Maverick Blue Bones review page 74 April 2011
Maverick review (5 star) for Kim Beggs April 2011

Fervor Coulee - roots music opinion
Country Standard Time

With the added bonus of the rough-hewn vocals of Gurf Morlix on the country classic ‘Just Someone I Used To Know’ the record has much in the way of genuine quality. While staying with golden oldies ‘I’m Thinking Tonight Of Blue Eyes’ likewise gains a welcome run out. Canadian (Quebec-born) Beggs may be no Jessi Colter or for that matter, Mother Maybelle Carter but her plaintive vocals lend a warm gentle charm to this folk country classic. To the degree magical may be a better choice of word on describing Beggs’ performance.

Beggs version of Dylan’s ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ in comparison to the likes of Linda Ronstadt’s vibrant version sounds somewhat lame (but different and has in time become more enjoyable). Shame since the song has a fantastic verve to it. Beggs, nevertheless does push all the correct buttons on the likes of the Kimmie Rhodes-ish ‘Maiden Heart’ where Morlix again lends some wonderful assistance on harmony vocals as regulars John Raham (drums), Keith Lowe (double bass) and producer Steve Dawson (electric guitar, percussion, mandotar, pump organ and melodica) strut their stuff. While the Rhodes likeness is tenuous that with joyous Nashville recording act, Stacey Earle is more striking on the cheerful and a little bit quirky ‘Can’t Drive Slow Yodel’ and then on elevating to a level not to be ignored ‘Bring Out Your Bones’ hits plumb centre! Draped in organ (Chris Gestrin) and the harmony vocals of Laurie Lewis it skips along in a fine fashion. It is the kind of song Morlix could just as easily have written and could well wish he had! Beggs not only produces a warm charm on her folk country fare but on one or two occasions she vies towards a western feel, as on the fiddle (Moritz Behm), organ, and electric guitar warmed ‘Firewater Bones’. And though her cover of Patty Griffin’s ‘Trapeze’ is good (and it is a splendid song) it runs a poor second to her own composition ‘Summertime Lonesome Blues’. That on utilising a raw edged rockabilly rhythm she scuffs up the dirt as (in song) she hits the ‘bottle’ blues in fabulous fashion; where you have star players Dawson and Gestrin pick some influential stuff, plus it contains a spot of banjo from the girl herself. While ‘Longest Dream’ features the sympathetic tones of Natalie Edelson and her music and ability as a songwriter draw comparisons to Mary Gauthier. Only here there is a considerably more melodious feel to go with the pain obtained by the latter — and this is no bad thing!
- Maurice Hope

Scanned from the pages of R2 magazine
(formerly Rock 'n' Reel)
Jan Feb Vol 2 Issue 25

Scanned from the pages of
Vintage Guitar Magazine

Scanned from the pages of
Sing Out! Magazine

The Moose Mountains were alive with the sounds of music recently as Moose Mountain Pottery, to celebrate its latest kiln opening, hosted a musical show featuring some wonderful Canadian folk music performers.

Held on location at the pottery workshop, a crowd of more than 30 visitors came together to peruse the latest offerings by renowned potter Gerald Morton, and hear as well the musical stylings of Kim Beggs, Rodney Brown, and Forget’s own Ken Hamm.

Kicking off at 7:30 p.m. the kiln was still warm in the workshop following the latest firing of earthenware objects.

Beginning the musical offerings for the evening, Yukon-based singer/songwriter Kim Beggs took the stage in front of the packed house.

Beggs, who had recently released her latest album, ‘Blue Bones,’ played a selection of tunes from the new album.

Wearing an oversized faux fur coat, Beggs’ diminutive statue belied the power of her impish voice.

Looking and sounding like a young girl, Beggs songs reached deep into the heart, speaking clearly about the struggles and triumph of everyday life.

In many ways, some of her lyrics were much older and wiser in their sensibilities than her on-stage image conveyed, creating a delicious paradox that captured the crowd in a swaying trance of empathetic understanding.

Like salt and sweet, these opposing images proved to be highly magnetic, and the deathly quiet of the crowd illustrated the hold that this spell of sound and song wove.

In her final pieces for the evening, she was accompanied musically by Ken Hamm, who took the stage with his guitar.

Between the two, the finale of Beggs’ set proved to be as powerful as the rest of her performance, leaving the crowd somewhat breathless upon its completion.

“This is my first time in this area,” Beggs said before her set. “I played in Forget [at the Happy Nun] last night, but I haven’t had a chance to come to this area before this.”

