Newfoundland's Sherry Ryan kicks off a tour tonight to launch her
latest album, called Wreckhouse. The singer-songwriter is a deceptively
strong lyricist, her songs uncluttered and spare, and she doesn't throw
around complexities and verbage. But the imagery is powerful and the
metaphors large. In Cool And Clear, she compares a relationship that has
ended to the difference between day and night, weather-wise: "Humid and
hazy, loving and lazy days are gone," the break-up like the night, cool
and clear. The answer to a Long Awaited Question (we're left to guess
what that question might be, but it's a relationship one she's trying to
avoid) is left untold, "drifting like a bottle at sea."
The
track Stop The Trains, where the album title comes from, is worth a
full write-up itself, one of those stories so good it can only be true,
and it is. Written with her father Jim, who was familiar with the tale,
it tells about the so-called wreckhouse winds in an area of
Newfoundland, so strong they could blow the train off the tracks. Only
one Lauchie MacDougall, known as the "human weathervane", knew when
those mean gusts were coming, and this song, set in the '50's, tells
what happens when a smart-arse from away decides Lauchie shouldn't be in
charge of stopping the trains. With it's book-chicka-boom country
rhythm, it joins the ranks of the classic train numbers.
Ryan's
music is that hard-to-classify sound that we reviewers tend to call
roots, and it actually fits well here. She has country leanings,
singer-songwriter melodies and a band that can rock, with some rich
organ and pop harmonies. Vocally she's homespun and real, singing like
she's telling you a story over a drink. Catch her over the next few days
in Ontario and Quebec at:
May 25, 6:30pm - Burdock - Toronto
May 26, 9pm- The Arlington - Bancroft
May 29, 9pm- Brasserie Beaubien - Montreal
May 31, 8pm- Artword Artbar - Hamilton
June 1, 7pm - House on Queen - Stratford
June 2, 9 pm - Windsor Beer Exchange - Windsor
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