She looks like Alicia Keys and sounds like a cross between Molly Johnson and Ndidi Onokwulu. She generates lush pop-rock music compositions loaded in vocal muscle and fearless arrangements of guitar, keys, drums and brass (yes, brass). Layers fold into layers.
Her name is Jessica Speziale and her musical landscapes are as jagged and towering as the Rocky Mountains she crossed to get here. She came from Toronto but she is in Prince George tonight for an intimate concert at Nancy O's.
If you listen you can hear a winter wind blowing all that melody and harmony from way back in Speziale's earliest moments in life.
Her father is highly acclaimed Canadian multi-instrumentalist Jay Speziale who was part of Backstreet, the famed Toronto backing band to the stars (he played for greats like Ben E. King, Peter Noone, Del Shannon, The Drifters, The Platters, and many more). He replicated the party in the band The Meteors which had an array of stars sit in with them over the years like Steve Winwood, Rik Emmett, Jim Cuddy, Ed Robertson, even Gary Busey and Don Cherry. He also spent several years on the road with power rocker Sass Jordan.
"Music was just all around the house all the time," said Speziale.
"They taught me how to harmonize in the car, we would always have music going, always making up songs together. Dad and I wrote a lot together. My mom said absolutely no music school, zero music school. In high school I wasn't allowed to go to the arts school but went to another one that had really good academics but they also had a really good band program. Dad would say 'well, as long as you have a really good foundation... now let's go make a demo.' Then I went to business school and studied marketing at the University of Guelph. It's been kind of beneficial."
If her father's musical bands had any underlying theme to them it was a horn section. He is a member, these days, of Brass Transit, a tribute band to the brassy rock band Chicago.
Speziale was an alto-sax player growing up, but can also pick up the electric six-string with authority, and her voice packs a soul punch.
With all her lifelong music connections as close family friends, almost nothing she cooks in the composition kitchen can't be made real.
It also helps that her partner in life, Darnell Koch Toth, is also a dexterous musician, music engineer and video director. All these forces have made Speziale into a formidable force in the modern Toronto music scene.
She and Koch Toth love being able to strip the rich studio production down to small-scale concerts. They did it all the way across Canada the first time Speziale made her way to Prince George, and they did it on the train. She and Koch Toth won a position on Via Rail's travelling concert schedule, whereby musicians travel on the nation's passenger train service for discounted rates in exchange for three concerts per day for the other passengers.
"One night we chased the sunset as we headed west," Speziale said. "We were playing a show, all the windows were open, we were having champagne, and it was still sunset for two hours. It was amazing."
That was this past summer. She's been working on a song about that experience ever since.
She has put a full 12,000 geographic kilometres on her career this year, and the year isn't over. It isn't every Toronto soul-rocker who can say they've performed in northern British Columbia twice in the same calendar year, two seasons apart but she can. It helps that Koch Toth, deep-seeded Torontonian that he now is, was born and raised here and still has loads of family to visit over Christmas.
This time Speziale gets to share the westernmost family connections, and show people a little of what they're up to back in T.O.
Their concert is tonight at Nancy O's starting at 8:30 p.m. with local performer Genevieve Jade opening the event. Cover charge is $5.
