Ani Kyd just moved to Hixon.
That's right. The mainstay of the Vancouver punk-metal scene is now Prince George's back yard rock star.
For those unfamiliar with the Vancouver music scene, Kyd is a veteran singer-songwriter-guitar player and also got a lot of attention through the 1990s and early 2000s for her visual presentation.
She was a cosplayer before costume play was even a term. She has been featured in music videos and movies. She was a punk-fashion trend setter alongside friends like Bif Naked, her pals in Limblifter, close friend Paul Hyde, and members of Fear Factory with whom she's socialized and worked.
She was a regular member of campy metal band Thor and punk units like Spank Machine and Rumble Fish. Even though she wasn't in their bands, she was called in for appearances in music videos for The New Pornographers and Strapping Young Lad. She was also cast opposite punk icon Jello Biafra in the movie The Widower and through that experience the two became close friends and repeat collaborators. She, Biafra and Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen constantly bounce ideas off one another.
She was even turned into a comic book character. Her caricatured likeness is featured on Page 2 of the second issue of the Futurama/Simpsons graphic magazine series entitled Futurama Simpsons Infinitely Secret Crossover Crisis.
As time went on, Kyd became a life coach, became a mom, and settled on the blues as her genre of personal choice. She also settled on a life partner who happens - and she was totally OK with that - to reside in the sprawling northern metropolis of Hixon, the quaint village halfway between Quesnel and Prince George.
"I've been blown away by her talents, and I think she is going to be a real playa around here," said Sue Judge, the longtime artistic director of the Coldsnap Winter Music Festival.
Kyd is booked to open Coldsnap's blues showcase on Jan. 29 at the PG Playhouse, warming up the crowd for special guest performers Markus James and Jeff Lang.
Coming to northern B.C. is a breath of literal and figurative fresh air for Kyd. For years she was friends with the guy who eventually became her boyfriend, and the organic path that relationship took was paralleled by his choice of home and lifestyle: rural north.
"In Vancouver you date people after you check out their resume," she said. "But we dated and dated, it went on long-distance for a year, and I kept seeing how he lived, how happy it made him, and I was growing more and more tired of certain elements of Vancouver life, so he didn't twist my arm to move here. I really wanted to."
The first thing she did after settling into the quiet and sparsely populated Hixon neighbourhood was orient herself to the music scenes in Quesnel and Prince George. She did a couple of introductory concerts at Nancy O's and Cafe Voltaire and she impressed the audience as deeply as the audience impressed her. Word spread like snowdrifts in a blizzard that there was this new Kyd in town and she arrived loaded with artistic ammo.
The nature of the punk and metal scenes in Vancouver - likewise other niche genres like jazz, blues, world beat, etc. - is the high level of collaboration that goes on. Kyd is steeped in the urge to work with others. She is excited by what she sees on the local stage. That's why she readily agreed to conduct a workshop for Coldsnap, a valuable outreach service the festival provides over and above the performance, but it takes a willing artist.
"I'm totally, totally in for workshops," Kyd said. "For me it really is about helping people, the way I've been helped and the way my peers have been helped by those who went before them. I have heard some musicians and artists in general complain about the level of support they get from the public, when you don't sell a million records or a million books or paintings. But how many times are you supportive, as an artist? How often do you buy tickets to a show, or buy a piece of art by a local original artist, buy your friends' CDs?
"Obviously you can't afford to always do that, but you have to be able to say you've done your fair share. Yes, of course, we deserve to be supported by the public, but you have to earn it by being supportive yourself, especially when it's supporting the other artists you have around you."
Support for musicians and other artists is especially important, in society, because those are the people telling the community's story, and talking to future generations - even this generation in terms they perhaps hadn't thought of - about who we are and what we represent as a group of people living in this place and this time. Punk, country, opera, graffiti, film, fine sculpture - it all says something representative."