Beggs explained that the themes and lyrics of her newest album had come about thanks to some of her experiences over the past year.

Busy with touring, Beggs had found inspiration in many places and in many people through her travels.

“I had spend some time in colaberation with the author Ivan E. Coyote,” Beggs explained. “That was a real font for me in a lot of my songwriting.”

“The songs developed in a very organic way.”

One addition Beggs played on stage and included on the album was a single Blues tune.

“I’ve kind of discovered Blues recently,” Beggs had told the crowd. “One of the things I’ve found about it is that it is really fun to sing.”

Asked later if Blues was a sound she intended on exploring further, Beggs indicated that she would be developing more of a Blues repertoire as time passed.

“It really is a wonderful sound, and I really want to explore the sound some more,” Beggs said. “But I have to do a little bit of research and learn a lot more about the style first.”

“One of the concerns about moving into a new sound is making sure that you keep your songs fresh,” Beggs said. “So having a strong understanding is important, so you don’t end up with a bunch of songs that sound the same.”

Following Beggs’ set, a break was taken for people to look around at Morton’s new work, much of it still in the kiln-cart within the cavernous area of his workshop.

Morton’s kiln proved to be as big a draw as his wonderful and delicate new works, as many seemed visibly impressed by the size of the artist-built oven.

Using only Saskatchewan earths in his work, everything from the clay itself to the subtle and colourful glazes he applies, Morton’s work is as local as one can get in the pottery trade.

“Saskatchewan is one of the only places in Canada I know about where you can make everything from local ingredients,” Morton said. “The rocks and minerals you need to create are here in abundance. It is a really special place because of that.”

Taking the stage for the second set was musician Rodney Brown.

Brown, who has been a friend of Hamm’s for many years, also played a selection of pieces from his most recent album, ‘North Land.’

A wonderfully researched and topical album, the ‘North Land’ songs all speak to Canadian history, especially in regards to the fur trade, and the people who populated and prospered in those days of the late 18th- and early 19th centuries.

Besides being a wonderful songwriter, Brown is an extremely accomplished musician, and his set proved the fact by his use of numerous different instruments.

“I am just coming off of a big tour with 18 stops, all along the Yellow Head Highway,” Brown said. “I’ve never been to this area before, but I have to say it is just wonderfully beautiful.”

“I like to think of myself as a pretty flexible musician,” Brown said. “While most of my stuff is definitely folkish, I’ve done other sounds too, like ballads, and even some reggae-ish stuff.”

Brown, who released his first album ‘Freedom in Me’ in 1977, has had long experience playing to crowds, a fact which showed in his ease with his musical presentation, as well as his light and approachable stage presence.

Offering a variety of historically-based songs, Brown kept the crowd captivated, and even included them in several tunes, teaching the crowd the chorus before launching into the song.

While most of his lyrics were in English, respectful of the French and Metis involvement in the fur trade, there were French lyrics in many of the songs as well.

Not that this created any confusion in the crowd about his songs, as all balanced the French and English in such a way that a native speaker of either tongue would be able to follow the story presented in the lyrics.

“I really like the period of the fur trade, and I very much enjoy creating songs about the people and the places from those times,” Brown said. “It is my way of honouring those efforts, and the contribution that those efforts made in developing the Canada of today.”

Whereas Beggs had caught the crowd in a silent and contemplative mood with her work, Brown had toes tapping and people swaying to music which would’ve been as welcome around a Voyageur’s campfire as it was to the packed house.

Another intermission followed Brown’s set, which provided another opportunity to speak with Morton, the potter.

“When I’m preparing the earths for the glazes, I have to grind them up to the consistency of flour,” Morton explained of his art. “Sometimes, things don’t always come out right, so there is a real science to it.”

Creating all elements of his work from scratch means that Morton is as much a scientist as he is a talented artist.

“Every piece I make, you might see a little mark somewhere on it,” Morton said. “It wouldn’t mean anything to you or anyone else, but for me, it helps me keep track of the different things I do to make the pottery.”

“It can be a real trial and error process,” Morton said. “But it is part of the work. If you want to be good, you have to work hard and keep track of all the little details that come together along the way.”

Morton said he creates about 200 to 300 pieces for each kiln firing, which he does around 10 times a year.

“This time I loaded the kiln on Wednesday, and lit it on Thursday,” Morton said. “It was cooking through most of Thursday, and it was about two days cooling down.”

The new pieces from the large, brick kiln were of many sizes and functions. From the decorative to the utilitarian, all showed a beautiful earthen hue from the unique glazes Morton mixes, with colours ranging from dark browns, through to ochre reds and oranges, delicate and deep blues, and the misty greens of an oxidized penny.

