Jazz singer back home
Relocating was ‘cool experience’
Yes, it was a lengthy hibernation. But it’s over now. And jazz artist Beth Arrison is ready to happily forage for a larger audience.
The Alberta native will begin, in earnest, when she returns to town for what will be her first local show in a couple of years, Sunday night at the Ironwood. It marks her most significant gig in the past couple of years outside of a handful of coffee shops and small cafes on the West Coast where she now lives on an acreage just outside of Whistler.
“I really just took some time off performing in front of people, and now I’m getting back into it,” Arrison says, before being pressed for why.
“I don’t know, I guess I just had some downtime. I needed space. I had good adventures and I probably just wore myself out emotionally, so I took a break.”
That’s something of an abridged version of events that leaves out many of the key elements, most notably the fact that six years ago, at the age of 23, the vocalist released her debut, Modest Charms, a gorgeous album of smoky, contemporary jazz-pop that begged for bigger things to befall her.
That seemed a certainty when she plucked herself from her Sylvan Lake homestead and then plunked herself down in the bright lights of L.A.
“I was mostly going down there because I knew there was a large amount of people in a smaller area,” she says of her naivete at the time. “I had a friend that had moved down there and I literally just jumped on a plane — I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t watch TV so I didn’t really know anything about a lot of what happens. I was totally clueless down there, I would walk around in dangerous neighbourhoods. . . .
“But it’s a small town, too, once you really know it. And I met a lot of cool people that are involved in the arts.”
She also managed to record her sophomore effort, Chasing Butterflies, which she released in 2010. It’s another excellent, latenight event that makes beautiful use of a voice that sounds like vaporized honey, planting it in a garden of dreamy but slightly askew sonics.
But, rather than use the album as a calling card to further her career, Arrison, who describes herself as being “gun shy,” retreated to Alberta.
“It was a really cool experience but I got a bit intimidated by music biz in general,” she says. “So I ran back home and went into hibernation. I ran right back to the farm,” she says. “I was overwhelmed.”
Relocating to B.C., though, helped her rediscover that confidence and inspired her to return to music. The somewhat closed community is one she’s begun to navigate (“Is it welcoming?” she repeats when asked, and laughs), and she’s also begun to write again and is hoping to head back into the studio before the end of the year.
When she returns to this province, she’s hoping to show exactly how much confidence she now has, backed by a trio of hired talent, whom she’ll use to put on, what she’s promising will be, an entirely upbeat evening.
“During this time I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a musician, as a piano player. And now I’m really excited to play onstage because I just feel that much more capable,” she says.
“Artistically I think living on the West Coast has been really good for me. It opened some creativity that wasn’t there before. And I don’t know what it is — whether it’s the scenery or what it is — but I’ve been doing more art and dancing here and maybe that’s tapped into something. But musically it’s just been a great place.”