Glenna Garramone
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Glenna Garramone

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada | SELF

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada | SELF
Band Folk Singer/Songwriter

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This band has not uploaded any videos

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"GLENNA DO GOOD"

Soundbites
Matthew Harrisson and John Sekerka



Glenna: good to be back in Ottawa

GLENNA DO GOOD
Self-dubbed "indie princess" Glenna Garramone talked over the phone from Montreal about her latest self-produced folk album and title track, I Am the Eye. Unabashedly, she began singing over the phone and I sat mesmerized by the magic of her lyrical honesty. To put it into perspective, and I'm not exaggerating, think Tori Amos, or Leonard Cohen. The authenticity shines through even via long-distance. At 22, Glenna has toured across North America, and self-produced three albums. Now she returns to the Ottawa where she grew up to play a show at Rasputin's Folk Café on Friday, July 16. Glenna's promising to deliver "experimental folk music and maybe some tap dancing depending upon the surface area and how precious the stage floor is."

Yes, she has a predilection for thrashing stages with her ferocious tap dancing and will share the stage that night with Athena Reich and Kyla Dowden. The show starts at 8 p.m., and tickets are $6 in advance or at the door. - Ottawa Xpress


"Glenna Garramone "Seasky-Starsong" Review"

One of the best things about following the career of any recording artist is listening to their musical growth—and you’ll find growth a-plenty on this, the fourth release from local singer-songwriter Glenna Garramone. While her earlier albums—Opus, Glenna Singing, i am the eye—were piano-heavy offerings (no surprise there, given that it’s her primary instrument), Seasky-Starsong finds Garramone at times stepping away from the keyboard for more full-band numbers featuring the likes of Kim Barlow’s drummer Jordy Walker, Outlaw Social bassist Oliver Reuben Swain, cellist Christina Zaenker (who adds a hauntingly aquatic level to the opening track, “Anemone”) and co-producers Wynn Gogol and Corwin Fox on a variety of instruments. There’s a number of stand-out tracks here that deserve radio play—notably the country-inflected “Maple Syrup” and the plucky rootsy twang of “Broken Bottle”—but while it may be Garramone’s haunting voice that initially pulls the listener in, it’s her songwriting skill that makes for repeat listenings. Definitely an artist who isn’t shy about showing her influences (note the decidedly Tori Amos/Veda Hille-esque “Empty Room”), I’ve long held that Garramone is a talent to watch and Seasky-Starsong only cements that opinion.

—John Threlfall - Monday Magazine


Discography

Opus- 1998
Singing- 2001
i am the eye EP- 2003
mouth wide open EP- 2005
Seasky-Starsong- 2008

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Bio

Glenna Garramone’s music is a reflection of her fascination with the edge. Inspired by the geography and spirit of the places she has lived, from Nunavut to Hawaii, she harmonizes the experimental with the classical, and the unexpected with the organic. Somewhere between Keith Jarrett and Joni Mitchell, Glenna Garramone’s unique approach to songwriting was recognized when she earned the Grand prize in the 2010 Artswells Songwriting Contest.

Glenna Garramone crafts “raw, emotional, and utterly captivating” songs (John Threlfall, Monday Magazine), using anything from piano to her tap shoes, or a shaker made from lentils in a film canister. And that voice. She performed regularly while obtaining her degree in Poetry at the University of Victoria, establishing a distinct style of lyrical integrity and delivery.

Glenna's fusion of talent, creativity and craft has won her invitations to a wide variety of venues, from the main stage of Victoria's Folk Fest, to the BC Festival of the Arts, and the Victoria Independent Music Awards. The summer of 2003 saw Glenna’s first cross-country journey as she traversed Canada on her Sloppy Seduction Tour. In 2004 she toured the West Coast of the United States by invitation, adding a musical and tap dancing element to the indie press touring circuit, The Perpetual Motion Roadshow. While laying the groundwork for the release of her studio debut, Glenna traversed Canada once again in the fall of 2007, this time traveling by train across the country.

Seasky-Starsong, Glenna Garramone's studio debut, charted at #2 in the Folk Charts on CFUV Radio in Victoria. On this album, her unmistakable voice pilots you through worldscapes populated by octopi, bull kelp, Saints, and a French seductress. In the way that Kim Barlow and Kim Beggs have captured the spirit of the Yukon in song, Glenna has embraced the West Coast in all of its imagery and philosophies. Seasky-Starsong offers the polish of a studio album with everything listeners have come to expect from Glenna Garramone: poetic lyrics, sophisticated arrangements, and a fearless musical vision.

Recorded in a solar-powered yurt on Molokai’i, Hawaii, Glenna Garramone’s newest album, Thank You Half Moon will be officially released in Spring 2013. When she’s not traveling, Glenna resides in Victoria, BC. She can also be found providing vocal harmonies to the Victoria-based band “Oliver Swain's Big Machine.” Glenna also pioneered and now co-produces and performs a tribute show to Leonard Cohen called “Tower of Song” along with Oliver Swain.

Seasoned by over ten years of working the indie circuit and cultivating her unique sound, her songs are the stuff the repeat button is made for: evocative lyrics, beauty, and catharsis.