>>PREVIEW
RACHELLE VAN ZANTEN
Wednesday, November 22
Engineered Air Theatre (Epcor)
Best known for her efforts with the rock quartet Painting Daisies, Rachelle van Zanten has come a long way from her bluegrass upbringing in the foothills of northern British Columbia. For over a decade, this Canadian slide guitarist and songwriter has been working out her soulful blues riffs and turning heads in the folk music industry. When the award-winning Painting Daisies dissolved in late 2005, van Zanten seized the opportunity to launch her solo career, recording her "fresh and rootsy" solo debut Back to Francois with producer Joby Baker. Baker has since assumed the role of bass player, accompanying van Zanten on an exhaustive tour that has thrust this up-and-coming artist into the international limelight.
Van Zanten has been on the road since May, touring throughout Europe and Canada. She’s been working her new material live in the cold countries of Scandinavia. In December she’ll be in England to work with Van Morrison’s producer.
"I’ll be recording in the studio with what I call my "British Trio," who are the musicians I’ve been playing with all through England, Holland, Germany and France," she says. They have turned out to be the perfect fit for my musical style and even though I have a great Canadian lineup as well, it gets very expensive to bring them overseas with me. I’m enjoying the luxury of having bands east of the Atlantic and West of the Atlantic, as I like to say."
Freed from the creative and financial restraints that bound her during her tenure with Painting Daisies, van Zanten is thankful that she is now finally able to support herself with a full-time musical career. Mixing up her self-taught slide guitar skills with bass-playing techniques such as plexing, hammer-ons and double hammer-ons and wearing her slide on her middle finger, Bonnie Raitt style, van Zanten produces an appealing resonance that merges elements of rock, country, folk and blues into one enchanting, Led Zeppelin-inspired sound.
"Right now the whole Americana vibe is really big in Europe and the audiences I’ve encountered thus far have been very excited about it, the shows have been packed with hungry music lovers," van Zanten says. "It’s so refreshing to perform for that kind of crowd after having slogged it out for years in North America. I guess it’s that typical equation where a Canadian artist has to make it elsewhere first to be appreciated at home. Just look at Feist. She made it big in France, and now she’s selling watches or men’s cologne or whatever to us over here. Personally, I’ve got my eye on a GAP underwear contract," van Zanten laughs.
As a musician’s musician, van Zanten confesses that she has her eyes on an even more valuable prize, endorsements that revolve around the instrument she loves so much. Yes, she’s more than willing to be picked up by a guitar or amp company, because as she puts it "they give you gear, and they fix it for you too!"
"It’s nice when people pay attention to my techniques and tones and the type of gear I prefer rather than focusing on the fact that I’m a female guitarist," says van Zanten. "People place too much emphasis on image when it comes to women in music. That’s the kind of message I try to convey to the girls who attend the annual Rocker Girl Camp I’m involved in. I like to stress the need for young females to encourage each other. I tell them that there’s no reason why they can’t play a wicked solo on that guitar they’ve got. It’s five days of sisterly love and going for it."
Shying away from comparisons to myriad women artists such as Lucinda Williams, Joni Mitchell, Shawn Colvin, Ellen McIlwaine, Suzanne Vega, Catie Curtis and Gillian Welch, van Zanten traces her roots to slide guitar master Lester Quitzau who inspired her and instructed her on how to develop her burgeoning talents as a solo performer.
"Lester Quitzau had an enormous impact on me. I saw him perform at a music festival in northern British Columbia, and from the moment he played his first note I knew that "this is what I want to do." I followed him for two years studying his slide guitar technique and he was very gracious about sharing tips and teaching me to play open D and G.
"Writing and playing slide just came naturally to me having grown up as a musician. Growing up in northern B.C. I lived on Lake Francois and was always surrounded by blue sky and water. My lyrics run like a river. For example on the song "Half Pint," I just let the words flow like liquid into an acoustic soundscape. The album also refers to the Prairies a lot on tracks such as "January" and "Rusty Boy," you can just hear the desolation and isolation of an Albertan winter. I get interesting reactions in Europe when I start out with a lyric about it being ‘45 below on the prairies.’ They’re looking at me like, ‘That’s not humanly possible.’" |
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