Meaghan Smith Hits the 'Peg - Junos' Best New Artist in Town June 9

Ok, you're in for a treat as Meaghan Smith, Halifax's young, retro-styled crooner comes to crush it at at the West End Cultural Centre in Winnipeg, June 9.

The London, Ontario native snagged "best new artist" at the Junos in March and "pop album of the year" at the East Coast Music Awards back in April.

Smith has launched a North-American tour to showcase what the National Post called her "swingy, nostalgia-tinged, soft-pop," and promote her album The Crickets Orchestra. She will hit the 'Peg a week after her Provo, Utah gig and before a string of Canadian and U.S. dates.

Career as animator

But, and here's the cool part of Smith's journey to rising star status, no one in North America would have ever heard her great pipes had it not been for a change of direction a few years ago. You see, Smith was set for a career in animation - and a promising one at that. She credits her family's modest budget for her love of illustration and music.



"We couldn’t afford cable, so to avoid doing homework, I occupied myself with other activities, like drawing and singing. And with three (mostly fuzzy) TV channels to choose from, I ended up watching a lot of animated movies and old musicals. Some of my favorites were Calamity Jane, My Fair Lady, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."

You'll notice Smith's animation handiwork in some of her early videos, in her video biography, and by mousing over the banner on her website to conjure up what looks remarkably like a fluttering Twitter bird.

Eventually, Smith worked up the courage to put on "secret concerts for a few of my friends in the stairwell" of the animation building where she was studying. A sound engineer encouraged her to use the building's studios to record a demo and she began booking local gigs to gain confidence performing.

After graduating, Smith moved to Halifax, and worked for four years to raise $30,000 to cut a CD. She then spent two months on the streets of Toronto living on home-made vegetable soup and sleeping at Tim Horton's.

Finally, recognition

Smith's Omnichord-based remake of the Pixie's Here Comes Your Man for the soundtrack of the movie 500 Days of Summer got her the first big accolades and gave her some solid momentum.

She's still nowhere near a household name, but her recent awards are the foot in the door to North American consciousness. And with her clever writing, throwback rhythms, some stronger branding, and a few good tours, let's hope the Mormon girl with the velvet vocals can establish a big career for herself.

Who are Those Strange People in our Living Room? A Photo Essay Idea Looking for a Home

We bought our current home from a sweet, old, German couple who entertained their extended family in it for many years. It occurred to me that their photo albums were likely replete with hundreds of pictures of people having a grand old time in OUR house. You know, friendly-looking strangers posing by our basement fireplace, in our dining room, perhaps on our front steps; strange kids playing in our backyard--get the idea?

I can imagine sticky photo album pages (you know the ones) with aunts and uncles, children and grandkids, nieces, nephews, and family friends; their faces often smiling, sometimes sad, stressed perhaps. All these folks we never knew, lived out their times in what is now our home. But the evidence of that resides in disparate photo albums spread all over who knows where.

I've often thought "why couldn't a person assemble a few pictures of every clan, every family of owners that has ever inhabited a given house?" What if the project documented two or three generations of people enjoying the same physical space, but in different eras.

Take the old home I grew up in downtown before what was to be my Grade 6 move across town. There could be shots of a war-time bride and groom cuddling in sitting room listening to the radio, a sixties family watching Ed Sullivan in what had now become living room, a young college student off to study in Europe, a single nurse or a widow sitting in an easy chair talking to the boarders she took in to help pay the mortgage.

That home could have had five or six sets of owners, I have no idea. But each would have chronicled their lives in rooms that were familiar to every one of us. A kitchen that would have seen thousands of meals and conversations, light and serious. A living room that gave respite from pressures and worries, and provided opportunities for kids to show off to visitors. Stairs that were skipped over by kids, and loomed like mountains to the infirm. Every room would have seen its share of sheer joy, setbacks, boredom.

Well, I´ve never got around to doing the detective, perhaps even geneological, work it would take to assemble that kind photo essay. But in a wired world, with so many ways to connect, and so many tools to gather, present, and preserve images online, it's possible that someone has already done a project like this.

Sure would like to see one.