Event Details
Date: Friday, June 22, 2012
Start Time: 8:00 PM
Event Type: Special Events, Concerts
Last Updated: June 02, 2012
Views: 9
Steven Bowers and Norma MacDonaldwith Sarah BeattySteven BowersSteven Bowers was born on a November day in Baie Verte, Newfoundland. He was determined to come out feet first. He grew up in wintry Churchill Falls, Labrador. "Ten months of winter," he says. "It's where I learned to drink and fight.He had those feet firmly on the ground though, and looked for something more positive to grasp. Music was it. There was one band in town. He joined, and played New Year's Eve at the local curling club. "Weren't bad," he says now. "But we weren't good, either."He thought about being a writer, but Lord of the Rings had already been written. He thought about being a pilot, but it turns out you need math for that, and Steven was a non-starter where math was concerned. He thought about going to university for something, but hit the road instead, lit out to explore Canada on his own.In the meantime, his folks moved to New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, and that's the home Steven returned to when his travels came to their end. Eventually, he did go off to university. He studied Sociology at Dalhousie in Halifax. He held on to music though. He hosted a weekly open mic at the campus bar. Before long, he'd made a record, called In Theory. He sold three hundred copies in less than a week. "Mainly because of all the friends I had in residence," Bowers says. "It wasn't a very good album looking back, I didn't know how to sing or write songs at the time. Still it got some really good reviews and it was the start of what I do now. It was really an accident. I dropped out of university and decided to be a singer-songwriter. My mom made me go back last year and finish my last few credits though, so I did finish the degree."Norma MacDonaldNorma MacDonald is a creature of dichotomy; joy/sadness, city/town, past/future, art/science, dog/cat. Her music reflects the mixed feelings of one who is in a constant state of flux along these spectrums and the nostalgia felt for both extremes.The New Waterford, Nova Scotia native's third album Morning You Wake, produced by Halifax multi-instrumentalist Phil Sedore (Amelia Curran, Catherine MacLellan), is undoubtedly the songwriters most diverse collection of sounds and stories to date. From the starry-eyed waltz Bright as you Dare, to the Neko Case-ean Comeback Kid to the elegiac Springsteen flood-of-emotion of Swollen Sky, her sound mixes the sincerity and grit of car stereo old-country with the polish and sophistication of satellite radio North-Americana. This latest recording also finds MacDonald tackling her hometowns history; Blackhearts of the Company is based on the life of William Davis, a coal miner that was shot and killed by mining company police during a protest in 1925.