As winter fades, the touring season heats up for Crystal Shawanda
by Michael Erskine
NASHVILLE—Wiikwemkoong songbird Crystal Shawanda said that she is grateful to have been once again nominated for a JUNO Award in the blues category (following her win last year), even if she did not take the top award this time around.
“I was grateful to have been nominated,” she said. “I wish I could have been able to attend the awards this year, but I had too many commitments. It would have been too hard to reschedule everything.”
Ms. Shawanda said she was very pleased to see the JUNO for Blues Album of the Year go to Angelique Francis. “I performed with her at Women in Blues at Massey Hall,” she said. Ms. Francis’s album ‘Long River’ won the JUNO. “It was great to see a sister win,” she said, noting that despite the roots of the blues as a musical genre, there are few women of colour performing in the blues these days.
As for her own career, Ms. Shawanda said that “things are going great. We are just getting ready to hit the road.” Ms. Shawanda and her band have dates scheduled in Kentucky, Alabama, Florida and Arkansas to promote her seventh and newest album, ‘Midnight Blues.’ “The new album is out now with a vinyl edition due out April 23. “We will be heading up to Canada in May, stopping in British Columbia before heading to the East Coast,” she said.
The blues as a genre is very much alive and well across North America, notes Ms. Shawanda. “It is really building up a resurgence,” she said. “I think people are looking for something that is not so ‘pop’ and they are finding that in the blues.”
She said that she is finding more and more people in her audience that used to listen to country music but are now drifting into American roots and blues.
“It’s really exciting to be part of the wave coming up,” she said.
Ms. Shawanda was the first Indigenous women artist to be featured on the Billboard Country Music Charts and now she has found her blues album rising to number eight on the Blues Music Chart. “So now it’s ‘okay, what can we do next?’” she laughed. “That’s always been what it has been about.”
Although her schedule is pretty tight these days, Ms. Shawanda said that she and her partner Dewayne have always been looking ahead to their next thing. “I am working on a lullaby album,” she confirmed, “it will feature children’s songs,” she said. “I am hoping to have it translated into Anishinaabemowin.”
Ms. Shawanda said that she feels that “sometimes you have to step outside of your comfort zone if you are going to do amazing things.” She said that applies equally to whatever environment you are in. “Whether that is going to school or in business, you dream big, you accomplish big things, but then you come back home to share your accomplishments and knowledge to inspire others.”
Ms. Shawanda’s music can be found on her website, crystalshawanda.co, or on Apple, Amazon, Google, Soundcloud or wherever you download your music from.
