Toronto-based singer-songwriter Shawna Caspi is coming to the Critical Pop-up Gallary on March 23 to showcase her fourth album entitled Forest Fire and will be touring the province for a week after touring Florida.
“I haven’t been back to B.C. in a couple of years so I’m really excited to be back touring in the area and it’s my first time touring in Northern B.C.,” she said.
The person who booked her for a show in Vernon told Caspi that 100 Mile House was a good place to book a show and told her to get in touch with Momentum Productions, according to Caspi.
Her album, released in September 2017, is a collection of finger-picking guitar and poetry and takes its inspiration from devastating experiences and rising back up from it.
“It’s a little bit of a more darker album. It felt like a lot of the songs had the theme of coming out of the darkness and into the light, so there are some darker themes on the album, but there is also a little bit of hope and a little bit of light that runs through it,” she explains. “I thought a forest fire would be an appropriate metaphor.”
The artwork and theme were influenced by Caspi’s touring of British Columbia during the fire season. The artwork is actually painted by her.
“I toured B.C. during the fire season and just those images of the smoke and the sky in forest fire season inspired me to paint the album cover but I just really like the idea of something catastrophic and huge happening and new growth coming out of that,” she said.
Caspi is also a classical guitar trained-musician, learning it when she was a teenager before heading off to York University where she took lessons for a year with a flamenco guitar teacher.
“It’s a more complex kind of lyrical guitar accompaniment rather than the strumming you might expect from a folk singer,” she said of her music. “I use my fingernails to pick the strings of the guitar instead of a pick and hopefully make the sound more fuller, more rich and complex.”
Caspi has been a musician for ten years but has only been doing it full time for the past five years and as an independent musician has to book and promote shows herself.
“I really love being an entrepreneur and being my own boss when I’m on the road or just in general. As an independent musician, I think it’s really exciting and cool to make those decisions,” she said but those reasons are also the most challenging aspect of being a touring artist. “The biggest challenge is trying to do everything myself. That’s the other side of the coin of being an independent artist. I have to do all the booking and all the promotion and all the advancing of the shows and when I’m actually on the road; I have to do all the driving. It’s a real challenge to do all of those tasks and stay on top of everything.”
However, she said she loves the travelling, something she didn’t get to do much of before she was a travelling musician and has now been across all of Canada and has started to tour the United States.
Caspi is also a painter, focusing on the many landscapes she has witnessed while touring, which often also inspire her songs. She has sold over 100 pieces of art according to her website and she will be selling more art at the show.
The show time is at 8 p.m. and the entry fee is $8.