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Amanda Rheaume, Nice n Sleazy, Glasgow, 4 Sept

Amanda Rheaume

Keep A Fire
 
Label                   Self-Released

Release Date        August 18 2014
 
Ireland & UK Tour · August-September 2014

                     
Thurs 4  September,   Nice N Sleazy, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow
 
www.amandarheaume.com
 
Métis singer-songwriter Amanda Rheaume is a powerful vocalist with just a touch of grit and an instantly-accessible roots-pop-Americana sound. Her latest album Keep a Fire, is a varied and evocative collection of mostly story-songs about her ancestors that more than lives up to the tradition of epic family-of-origin albums.
 
Rheaume pays tribute to her Métis heritage with ‘Keep a Fire in the Rain’, a pulsing piece about her grandfather and Ojibway great grandmother who lived exactly halfway between the reserve and the mine site in God’s Lake, MB – because the mixed-race couple wasn’t welcome in either community.
 
On ‘A.G.B. Bannatyne’ she offers a sprightly ode to her great great great grandfather, a founding father of Manitoba and friend to Louis Riel, who hosted the province’s early legislative sessions in his home – and after whom Bannatyne Ave. in Winnipeg is named.
 
And on the driving ‘Not this Time’, Rheaume describes the harrowing voyage across Great Slave Lake taken by her paternal great grandparents, who were on route from Nelson House, MB to a Hudson Bay posting in Fort Norman, NWT. Her great grandmother and her six children travelled on a barge attached to a paddle wheeler, while her great grandfather helped shovel coal on the boat. When a storm hit, the barge, and the family, were set adrift in the elements for two days until, miraculously, they were reunited with the boat and Rheaume’s great grandfather. Rheaume’s great grandmother had a history of marine tragedies in her family – her own father died on a lake in a storm – so the song title is a toast to the fact that she escaped that fate.
 
Amanda’s songwriting style provides the perfect vehicle to get her narratives across, whether she’s playing solo with just her guitar, or there’s a full band behind her, the song is invariably the attraction.
 
Her life as a travelling musician has taken her down many roads. Performing over 160 shows a year, Amanda has delivered her unique blend of folk-country-pop tinged tracks to audiences around the world, including the USA, Europe, Faroe Islands, Central America and more.
 
Possessed of a powerful, slightly gritty and occasionally Alanis-like singing voice, along with an ear for catchy melodies and instantly-accessible roots-pop arrangements, Rheaume won $40,000 in Live 88.5’s 2008 Big Money Shot competition. She began releasing EPs in 2007, culminating in a fundraising Christmas collection for Boys and Girls Clubs of Ottawa that sold 6500 copies locally. For the past several years, she has organized Ottawa’s Bluebird North songwriter showcases and co-organized the Babes for Breasts concerts and recording projects to raise money for breast cancer. In addition, she’s performed for Canadian troops in Afghanistan three times and raised money on tour for the families of military personnel.
 
Rheaume was shortlisted in 2012 for the Council for the Arts in Ottawa’s RBC Emerging Artist Award. And in spring 2013, she sang the Canadian and US national anthems to a 19,000 crowd at the Ottawa Senators v. Pittsburgh Penguins game.
 
With Keep a Fire having garnered a prestigious Juno nomination in February for Aboriginal Album of the Year, Rheaume is already attracting an even grander array of accolades and opportunities.
 
AMANDA RHEAUME · IRELAND & UK TOUR · AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2014
with M.J. Dandeneau (upright bass, vocals) & Fraser Holmes* (guitars, vocals) *from August 26
                                 

www.amandarheaume.com

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