A welcome relocation

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This article was published 01/02/2024 (955 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s musical welcome wagon has made Harper K. Smith feel like she’s home.

The singer-songwriter moved to the city from Vancouver in August and in the ensuing months, she has met new friends who have collaborated on songs, put the finishing touches on a new EP and connected her with a Manitoba agency that will present her Winnipeg debut.

Smith has teamed up with Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba (AANM) for a concert Feb. 9 at the Output, a second-floor performance space at the Artspace building at 100 Arthur St., which will serve as the official launch of Thirty Candles, her debut EP. Admission is free.

“Got up this morning and my CDs arrived in the mail, so it’s been a wild morning already, which is good,” Smith says during a phone interview.

“I first connected with AANM in the early summer last year, which is when they took me on for this show. I haven’t played any shows since moving to Manitoba, so I’m really looking forward to doing it and hope there will be lots more this year.”

Arts AccessAbility Network is a non-profit organization that supports disabled artists, including musicians, comedians, actors, dancers, writers and visual artists, and also strives for inclusion for its 150-member base.

It also sets up accessibility audits for Winnipeg’s concert venues and gallery spaces to help inform arts patrons who require elevators, special seating areas or other accommodations to attend shows and exhibitions.

Smith’s concert is one of 12 juried shows AANM plans for 2024, adding to past collaborations with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra on a 2012 performance by Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii; a 2015 concert by Manitoba blues singer Angel Calnek; and in 2021, a virtual a cappella performance by John Oross.

It also has hosted several exhibitions by visual artists since its inception in 2008.

Smith, 30, suffers from mental illness, symptoms of which were amplified by life in Vancouver, one of many cities where housing stability has become an economic threat to people’s quality of life.

“We like Winnipeg so much compared to Vancouver,” says Smith, who grew up in Nanaimo, B.C., and earned an arts degree from the city’s Vancouver Island University. “I dreamt about living in Vancouver since I was a teenager, but when I moved there it was horrible. Now I’m saying I can’t fathom going to Vancouver again.

“There’s so much more vibrancy in the music scene (here) and it’s so much easier to meet people.”

She describes some of her mental-health challenges in the song Not Sad, but Smith says world events that have affected her and her husband, Spenser, come into play in her material as well.

The melody’s bouncy tone strikes a sharp contrast to Not Sad’s lyrics: “I’m not sad like I used to be / I’m sadder / But not depressed / More like broke, stuck, scared, on edge,” Smith sings during the folk-pop tune.

“There’s a lot of grief in the songs. I talk a lot about illness, loss and death, at times. Living in Vancouver was a pretty rough time in terms of all the social issues and crises overlapping,” she says.

“I felt like when I was writing these songs I felt like I had no choice but to explore these topics. They were so much of my life. Aside from the external world pressing down on us, there was also a lot in my personal life, deaths of people close to me, loss of friends. A real lot there.”

The stage is a comfortable space and she’s found it is easier to describe her life in song than in conversation.

“I think it’s harder to talk about (feelings) with other people than it is to write about them,” she says. “It’s a little bit hard to find the right words and have it poetically sound good, but when I’m talking with them, with other people, it’s hard to explain and know that it makes sense, because they’re not experiencing it.”

Among the musical relationships Smith has forged since her Winnipeg arrival are a connection with Mutable Body, the stage name for city composer Alison Hain, who has created a remix for Not Sad, and Annaxis, the singer-songwriter who will open next Friday’s show.

“I really love her sound and overall vibe,” Smith says. “We’re probably going to do a cover together during my set.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall