For the past year, Dirty Grace has worked on their album and pined for Prince George. No kidding.
The southern B.C. band enjoyed their 2014 visit to this area so much, they are hauling their new parcel of music down the highway this coming week to show local audiences.
"We are playing the Jasper Folk Festival and we wanted to do a few shows around it, and P.G. was so hospitable for us last year. We couldn't believe the beautiful human welcome we got last time so we wanted to come back and visit you all again," said Betty Supple, who provides singing, mandolin, guitar and beat-boxing to the trio's blend of styles.
Marley Daemon adds her vocals, piano, accordion, and beat boxing while Jesse Thom adds his vocals, percussion and guitar to round out the group. They take turns tossing in pinches of upright bass, tenor sax and banjo as required by the song.
"We are hard to describe, I know," said Supple, after listing some of the ingredients in their sound. "The new album is quite folkie, with some other influences in there as well, like some indie rock undertones, with a bit of fusion in there."
It is perhaps easier to describe their sound by the moods the music evokes. The band has summed it up as "provocatively cheeky to the intimately introspective" and since they each add vocal depth to the songs, not a lone front-singer, the voice blend has been called "deep, moving, sassy and swooning three-part harmonies, swelling under contagious melodies."
Unlike a lot of bands, these three don't stick to the same address. In the past year they have been spread around the Gulf Islands, the Kootenays, sometimes Vancouver, currently all three are on Vancouver Island but not the same towns, and there is talk of some heading off to Montreal for an indefinite musical adventure once this tour is finished so, said Supple, "if you want to see us do a concert, it probably has to be now, I don't know when we will get together for another tour, we still have to talk about all that ourselves."
The last time they were through was holding down the calendar in between regional festivals last summer. They have now been on the bill for all the region's main events: ArtsWells in Wells, Robson Valley in Dunster and Music On the Mountain (now Music On the Meadow) in Fort St. James.
In 2014 they came packing an EP that has now grown into the full-length album called Coals And Crows.
"It was about two years in the making," said Supple.
"We intended, when we did the EP, to release a whole album then but technical realities were not as predictable as we would have liked, but the benefit of it was we could take our time to fully record the remaining songs well. You can't rush that kind of thing, we have discovered. The original ideas had to be surrendered and it allowed us to do an even better job."
The concert is on Sept. 14 at 7:30 at Art Space. Tickets are available at Books & Company.
"We really love the vibes of the people of Prince George so we're looking forward to seeing those people again and hopefully meeting a few more, too," said Supple.
