evalyn parry

Music:

Member Since: 7/18/2006
Band Website: evalynparry.com
Band Members: Brad Hart (percussion and vocals) & Suzie Vinnick (bass and vocal). Sometimes Ken Whiteley (piano, organ and guitar) and Anne Lindsay (fiddle and mandolin), and Jennifer Gillmor (bass and percussion). A couple times lately, Beth Washburn on cornet and tubette.
The new album SMALL THEATRES (Borealis, 2007) features the playing, singing and musical ideas of all of these people and also Richard Reed Parry (upright bass and other stuff), Joe Phillips (upright bass), Jason Fowler (guitar), Burke Caroll (pedal steel), Pietro Amato (french horn) and Sarah Neufeld (violin); Treasa Levasseur (accordian), Jenny Whiteley (washtub bass), and a choir of a whole pile of lovely lady singers (the Fearless Kitchen Choir)
Influences: The Watersons, The Beatles, The Friends of Fiddlers Green, Meryn Cadell, Simon and Garfunkle, Stan Rogers, Frankie Armstrong, Laurie Anderson, Gillian Welsh and David Rawlings, Joni Mitchell, Cyndi Lauper, m ward, The McGarrigles, Alix Olson, Jane Sibbery, Leonard Cohen, Veda Hille, Kim Barlow, Talking Heads, LM Montgomery, Dar Williams, Penny Lang, Maddy Prior, Steeleye Span, Greg Brown, Corin Raymond, Pete Seeger, Sharon Lois and Bram, Raffi, Fred Penner, Al Simons, Culture Club, Peggy Seeger, Margeret Atwood, Ian Robb, Holly Near, The Rheostatics, Ron Sexsmith, The Magnetic Fields, Le Tigre, John Millard and the Happy Day, Emmy Lou Harris, Saul Williams, Hilary Peach
Sounds Like: I don't know if this is true, but it's my favorite (and most hilarious) review of my work
"...They call it 'folk' over there, whatever that may mean, but it comes close to what was so popular in the sixties and seventies in the [Belgian] Lowlands: militant cabaret. In Canada and the States this causes a lot of mayhem. Because Parry, gifted with a sharp pen, constantly raises hell. We gather her cds are ritually burned in the Bible Belt and in the more fundamentalist parts of the American bush. She goes into the attack with wit, refined humour, verbally clever, without any restraint, but also without using fist clenching slogans, because shes always saying it with the right innuendo. Strong lyrics...She just tells it like it is"
MazzMusicas, Belgium

"Toronto songwriter, poet and ironic social commentator Parry has surpassed expectations with this expansive two-CD set, a collection of 16 originals produced by John Switzer that range from the haunting ("14," about the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal) to the quirky ("Please Stop Following Me," about an obsessive former lover), from the quaintly romantic ("The Stars") to the outright eerie ("Lady Margaret," a sinister reworking of the folk boom-era British Song Circle ballad) and wryly urbane ("Love In The Greater Toronto Area Takes Public Transportation"). Inventive instrumentation and imaginative arrangements enhance the theatrical spark of Parry's verbal wit, as she builds a complex series of vignettes occupied not just by her own thoughts and preoccupations but also by lively characters, apparently the remnants of real-life encounters, acting out their own perplexing parts. Adventurous stuff."
Greg Quill, THE TORONTO STAR
Record Label: Borealis Records
Type of Label: Indie