Imposter not

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This article was published 08/10/2024 (722 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘To listen to Georgia Harmer live is to be suffused with a renewed desire to live, to want to live life as intently and purely as she does, to see the world through her sensitive eyes,” is what Exclaim! Magazine wrote after the Toronto singer took the stage on the last weekend of September at Highlands, a musical festival set at the picturesque Camp Walden in Palmer Rapids, Ont.

If you’d only scanned the lineup — including top-tier Canadian talent such as Begonia, Fontine, Jonah Yano, Donovan Woods and American garage idol Kevin Morby — or read through Alisha Mughal’s glowing review of Harmer’s performance, you wouldn’t be aware that backing her up on guitar was the Rock Artist of the Year, according to the Western Canadian Music Awards.

“My mom somehow found out before I did,” says Kris Ulrich, a 32-year-old Lac Du Bonnet-raised Winnipegger who has been an integral player with dozens of Manitoban artists as a bandmate, producer or mixer. “Ooly” is currently working with Grant Davidson of Slow Leaves on an upcoming recording, his partner Cassidy Mann on her next release, and is a member — with Harmer, Field Guide’s Dylan MacDonald and Julian Psihogios of Wild Rivers — of the bicoastal indie group Dweller. He plays with Field Guide and Boy Golden. He’s also produced for rising Winnipeg artists such as Stellar, sundayclub and Taylor Jackson.

He’s busy.

Still, when he found out that he’d won, Ulrich was shocked.

“I had a bit of imposter syndrome,” he says. “I’m obviously flattered and so very appreciative, but I always feel there are people with a lot more going on.”

The announcement came during the awards ceremony Sept. 25 and 26 in Saskatoon.

Ulrich traces his beginnings as a musician and producer to high school, when his parents bought him a Cubase interface — essentially, a software-based mixer board — for the family computer. “I remember hooking the microphone up to a digital camera and recording the sound of the shutter opening.”

After high school, Ulrich enrolled in Brandon University’s vaunted jazz program, but his stay was short-lived. “I just knew my heart wasn’t in that,” he says. “Jazz wasn’t the music I was put on the earth to make, so I dropped out and tried to get gigs as a guitar player.”

He spent the bulk of his twenties playing with, and aspiring to the skill level of, “killers of the guitar world in Winnipeg” such as Ariel Posen, Joey Landreth and Darren Savard, soaking up those artists’ approaches to tone, harmony and structure.

Around 2013, Ulrich was about to head on a tour with Sol James and Brooke Wiley, which got him thinking, ‘Maybe I need a record.’ So he cut a five-song EP, Moonshine, at engineer JP Laurendeau’s home studio, backed up by the Bros. Landreth.

“That was the first time I heard a really great band playing my songs,” he says. “What a crazy feeling.”

For the next several years, Ulrich continued to tour steadily until a move to Toronto on New Year’s Day, 2020. MacDonald and Liam Duncan (Boy Golden) were already living there. “We were all kind of going for it,” he recalls.

Toronto didn’t last long, with Ulrich returning to Winnipeg in the spring when the pandemic struck. For the first time in his adult life, the only reason he had to be on the road was to do curbside pickup.

In September 2020, Ulrich released The Less I Know The Better, a song written in the thick of a post-breakup fog featuring players like clarinetist Sean Irvine, cellist Julian Bradford, percussionist Cody Iwasiuk and Sam Lynch on vocal harmonies. Duncan mixed, the group gelled and Ulrich — who played at least six instruments himself — continued with a similar, friend-centric format on his 2021 EP Pacific Central.

“I ended up quitting a lot of my touring gigs around 2021 and 2022,” he says, referring to steady work with country artists like Dallas Smith and Jess Moskaluke.

“I wanted to focus on the music of my friends and the people I really admired. I needed to make that shift.”

That culminated in the March 2023 release of Big in the USA, an Ulrich album and a showcase for the songwriter’s talent for allowing his bandmates to flourish. The dense, rich, inviting guitar that’s emerged within Field Guide’s most recent releases? Ulrich certainly had more than a passing influence, just as Mann’s digitally experiential lyricism blended into Ulrich’s; one released a song called Disappointing the Internet, the other, Friends on the Internet.

Ulrich has also produced for and played with the Brandon-born Fontine, who won the WCMA for Indigenous artist of the year.

“I don’t think anyone creates anything in a vacuum,” says Ulrich, who doubts he’d be able to be as productive without his friends pumping his tires. “Before Big in the USA, I made a few demos with my friends in Slow Spirit. I showed Dylan those songs and he said, “You have a record here.” Then I worked harder. I found myself not knowing how to take it over the finish line and then Liam stepped into the picture.”

“Having travelled across North America, I’ve seen that people have started to take notice of the incredible music coming out of here,” he says. “I think Winnipeg is a slow burn. Nobody is exploding overnight, but we’re all working hard.”

That’s reflected on the final track on Big in the USA. You Gotta Be Patient was written after Ulrich played in a tribute show for JJ Cale, the cult-favourite artist who only approached fame when Eric Clapton recorded his song After Midnight.

“The song was a message to myself that music is a long road,” he says.

“I felt at times a lot of doubt surrounding a career in the arts. Was I working toward something that wasn’t going to work out? I always feel like what we make is a chance to become the next version of ourselves. Music is an ageless thing. Jackson Browne wrote These Days when he was 16. Everybody finds their voice in a different time.”

See Ulrich play with Field Guide on Nov. 22 at soon-to-open South Osborne venue Sidestage. Tickets ($23.38) available at sidestagewpg.com.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com