tap their feet and respond to what I am singing about, whether they get teary or they bust a gut laughing. That’s when I know I am doing my job right.”
Coyote and Reid will perform on Nov. 26 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are: regular $35, members $30 and students $20. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
For tickets, call 250-338-2430 or buy online at www.sidwilliamstheatre.com.
— Sid Williams Theatre