BC Junos grab bag
5 more interesting stories from this year's BC-based nominees
5 more interesting Juno stories this year
When I looked at all the Juno Award nominees in 2022 who are from BC – all genres, not just the jazz Junos we've covered so far – five more stories jumped out at me:
Mother Mother, ahead of their time (Group of the Year)
The Canadian equivalent of the Fleetwood Mac cranberry juice moment is the music of Mother Mother's rock album from 2008, O My Heart; its newfound popularity has come from TikTok since early 2020, coming in multiple waves.
The press has made hay out of this phenomenon, but the best article about it is from Rolling Stone, where Samantha Hissong writes that the band were ahead of their time, not merely plucked out of the past by teens a decade later.
Samantha Hissong
Ocie Elliott's trajectory (Breakthrough Group of the Year)
Ocie Elliott is a folk-pop duo; they started a European tour yesterday, and a month from now they'll end the tour back here, headlining the baseball field that hosts the popular Squamish Constellation Festival.
They've released a solid amount of music since 2018, but they dropped an EP then:
I heard them open for Roo Panes in October 2018 at the Biltmore, and I'm pretty sure we crossed paths at a few folk festivals the next summer. They are our province's Millennial answer to Gillian Welch & David Rawlings.
Two folk masterpieces I missed
Without further context, these are two of my favourite albums that I didn't review in 2021. First, there's The Fretless, a progressive folk group from Vancouver who influenced me and my best folkie friends. They're up for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year:
Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 26, 2023
And then there's John Reischman, up for Traditional Roots Album of the Year, with a highly successful Bandcamp release:
elfgerber
Alex Cuba, Grammy winner
In a free weekly article about the BC World Music Collective, I mentioned that Alex Cuba had won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Album. Well, he's up for Global Music Album of the Year here in Canada with his album Mendó:
He has to win, right?
If you believe as I do that latin pop will soon be the undisputed popular music of the world, you'll know this achievement is a big deal for a BC artist.
Reviewed before nomination: Desirée Dawson
My colleague Francis Arevalo pitched me this album in the summer of 2021:
Will Chernoff
That's how it started – here's how it's going:
- Desirée won an award for best music video at South by Southwest in Austin this year (with no tour!)
- She's in Toronto now to perform at JUNOfest
- And, of course, she got nominated for Adult Contemporary Album of the Year
You never know which artist in your own backyard will take off next, so covering them is always a treat.
