Since the last time Rae Spoon performed in Prince George, the acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter has gone on to also become a film star.
Spoon was the subject of the National Film Board documentary My Prairie Home, a biographical account of Spoon's troubled family during childhood, coming to terms with Spoon's transgendered reality, and making music for a living. A soundtrack album was also born of this project. Both film and album received award nominations and My Prairie Home was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, among others.
Spoon is also the author of the 2012 book First Spring Grass Fire which got a Lambda Literary Award nomination in the Transgender Fiction category and won an Honour of Distinction on the Dayne Ogilvie Prize (a Writers' Trust of Canada initiative) roster for LGBTQ writers.
Spoon's most recent book was released in 2014, a companion to the multimedia duet project done with Ivan Coyote they entitled Gender Failure.
The latest Rae Spoon music was released earlier this year. The album is entitled Armour.
"I wrote Armour in three different cities at my kitchen table over a couple of years," said Spoon, who was raised in Calgary but now calls Montreal home when not out on tour.
"I had a couple of really hard years after My Prairie Home came out. It left me with a lot of questions about how I was going to live with trauma after I was so open about it on screen. At the same time I fell in love and got married. The experience of choosing hope over despair really plays itself out in the lyrics."
Spoon has performed on the same bill with luminaries like Natalie Merchant, Earl Scruggs, Kinney Starr, The Be Good Tanyas, Ember Swift, Annabelle Chvostek and many more.
While in Prince George for an upcoming encore concert, Spoon will be joined by guest artist Plastik (the electronica alter-ego of German performer Alexandre Decoupigny), a frequent collaborator with Rae Spoon.
Also on stage that night will be Prince George singer-songwriter Naomi Kavka (of Power Duo, The Arbitrarys, Pocket Knife and the PGSO).
This concert event happens July 23 at the Knox United Church sanctuary. Tickets are $15 at the door, showtime is 7 p.m., and the live music is a presentation of CFUR Radio, the campus station at UNBC.
