The interior's festival circuit has brought Dirty Grace north from their Vancouver Island home base. The theatrical folk trio will play a pair of Prince George shows this week - tonight at Art Space and Monday at a house concert - plus the popular Music On the Mountain festival in Fort St. James over the weekend.
They have already gotten acclimatized to the region by working the ArtsWells Festival, the Robson Valley Music Festival, and a set of small-venue gigs in Jasper in the leadup to this week's flurry of local activity.
The question is, though, are our audiences acclimatized to them? This is not your flowerchild folk group. They are a value-added performance experience. Canada's unofficial beat-poet laureate Shane Koyczan called the band "dirty in all the right places and graceful in all the right ways" after seeing them perform. They have been known to twirl fire, don masquerade masks, use instruments and stage props interchangeably, break into vocal beat-boxing, and put their very bodies into the show.
"Live performance was something we had to grow into, and not every band gets that," said Jesse Thom, one of the main members along with Betty Supple and Marley Daemon. "One weird coincidence for us is all three of us are clown school graduates, which isn't about red noses and floppy shoes, it is training in breaking that fourth wall and physically expressing ourselves directly to the audience expecting the audience to express back. It allows magical moments to occur because we don't know who is going to show up and how they will respond, but we know we are showing up to that commitment with the audience, so it ensures a different show every night and we are as much in the witness seat as the audience. It is demanding, and we crave that level of authenticity and unpredictability and challenge."
They inject that same extraordinary theatrical push into the concert whether it is inside a hall, on a street, in a home, or on a festival stage. It is different when they do their respective solo material - each of them is known for their personal projects as well - but when they join up as a unit there is an alchemy that occurs.
"I don't know if we have ever created a song from scratch together," Thom said. "It's better this way for the audience, I think, because we are all pretty prolific songwriters so there aren't any expectations about what gets included and what doesn't and nobody can take for granted what gets the green light. We bring about an equal number of songs to the mix, and once the other two members have made their modifications and had their input, then we call it a Dirty Grace song. The audience only gets the cream of the crop and we all contribute fairly equally so none of us bears the brunt of the creativity, and we are able to back each other up and collaborate through it all which keeps each of us humble and motivated."
Catch them tonight at Art Space starting at 8 p.m. For information on the house concert, check the Dirty Grace website.
