Monday, June 18, 2012

Artist: Rachel Kane, Album: All In A Dream, Song: Chasing Rainbows

"I remember the dancing boy, stars up and down his legs."  Rachel Kane is a singer songwriter from Winnipeg, Manitoba.  She was actually born and raised in New York.  By the young age of seventeen, she was living in Spanish Harlem and playing guitar in a Latin band.  She toured along the east coast until she decided to take off to Russia and finally Paris where she earned a degree in French.  From Paris she moved to Winnipeg to earn her teaching degree in languages and began teaching French folk music at the University of Saint Boniface.  She decided to record her debut album, Groundwire, with some well known Toronto based musicians, David Woodhead, and Al Cross (Big Sugar) in 1997.  I actually stumbled upon her music at a new artist night at Hugh's Room in Toronto sometime around 2006.  She performed on stage with one conga player.  I was completely blown away by her music and made sure I bought a CD from the merchandise table.  In hindsight, I should have bought all of her albums.  She keeps a very low profile and there is hardly anything written about her anywhere.  The album that I happened to buy that night was entitled, All In A Dream, released in 2001.  It featured local artists, Bazil Donovan (Blue Rodeo), Mia Sheard, Mitchell Lewis, Gary Craig and Richard Bell (Janis Joplin, Crowbar (see blog 8/19/10)).  The song, Chasing Rainbows, is a beautiful tune from this album.  Kane has such a relaxed vocal delivery and the arrangement is wonderful.  Definitely worth trying to find if you can.  Unfortunately, I can't really say what she might be up to these days.  I believe she released an album in 2006 following this release but she doesn't appear to have a website.  There were a couple of copies of the album, All In A Dream, trading on Amazon between $5 and $10 at the time of this blog.  Thanks for reading and enjoy!