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Mark Perry drops 13th album

Northwest features Perry’s signature story-telling style of life in rural B.C.
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Mark Perry performs at Midsummer Festival in Smithers in 2018. (Adrian Forsyth/Airless Photography)

BC singer-songwriter Mark Perry gets introspective and earthy on his 13th album, Northwest, released today (Oct. 29), on digital streaming platforms worldwide.

Northwest is very much a product of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a media release announcing the album.

“I was reading and rereading Emily Carr’s great little book, Klee Wyck, at the time,” he said. “COVID was settling in. Her writings about the demise of a way of life on the West Coast of BC seemed to correlate with the way the entire planet was going.” he said.

The album was written and recorded remotely across Canada with Perry sending songs back and forth from his Smithers home studio to his producer in the Yukon and musicians in Victoria, Toronto, Whitehorse and Telkwa.

As usual, Perry draws on his Northern B.C. surroundings, highlighting songs that offer a glimpse of, what is to many, an exotic and remote place. The songs offer a peek at our emotional connection to landscapes, our dependency on its resources, our periods of isolation, and our human resilience, especially when we experience loss, and how we find our way out of it.

“In his signature anecdotal style, Perry sings about real people and historic events,” the media release states. “‘Fish Boats is about the demise of a once-thriving west coast industry. ‘Golden Spruce’ is about the legendary story of Grant Hadwin, who, in a highly controversial act of protest, went missing after he felled a revered Sitka Spruce tree – Kiidk’yaas on Haida Gwaii – considered sacred by the Haida people. ‘Gumboot Girls’ celebrates the story of droves of young women who, in the 1970s, migrated away from urban settings and settled in rural areas across North America, many on the north coast of British Columbia. ‘Cold Road’ refers to the tragic bus crash of a Saskatchewan hockey team. In other songs such as ‘Rosary’ and ‘Who Am I?’ Perry gets more existential, exploring the human dilemma we experience when, what we perceive as ‘normal’, suddenly wavers.”

“We begin to question what ‘normal’ ever was,” Perry said. “Who Am I? is a big question many of us pack around… The COVID-19 pandemic tore down many of our perceptions. We humans stumbled and began to show cracks.”

Several northern B.C. tour dates had to be cancelled due to the most recent round of restrictions imposed by Northern Health due to a surge of COVID-19 cases in the North, but the singer-songwriter promises a northern B.C. tour hopefully sometime in early 2022.

In the meantime, Perry will be teaming up with guitarist Mark Thibeault and bassist Ian Olmstead for a number of dates in November in Vancouver, Calgary and Nanton, Alta.

Northwest is available online at Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music/iTunes, and all other global streaming services.

Northwest was produced by Jordy Walker in Whitehorse, Yukon, with accompaniment from musicians recording in their own studios across Canada — Tobin Frank in Victoria, Mip in Toronto, Andrea McColeman in Whitehorse, and Kiri Daust, Thibeault, Olmstead and Perry in Smithers.



editor@interior-news.com

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