Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
"A sweet voice that fills the soul up, making your heart feel every word"
Tongue and Groove
- Jana Keller
Derrick
Laurell and her band definitely rocked The House Coffee Sanctuary. The
music was instantly accessible and everyone who was here was into the
vibe. People who were walking by on the street were drawn into our shop
and the music definitely won them over. And I can't say enough good
things about Laurell, her band and crew: they were one of the most
congenial and accommodating bands we've ever had play here. With
Laurell's songwriting ability and her skill in performing those songs
she is definitely someone we'd love to have back here at the first
chance we get.
- Derrick Mitchell, Manager
True Idol
North Shore Outlook
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Don Fiorvento
While Canadian Idol was in town this week testing out pop star wannabes, Laurell Hubick was pondering a future based on the truth. It is a value that factors into everything the Vancouver Idol winner does, and partly why she won’t be climbing aboard the Canadian Idol juggernaut a second time around. The 24-year-old admits last spring’s experience was a lot of fun, but she started losing interest when she advanced and was told she could no longer sing her own original music but rather had to chose from a prepared list. “My songs are a real representation of my sound,” Hubick shares in a friendly, down to earth, cutesy kind of way as we sit in The North Shore Outlook office Monday morning.
A sound that she is imparting in two realms — the first of which is a recently released worship CD “Into Your Love.” Hubick, who sings regularly at North Shore Alliance church, says she had been considering releasing a worship oriented CD and a mainstream CD. But as a student in the jazz program at Capilano College, funds have been limited and she had decided that the mainstream CD would have to wait a while. Then out of the blue — or for the faith inclined, out of divine intervention — a church member called North Shore Alliance’s young adults minister and told him that they would like to pay for Hubick to put out a worship CD. The funds were provided through the In Him Foundation, and Hubick never knew the identity of the donors until the CD release party in November. “This whole fall felt like ‘Laurell, get on the roller coaster, put your hands up and ride it.’ It just kind of happened. Even the way the CD process got going, it was out of my hands.” It is a CD that comes straight from the heart, but lyrically plays more on her love for Jesus Christ and how much she values that spiritual relationship.
Her mainstream, as of yet untitled CD, due for release this summer, derives a lot of its content from Hubick’s personal relationships. “I have one about [my husband] Jamie, obviously an acknowledgement that this relationship isn’t perfect.” The lyrics, she notes, go:“Stay by my side, let’s walk this walk, let’s ride this ride.” They’re honest songs, Hubick contends. The lyrics don’t pretend to arrive at a resolution. “It just shows I’m a human, that I don’t always have it together. I’m not perfect, I get broken and hurt. It’s never about me being perfect, but I have a hope that is.” And while some of the more critical in her Christian faith may accuse her of selling out by producing a mainstream CD, Hubick says she has no qualms with what she is doing. “I’m happy with fate taking its path and people hearing it who are meant to be hearing it,” she explains. The CDs are just a part of the spiritual and musical journey being unveiled before her. They are not, as of yet, part of some timeline she has laid out for success. “I still don’t necessarily have an arrival date or point in my mind. I just feel that I’m supposed to get better and I’m supposed to share it.” “Into Your Love” sold 452 copies at the CD release party and despite a lukewarm marketing effort on Hubick’s part thus far, is also moving well at Sign Of The Fish bookstore in Lower Lonsdale and via her website (www.laurell.ca).
The early numbers make her grin, but they aren’t as important to Hubick as the impact of her work and her spiritually-led desire to make a difference. “I think Christians are afraid of showing this imperfection and this pain because they see themselves as the example. But if we were to be a true example, I think honesty would be a key element.” An element she finds to be absent from the prepackaged pop images created just to sell music, like the kind Canadian Idol aspires to develop. “I just want to be known for who I am; as this person who’s not going to give you this image necessarily but the real deal,” Hubick shares. “I look at the influences on MuchMusic and I just think ‘Hey, if I have a chance to be a positive influence, then let’s do it.”
Hubick is counting on the belief that staying true to who she is will keep her from falling into the image trap: A trap that causes rising young artists to develop who they are based on the comments of critics: A trap that becomes so pervasive, it holds them emotionally captive. In her own way, even if she’s not consciously doing it, Hubick is imparting some Biblical wisdom: “The truth shall set you free.”
- North Shore Outlook
Discography
Albums
1998 Nectar
2003 Into Your Love
2004 The Fool In Me
"Great I AM" has national radio play on Commercial Christian Radio Stations.
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
It was a dim café on the North Shore, and a young girl was up on the tiny stage, spinning songs out for the crowd of hipsters and style kids that were filling the place on a sparkling Vancouver Friday night. At most of those café shows, the crowds more into their conversations and lattes and cheesecakes than the music, but that night the place was dead quiet, everyone just totally taken away by the girl up there with the gorgeous, fragile voice. The crowd that night knew that the girl on stage was something special, and now, five years later, Laurells music is still continuing to catch peoples breath in their throats.
Now 25, the B.C.-based singer-songwriter Laurell Hubick has become one of those rare artists who can draw from the mainstream, the sacred and the farther reaches of modern music to turn out work thats bright and unique, full of unforced honesty and free of artifice. With the release of The Fool In Me, and a heap of accolades for Into Your Love, an album of original spirituals, Laurell is one of Canadas brightest young talents, and the owner of one of its purest voices.
With formal training in Jazz Studies at North Vancouvers Capilano College, Laurell has been honing her skills as a songwriter since the age of six when impromptu fireplace performances for her family made it clear shed be going down the path of guitars and mics and the stage. Laurells credits include winning the North Vancouver Battle of the Bands as a solo act in 1998, being named the Vancouver Idol, and making the top 100 in the nation-wide singer search Canadian Idol in 2003. Shes received widespread media coverage on CTV, BCTV and VTV and in the Vancouver Sun, the North Shore News and the North Shore Outlook. Laurells talents have also earned her scholarships from Bostons renowned Berklee College of Music, and in 2004 she won Song of the Year at Canadas gospel Vibe Awards.
On The Fool In Me, Laurell shows herself to be a stylish, gifted musician and stakes out her space in the line of accomplished Canadian women singer-songwriters, a tradition that goes back to Joni Mitchell, passes through Sarah Maclachlan and Sarah Harmer, and culminates in Laurell and her peers. Hers is music that you feel at home in; there are breezy, curious melodies that roll along like a summer day in the valley hills, and a voice that is gentle, shining, occasionally heartbreaking, and always possessing an understated complexity that speaks to her jazz roots. Her new albums material is mostly autobiographical, without falling into the insipid self-importance that often affects lesser writers. I think my story is pretty unique, she says. I think my songs have a quirkiness about them, a playfulness, but I think as well that I try to be wise beyond my years. I want to be a positive role model, but I dont want to be preachy I just want my stuff to inspire people. As one critic has said, she draws you into a unique place. She projects her reflection on life experience and you cant help but be drawn into that experience. Its music about pasts and loves and wishes and frailties, its captivating in its optimism, and Laurell has that rare talent of making you feel like youre friends after the first listen. Its downright pretty music, and its lifting, even when it breaks your heart. Culminating in the song Cut Through, an entreaty to someone higher to cut through the numbness that so often affects us, The Fool In Me is full of promise of great things to come.
I want to earn the right to have my music heard, says Laurell. Shes doing it the right way, building a career on honest writing and vibrant singing, and her hybrid, jazz-inflected pop has definitely earned the right to be heard. In years to come, it will be no surprise to see Laurell as a staple of the Canadian music scene.
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