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 Christine Fellows |
Christine Fellows is feeling a bit celebratory these days. When the Sun caught up with her last week (driving with her mom to the first gig of her Shadow Songs tour in Ottawa), she pointed out it had been exactly a year since her last album, the much-lauded Paper Anniversary, was released.
"It's the paper anniversary for Paper Anniversary," she laughed. "Weird."
But Fellows, a well-known singer-songwriter from Winnipeg, has much more to be happy about these days.
For one, there's the new tour, which has her paired with multi-media artists Shary Boyle and Steve Bates and which will see the trio exploring the realm of "audio art," as she calls it.
Boyle, a onetime Winnipeg resident, contributes handmade animation via an old-school overhead projector, while Bates (former CKUW director and founder of Send + Receive: A Festival Of Sound) will unveil songs from his first solo CD.
"He was trying to do it before he turned 40," Fellows says of Bates. "He's squeaking in just under the wire."
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Of Boyle's work (three of her sculptures were recently acquired by the National Gallery of Canada), Fellows is effusive.
"In a way it's pretty simple technology, some live drawing, and some prepared," she explains. "But it's kind of like an extra narrative that goes under the lyrics."
An abbreviated version of the collaboration will be featured at this summer's Winnipeg Folk Festival, but Fellows hopes fans will still check out this Thursday's show at the West End Cultural Centre (her first gig to be presented by the venue, not paid for by the artist).
"I'm really thankful for that," says Fellows, who has also been working with drummer Jason Tait on a score for the Libby Hague film Close To Home and on a commissioned song cycle for choreographer Susan Burpee's new work, The Spinster's Almanac.
One more thing Fellows has to be thankful for?
The keen eye and generosity of a good Samaritan from "deepest Transcona," who returned her purse to her after she left it at the Winnipeg bus depot back in February.
The purse went missing while Fellows was impersonating a janitor, of all things, a ruse necessitated by the Cleaning the Toilets Of America tour she'd embarked on with cohort Carolyn Mark.
"Every bathroom you go into in America is totally disgusting," she laughs. "She (Mark) said we should do something about it."
Fellows, who expects to start working on a new album soon, plays Thursday at the West End, along with Boyle and Bates and with bandmates Tait, guitarist Jordy Walker and cellist/road manager Leanne Zacharias.