New music from Kaley Bird
Singer returns with new songs, old dedication
Kaley Bird With: F&M When: Friday at 7:30 p.m. Where: Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre, 8426 Gateway Boulevard Tickets: $10 to $20, available at the door or from Yeglive.ca You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but Kaley Bird is something of a drill sergeant by nature.
At least when it comes to herself and her endeavours, whether they be writing and performing music, acting as a publicist for various organizations or putting together street festivals.
“Failure is not an option, even when it’s forced on you,” the Edmonton singer-songwriter jokingly says. Except that she’s not really joking so much as wryly acknowledging a tendency to be more than a little hard on herself when it comes to musical matters.
It’s a tendency that’s served her well in many respects. At the tender age of 20 she went from playing her first open mike to writing and recording her first album in the space of a year. Soon after, she was nailing down spots at both the Edmonton and Canmore folk fests, and hitting the road for extensive tours. Goal-oriented by nature, she expected that her career would proceed in logical steps if she worked hard enough.
“I have high expectations in everything,” she admits. “That’s probably why I like to work on big projects.”
Projects like SOS Fest, the two-day music festival in Old Strathcona in 2010 that culminated in part of Whyte Avenue being closed off for an outdoor show featuring Shout Out Out Out Out, among others. As successful as it was, Bird wasn’t asked back to head the 2011 edition, which was then reduced to a one-day event, and hasn’t been repeated since. Bird admits now that it rankled her to have a project she worked long and hard on taken away from her; she was even more crushed when the festival disappeared a year later.
“It was something that was great for the city, in my opinion,” says Bird, now 26. “I was young; it was very personal to me, and it took a lot out of me.”
Her disappointment at how her experience with SOS Fest turned out was only one of many reasons why Bird decided she needed to get away from Edmonton. For the last few years she’s been living in Calgary, working as a flight attendant for WestJet and taking stock of her vocation. Bird sightings were rare back home in Edmonton, and it seemed to many of us that she had decided to put aside the guitar and concentrate on other matters. Turns out we were wrong.
“It’s been a great job for me,” she assures. “Music has always been the main focus of my life, though, and always will be. I would come home in the evenings and sit and write, and not worry about the out come. That was the big difference,” she notes. “Not caring so much about how it would be received by others, but whether I was pleased by it. I just concentrated on the writing, and because of that I was able to come up with a record’s full of songs that I’m really proud of.”
Turns out that as much as she felt she needed to escape Edmonton, she couldn’t get away. Her new album, Don’t Say You’re Sorry is chock-full of references to her hometown, along with a few about her adopted city. Produced by Calgary’s Russell Broom (Jann Arden, Chixdiggit), the album is Bird looking back at her life over the last few years, from meditations on friends taken by cancer (Song For Matt) to city landmarks (High Level Bridge). For Bird, they’re the first batch of songs she’s written that actually have some serious intent behind them.
“They mean something,” she stresses. “Not that the songs on my first record didn’t, but they don’t go quite as deep. I’m proud of these songs because they’re a reflection of who I am and what I’ve gone through.”
“That’s the beauty of growing older,” she adds. “Maybe I’m more confident now, or maybe I’m just not worrying about expectations. Whether I sell a billion records or I sell a few it doesn’t matter as much. The important thing is that I get to play for people who like what I do. Maybe I’m an idealist now, or maybe it’s a survival mechanism.”
Her self-imposed exile is over; Bird is back in Edmonton again, and looking forward to participating once again in the cultural life of the city that both nurtured and knocked her down. There’ll be trials and tribulations in the future, as with all ambitious musicians, but she’ll be better able to handle them. Besides, there’s at least one person in her life that will give her perspective if she ever feels unfairly put upon.
“My dad says I don’t suffer enough,” she laughs. “He says I need to in order to write better music. Not that he doesn’t think my songs (are) good; he just thinks ‘Ah, you have it too easy, kid. If you want to be a great songwriter you need to go slum it for a bit.’ ” She laughs. “OK, Dad.”