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Excellent new singer-songwriter from Canada via Sweden.
There’s some pretty remarkable rootsy music coming out of Sweden right about now, from country-rock (Willy Clay Band) to rockabilly and rock’n’roll (Eva Eastwood), to sensitive singer-songwriters (Monika Nordli), and Canadian Suzanne Michelle certainly fits in well with her artistically thrilling brethren.
It was purely by chance that she met multi-instrumentalist Anders Kronlund whilst walking in the Pyrenees with her parents. That was in 2002. A year later Suzanne moved to Sweden to set up home with Anders in the small town of Östersund. Working together, they have come up with this stunning album, all songs are penned by Suzanne, mainly before she moved to Sweden and all exploring her family and roots back home in Canada. A highly distinctive vocalist, her voice moves effortlessly through a soulful vibe that has echoes of Bobby Gentry to a blues tinge, and even a slight country twang.
Anders provides most of the acoustic instrumentation, including various guitars and harmony vocals, assisted by Fredrik Mårtensson (acoustic steel guitar, lap steel, mandolin, resophonic guitar), Per Wiklander (hammond organ), Lars Ericsson (double bass), Jan Strömstedt (harmonium), not to mention a string and horn section.
Some of these songs take the listener back to the Canada where Suzanne grew up such as Olmstead and a house that holds memories good and bad, Mama’s all right a powerful about her mother and grandfather. Fields of misery is more of a folk song with some great guitar backing up Suzanne’s impassioned vocals. Suzanne and Anders sound like they were born to sing Berry pie and the easy, almost jazzy vibe will make you swear you can smell the pie-a-baking. A superb, eclectic album that is highly recommended.
AC
Maverick Country Music Magazine - Maverick Country Music Magazine
Discography
Radio airplay from our album ''My Roots'':
Berry Pie, Mama's all right, Towards the light and One size fits all.
Photos
Bio
In August of 2002, I left Canada to embark upon a pilgrimage called El Camino de Santiago. It is an ancient road traveled by people from around the world, walking towards the same destination: the city of Santiago de Compostela. There are many roads from which to start but they all ultimately lead to one main road in the north of Spain. I had decided to start walking from Le Puy en Velay in France, a distance of about 1700 km to Santiago. Meanwhile as fate would have it, near the end of September of that same year (2002), Anders had also made his way to Spain to walk 750 km from the Pyrenees to Santiago. He had planned to do the pilgrimage alone for 6 weeks, but things on this road dont always work out the way we foresee them. He only walked one day by himself and the rest is about us. On September 27th, after having walked 900 km already, our paths crossed in a small village called Larasoa..a. I had walked pretty fast that day, and was sure that I'd be the first one to arrive at the refuge. When I got there, I saw him, in his blue fisherman hat, sitting on a set of stairs. It was the beginning of our relationship and of a musical partnership. For weeks after that, we had hoped to find a guitar along the way, but who carries one on a pilgrimage right? Well one day, in a little refuge run by the British, we found a guitar: it was old, it was too small, it was perfect. We sang all night, it was wonderful. We ended up walking the rest of the pilgrimage together. The good bye was heart breaking. I sat on a bench in tears while Anders sang Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" in my ear. A week later, he called me to say that he was coming to Canada... We started writing songs right away, the words and melodies just poured out of us like good wine. I wrote my stories and he played them on his magical guitars. In August of 2003, I made the decision to move to Sweden and Ive been there ever since. We were married here in Sweden on august 12th 2006.
On october 4th 2006 we released our first record called “My Roots” here in Scandinavia and on Itunes Europe. We wrote the entire album together. Anders wrote the melodies and I wrote the lyrics. The record is about my roots, my family and my past. It is my personal testimony.
We are currently recording our second album (13 tracks) which will hopefully be released some time next year.
** We are also looking for a record label outside of Sweden to license our album and make it possible for our music to reach other parts of the world.
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