Lorne Warr
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Lorne Warr

Bowen Island, British Columbia, Canada | SELF

Bowen Island, British Columbia, Canada | SELF
Band Folk Singer/Songwriter

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

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"Lorne Warr brings everyone home to the island again"

The worst thing about loving the place where you live is having to leave it.
The best thing about leaving the place you love is coming home to it.
This “coming home” feeling is what Lorne Warr captures in his new song about Bowen Island, Home to the Island Again.
“Home, going home, To arms around me and a place of my own, Where the sound of stillness sinks into the bone, To Bowen Island again,” the chorus goes.
Warr’s song was chosen by the Spirit of Bowen committee as the winner of the Bowen Sings contest. The song will be part of the special Olympics celebrations planned for the island on February 9, which is Winterfest, and February 10, when the torch makes its run here.
“Bowen for me feels like a real community,” says Warr, who moved here because of love. “There’s a real sense of rootedness.”
And rootedness is what he seeks, having left his home province of Newfoundland many years ago.
Warr grew up in Lewisporte, on Newfoundland’s northeast shore. Like most Newfoundlanders, he comes from a community where music is simply part of the social fabric. “You had to supply your own entertainment,” he says. “If you were going to have a party and no one had a button accordion, no one would come – they wanted to dance. You have to tell your own stories and make your own music.”
While his parents didn’t play much, his uncles played guitar and his grandfather was a great fiddler. “My grandmother would always be off in her chair with her button accordion.”
With so much music all around him, it just seemed natural to play. “Everybody I know plays something and it’s no big deal,” he says.
Ironically, Warr didn’t get serious about music until he moved to British Columbia about 12 years ago. Before that, and since then, he was a freelancer with CBC radio, writing radio plays and programs.
One story was about buskers and it got him thinking about doing some busking himself. He got together with two friends and they formed a band called Streels. They’d only gotten together twice when one of the members was in the Penny Lane Club in Vancouver bragging about this new band. A person at the bar overheard him and mentioned that they needed a band for the next Saturday night. Streels was booked for its first gig.
“We had like five songs,” Warr laughs. “We had to come up with three sets in a week. We had only half that and some songs we played twice or three times.”
But the audience loved them and the Streels became a Vancouver fixture.
Their website, www.streels.com , says that “’streel' is a slovenly person in Newfie-speak, but there's nothing shabby about this east-coast-on-the-west-coast quartet of virtuoso musicians, who sing and play an eclectic repertoire of original, maritime, and Celtic tunes. Their arrangements are fresh and innovative; their harmonies are seamless and tight. This is Great Big Sea with side-clutching stage banter and infectious energy.”
Today, “music is pretty much what I do,” says Warr. He’s currently working on his first solo album. The Streels’ music is very Celtic based; as a solo performer he’s more inspired by musicians such as Gordon Lightfoot, Stan Rogers and Richard Thompson.
Life also changed for him when he met Genevieve McCorquodale at an Irish music session at the Wolf and Hound. McCorquodale lives on Bowen and owns Still Waters Massage.
He wanted to be with her on Bowen but the Howe Sound was a barrier. “The main obstacle was I was a working musician in Vancouver and there was no way to get back at night.”
Finally, they came upon a solution: a camper van. He sleeps in it on those nights when he plays long past the water taxi’s last run. “It’s worked out better than I thought,” he says.
It was McCorquodale who heard about the Bowen Sings competition and told him about it. He was in the process of writing songs for his solo album and turned his attention to coming up with the words to describe why Bowen had become such a special place to him. The song had to be something that everyone could sing and the contest had a deadline.
When Warr is writing a song, “the music comes first and the music usually comes a lot easier than the words. The words, for me, is like working the coal mines. You’re breaking rock. But then you get this little phrase and say, ‘I’ll keep it.’”
Helping him write a song about what makes Bowen so special is his appreciation of what makes a place a home. He never felt connected to people in Vancouver but “Bowen is one of those places that inspires that sense of place.” It doesn’t matter what the weather is like, or how your job is going, it’s a place you always want to come home to.
Back on the Island Again is posted on Lorne Warr’s myspace site: myspace.com/lornewarr. The Undercurrent also hopes to have an mp3 version on its website. - Bowen Island Undercurrent by Martha Perkins, Editor, Black Press


"Lorne Warr on Rick Cluff's CBC Morning Show"

Written by
Martha Perkins, Editor
Published
Febuary 11th , 2010, 5:00 pm

With pride in their hearts, people joined him (Murray Atherton) in singing O Canada before he turned the mike over to Lorne Warr. Warr's song, “Back to the Island Again”, was the winner of the Spirit of Bowen song contest. Over the past few weeks, Warr has been rehearsing the song with the community choir and BICS students. Earlier that morning - just as the torch started its run down the hill - CBC Radio morning host Rick Cluff interviewed Warr and Atherton by phone. Now, every listener in the lower mainland was catching Bowen's spirit too.
But finally the moment came for Warr to share the song with his fellow islanders. He stood on a picnic table, playing his guitar and singing into the microphone as the crowd joined in.
"It was fabulous," he told the Undercurrent. "The crowd was amazing and a lot of people were singing. It was lovely to see."
MP John Weston was on hand to share his salutations with the crowd. Like everyone else that morning, he was impressed by the phenomenal turn out (which had people wondering whether, if on a per capita basis, Bowen had the most Olympic spirit of any community in British Columbia.)
Murray Atherton quotes “the chills that we get when we hear Lorne Warr's chorus again is fabulous”
Excerpt from “Olympic Torch Lights up the Cove” - Bowen Island Undercurrent/Black Press


"Bowen has a new song to sing"

Bowen has a new song!

