Sometimes our connections from long ago echo back at us, like distant yawps circling a hoodoo in a canyon...Oh, sorry! I got a bit too poetic there for a moment. Maybe it's because the brilliant singer-songwriter Dana Sipos rolled back through Amarillo on her trip to Vancouver—and thankfully, she also brought her guitar. Hear the full interview and in-studio set on the link below, and find out more about her music here.
More about Dana Sipos: This acclaimed Canadian songwriter inhabited the far north before going nomad and her captivatingly nuanced songs are filled with a wild wind and a haunting surrealism, akin to the mysteries of the north.
Sipos toured extensively across north America, Europe and the UK in support of her 2015 album Roll Up the Night Sky, released on underground Nashville label Muddy Roots Records and nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award in the Pushing the Boundaries category, celebrating innovation in creating new folk sounds. She was invited to participate in the inaugural Songwriter residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and then teamed up with experimental Toronto producer Sandro Perri for her new album, featuring a cast of celebrated Canadian musicians including Mary Margaret O'Hara and Jesse Zubot.
The ten songs that make up Trick of the Light are informed by the pull of the tides, amateur palm readers and hurricane season, and travel down the well-worn hills of Appalachia and wilds of Tennessee. Sipos breathes new, albeit tenderly skewed, light into these familiar haunts, these sonic stories sewn together by gentle, tenuous threads. According to Exclaim!, "Trick of the Light is a luminous and compelling work indeed.”
Released in May 2018 on boutique Toronto-based label Roaring Girl Records, Trick of the Light received acclaim from CBC, The Bluegrass Situation, Penguin Eggs, Folk Roots Radio (UK) and No Depression. Dana was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award in the English Songwriter of the Year category and shortlisted for the Ontario Arts Council Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award and the Kerrville Folk Festival “New Folk” songwriter competition. Dana has facilitated songwriting workshops in remote communities in northern Canada and toured the new album through Canada, the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Select past performances include the National Arts Centre (Ottawa, ON), Naked Song Festival (Eindhoven, NL), Available Light Film Festival (Whitehorse, YT), Cygnet Folk Festival (Hobart, TAS), Toronto storytelling Festival (ON), Milk and Honey Festival (Queenstown, NZ), Philadelphia Folk Festival (PA), In the Dead of Winter (Halifax, NS), Atlin Festival of the Arts (BC). Trick of the Light was funded by FACTOR, Toronto Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.
