She's never performed in Prince George before, despite a life on the road, so T.Nile is coming twice in two weeks to help restore balance.
The progressive-folk artist was born and raised on Galiano Island, the daughter of a Polish refugee displaced by the Second World War. He was trained as a sociologist but nothing made him happier than making music, and he took it to international levels yet never left the grassroots. He was known as Dan The Man The One Man Band (not to be confused with Dan Duguay, the Calgary performer called Dan The One Man Band who has performed here in P.G. several times in recent years).
He was one of the first to operate under the term "busker" and because he had dual American-Canadian citizenship, he patrolled the west coast from San Francisco to Alaska. His main corner was Granville Island, one of the very first to do so. He was far more than a guitar player with his case open for change, though. His title packed a punch. He had bells, strings, gongs, chimes, whistles and wood dangling seemingly dangling from skyhooks. He took his job of fun very seriously.
T.Nile was along for the ride and in on the show. When she was 11, as they strolled the streets of Hollywood, she and dad spotted a store that sold clown gear. In a flash T.Nile was outfitted in oversize shoes, a rainbow wig, a balloon animal how-to book and other paraphernalia. That night on Venice Beach, she made her debut as a performer and it's still the main zing in her vitality string.
"He was obsessed with the Delta blues in the '60s, especially one songwriter, Jesse Fuller, from the '40s or '50s, this old guy from the south who was a one-man-band," said T.Nile, explaining her own origins by way of her father's. "My dad went and found him. He was working in a shoe shining shop in Oakland, Calif. selling his LPs out of the store. Somehow, my dad and a few other people convinced Jesse Fuller to get back out on the road, touring the college circuit and he got a whole second wave of popularity. My dad was sometimes his tour manager. And sometimes he'd get my dad to play his rig so he could hear for himself what it sounded like, and that left a big impression on my dad."
Dan The Man The One Man Band was always a kooky, comical show to see. He rigged a wheelchair to handle all the props and dangling soundmakers he used.
On the road trips he drove an RV he outfitted with a fold-out stage for his performances, while his family lived backstage. It might have looked eccentric and hardscrabble, but T.Nile said her father was intellectually sharp, scientifically invested in the music and the show, and made a solid living making people happy.
Her mother played violin with her father, sometimes. Her sister was there for all the same experiences. Yet something connected between father and T.Nile and she ate up the whole performance meal he was serving. She has several packages of her own original songs out in the world now, the most recent being At My Table, The Cabin Song EP and the latest is entitled Tingle & Spark.
The past work has won her a strong fan base and honours at the Canadian Folk Music Awards.
It was firmly in the folk genre, with lots of banjo, steel guitar and resophonic guitar in the melody.
This time, as the title hints, it has taken an evolutionary turn into electronica. It's still folk in many structural ways, but there is some extra buzz and throb to it.
It's almost a senseless question for someone of her upbringing but the curiosity around her two Prince George gigs is how can you represent electronica music in someone's house? Both these shows are part of the HomeRoutes caravan of travelling musicians willing to perform and be billeted in private homes along the way.
"I have a tambourine on one foot, and I have a porchboard which is an analogue rhythm instrument rigged with a really resonant mic that makes a sound almost like a heartbeat. I play either banjo or guitar, I play harmonica, and of course I sing. I have pedals that I can go to for different effects, but I don't use that a lot.
"I have a full sound. On some tours I have a keyboard set-up but not on this tour. I'm a songwriter at the bottom of everything I do. It all comes down to elemental music making. And if it's going to sound just like the record, you might as well just buy the record."
Apart from translating her material into smaller spaces, the other upside to her home-show tour is intimacy.
"You can talk to absolutely everybody. I'm not background music for people getting drunk. As a solo performer in a bar, to fight against so much other stimuli, that's hard, and there's no point trying to interact in that sort of setting. In a house concert, it's all about the stories. It's very old school. This is what troubadours used to do, and the age of parlour music. You can look people in the eye and tell a spontaneous story, and you're not with a crowd, you're with friends who are really attentive and really want to be there for you."
There are two opportunities to see T.Nile in the coming days. Her first show is on Friday and the second is April 15.
To buy tickets, go to the HomeRoutes website, click the Attend heading, then click in the T.Nile heading.
The ticket purchase form will emerge, and once done, the home location is revealed.