"Back to the Island Again" is an original composition by local singer/songwriter Lorne Warr.

Warr is the winner of the Bowen Sings competition sponsored by the Spirit of Bowen/Torch Relay Community Celebration committee, and recipient of the $750 honorarium.

Chair Murray Atherton said the competition was stiff. "We received nine great songs - toe-tapping music and warm hearted ballads that caught the spirit of this place we call home. It was a tough decision to chose just one song, as they were all so impressive."

However, Warr's song, with its upbeat tempo, in a style reminiscent of Gordon Lightfoot's finest tunes, ended up being the unanimous decision.

_"The chorus: Home, going home, To arms around me and a place of my own, Where the sound of stillness sinks into the bone, To Bowen Island again, as do the other lyrics, captures that emotional connection many of us have to the island," said Atherton.

Warr, originally from Newfoundland, is a musician who moved to Bowen recently, facilitated a song-writing contest at the Write on Bowen Festival and played at Bowfest this past summer. He is a member of the Streels, a band founded in 1998. While he has played music of a variety of genres and styles, he has returned to his Newfoundland and Celtic roots and the music he has loved since he was a child.

The Spirit Committee has entered an agreement with the song's author, and will distribute the words and music widely with the hope that the community learns to sing it and embrace it as their own. The plan is to perform it en masse during public celebrations and gatherings and specifically at the Torch Relay Community Celebration on February 10, 2010. That's the day the Official Olympic Torch visits Bowen Island. The local committee is planning a host of events and activities to coincide with the dates of the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

Funding for events has been provided in part by the Province of British Columbia.

The Spirit of Bowen/Torch Relay Community Celebration Committee is a group consisting of representatives from the Bowen Island Chamber of Commerce, the Bowen Island Municipality, the Bowen Island Arts Council, the Bowen Island Community School and other groups. For the past four years, they have been organizing community celebrations during the Spirit of BC Week, held in February.
- Bowen Island Undercurrent


"North by Northwest CBC Radio"

Lorne Warr also has a Celtic band "The Streels" Here is a review from Sheryl MacKay of CBC Radio:

"The first time I heard The Streels, I was struck by their energy, their great sound, their love of the music, and the fun they were having playing together. Their first CD, A Night on the Marge, shows how they can put a Streels stamp on some of the standards, and make new songs that sound like they've been sung for centuries. Lorne Warr's vocals on Wild Mountain Thyme are brilliant, always leading listeners to write in to ask who is singing. Plus their musical version of The Cremation of Sam McGee should be declared a Canadian classic. The Streels make me want to sing along and dance... and when they play, I don't want them to stop." - Sheryl MacKay - Host


Discography

Come Down to Paris due for release in the Spring of 2011

A Night on the Marge
released by Lorne Warr's band "The Streels" 2003

Photos

Bio

Lorne Warr was born and bred in Lewisporte, Newfoundland, and currently resides on Bowen Island, BC -- from one Rock to another. His intricate guitar playing and velvet baritone vocals-- coupled with his songwriting and gift of telling stories that travel from one side of Canada to the other, is what modern folk is all about

He grew up surrounded by Newfoundland music and folklore -- listening to his Granny's button accordion and his father's stories of ghost ships and pirates. Over the years he has explored many musical genres-- from rock, solo classical guitar & folk music, to obscure, esoteric jazz. It wasn't until a friend, lent him a mandolin and taught him a jig that his musical soul found its way back home--back to the Folk music he had loved as a child. Inspired by traditional music, and influenced by songwriter's like Gordon Lightfoot, Stan Rogers & Richard Thompson, Lorne began writing his own songs & writing arrangements for traditional music that were fresh and energetic.

Lorne has been a professional musician for more than a decade. Playing with his band The Streels he has performed at numerous festivals and venues around western Canada. Lorne wrote the new Bowen Island anthem "Back to the Island Again" and was chosen to perform it at the running of the Olympic Torch. He is active in the Celtic Folk music scene around the Vancouver area and beyond, singing and playing the guitar, banjo, mandolin, harmonica, bodhran and button accordion. His latest CD, Come Down to Paris, is due for release in the spring of 2011.

He continues to write, arrange, perform as a solo and with The Streels and to follow the most important part of the Newfoundland musical tradition -- having fun!

For more on Lorne Warr email lornewarr at gmail.com