Jacinda Beals

JACINDA BEALS grew up in the mining town of Labrador City. While her father toiled in the iron ore mine, her family lived in company housing -- a trailer with walls barely thick enough to keep out the winter’s frigid temperatures and metres of snow.
At age five, Jacinda’s sweet singing voice and smiling eyes warmed the hearts of family and friends in their living room. She started taking piano lessons at six, and was playing her father’s twelve-string guitar at 13. She then performed with her dad, Pierce, at summer folk festivals. “We took turns backing each other up with guitar - we’d do songs like ‘Fields of Athenry’,” she says. During high school, ‘Cin’ as she’s known to most, turned to more contemporary music and started a female, pop and metal cover group. She rocked out in battles of the bands playing Red Hot Chili Peppers’ songs, and covered The Indigo Girls with her friend Tina Cassell. She also wrote and performed music for the school’s theatre productions.
She said good-bye to Labrador City at 18 after finishing high school and headed for college in Newfoundland. She studied journalism at West Viking College in Stephenville and ended up recording and producing an album that included two of her original songs, while taking a sound technology course there. And it was there that she met another young musician, Susan Gale; Cin joined her rock band to sing backup and play rhythm guitar. The two girls left the province, and Cin struggled to make a living playing music in Prince Edward Island. She recorded a song with the Susan Gale Band for the compilation CD Eat This Two, showcased with the band at the ECMAs in 1997, and then returned to her roots, settling down in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
She found inspiration back home in Labrador and started seriously writing music and looking for ways to fund her career. She began performing with ECMA-winner Tunker Campbell at venues around Goose Bay and also found a musical confidant in local singer and drummer Mike Lethbridge. Together they started the Friday Night Jam Session at Lethbridge’s nightclub, Rumours, where Cin also performs with the country/rock band, Crossroads.
Cin’s wide musical range and polished songwriting skills are nicely packaged in her first album, Slip Into My Skin, produced by Tracy Holmes of Ottawa’s Distortion Studios. Cin says she feels the ten-song CD was a great musical accomplishment, “after I heard all the positive feedback”. She heard plenty of praise about her talents at Contact East 2003, and was nominated for two Music Industry Association of Newfoundland & Labrador awards shortly after. Songs from Slip Into My Skin were also released on two Newfoundland & Labrador Fueling the Fire compilation discs. Her music has been described as “funky folk with rock and roll attitude” and her lyrics are heartfelt and poetic, often telling of the people and places she loves. Her song Labrador to the Core has become somewhat of a local anthem, although Cin says she wasn't even sure about putting it on the album.
In May 2004 Cin played Newfoundland and Labrador’s Arts and Culture Centres on a Women and Song tour, with Jackie Sullivan and Christa Borden. The tour recieved great reviews from all over the province and Cin says it was great opportunity. “I really learned a lot from the other musicians on the tour..... Everyone was so professional and so down to earth. It was such an awesome experience”. But Cin says her biggest accomplishment to date is the new album she just released on November 12th, 2005 in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador. "Love, Cin" was recorded this past summer when Cin returned to Distortion Studios in Ottawa, On. The new album contains 9 of Cin's originals and "Dark Rain", a song by another Labrador singer/songwriter, Shirley Montague and partner,Terry Delaney. "Love, Cin" was produced by Tracy Holmes and is now available!!