“Every piece is unique, and every piece is completely made from Saskatchewan,” Morton said.

Following the last intermission, Ken Hamm took the stage.

Hamm, who holds a Juno award for his steel guitar work, also put on a wonderful show.

Known for his consummate plucking and finger work, Hamm delivered to expectations with a wonderful selection of work.

Hamm remains an active musician, and has also helped countless artists produce albums, as well as providing accompaniment.

Hamm now lives in the community of Forget, and operates Village Music, a musical equipment store that specializes in high-quality, Canadian made instruments.

The kiln opening at Moose Mountain Pottery took place on Saturday, Nov. 6.

Moose Mountain Pottery is located just south of the intersection of highway 9 and highway 48.
-Todd Gervais

Kim Beggs / Blue Bones

Though the subjects are familiar; love, loss, more love, more loss and the freedom found in and from both, occupy the spaces in Kim Beggs tunes, her voice separates the tracks. Kim’s vocals showcase an ability to infuse each work with a vulnerable sincerity.
That is what makes ‘Blue Bones’ authentic, offering originals and reinventions of songs by Nanci Griffith, the traditional “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes”, Patty Griffin, “Trapeze” and Bob Dylan, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” the stamp of the real, the honest and the personal. When Kim’s voice comes in, she makes the words intimate, a shared experience, a look into life. Her reading of previously sung songs changes them enough to be of her own making. The Kim penned are glimpses into the life of a road musician (“Honey and Crumbs”), the past creeping into the present (“Terrible Valentine”), the memory of a little brother born with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder(“Firewaterbones”) and big love and a traveling heart (“Summertime Lonesome Blues”).
There is a lot of travel in Kim’s songs. No surprise as she now calls the Yukon home, when she isn’t on tour. Born in Val d’Or, Quebec and raised in Northern Ontario mining towns, Kim began working as a non-musician at the age of twelve. She left Toronto and came to the Yukon in the winter of 1991, swinging a hammer to augment the $50 in her pocket. The pawnshop guitar she brought with her was hardened around the campfires at night. ‘Blue Bones’ is her third full length. She works with collaborator Steve Dawson on the album.
- Alternate Roots Magazine

Kim Beggs,
Blue Bones
(Black Hen, 2010)

I reviewed Kim Beggs's self-released Wanderer's Paean in this space on 5 May 2008. Paean -- its title a play on "pain" -- was an often harrowing account, with strong autobiographical elements, of life on the margins in Canada's northern regions. Beggs lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, which to the rest of us, at least those of us who don't live there, may seem an unimaginably remote outpost. I say that, by the way, as one who dwells in a tiny Minnesota town that is close to nowhere except the South Dakota border.

On Blue Bones, her first CD for Steve Dawson's Vancouver-based roots label Black Hen Music, Beggs sings in front of a bigger band including electrical instruments (albeit not ones inclined to rock out), a departure from the bracing, starkly skeletal acoustic sound of Paean. Again, however, one hears that astonishing expressive little girl's voice -- though Beggs is hardly a child, either in calendar years or in hard life experience -- and senses that great open heart. While there's humor here (most entertainingly in the original -- in both senses of the adjective -- "Can't Drive Slow Yodel"), there's also an abundance of darkness. The darkness falls in the company of mental illness, alcoholism, imprisonment, relationships gone horribly wrong and death. It comes, however, with redeemingly strong performances and melodies that touch listeners without causing them to collapse in despair. Beggs manages to be at once unusually intense and fully listenable, and not only because of her musical talents. One has the impression of a truly decent human being behind all of this.

If at heart a folk singer, Beggs conjures up light doses of country and pop here and there. The ostensibly chirpy tunes that result may mislead the unwary, however. "Summertime Lonesome Blues," which sounds more summery than lonely, is about a love affair with a hopeless alcoholic. If you aren't listening to the lyrics, you wouldn't know that the bouncy country-pop "Terrible Valentine" concerns a woman who is walking out on a physically abusive relationship.

From a purely musical perspective, my tastes being what they are, I am reflexively more immediately drawn to the more straightforwardly folkish material, from the tuneful opening cut "Honey & Crumbs" to the unsparing true-life ballads "Mama's Dress" (rendered all the more potent by Steve Dawson's slide guitar and National steel) and "Firewater Blues." Shattering and beautiful in equal measure, "Longest Dream," which feels much older than its years, visits the last earthly hours of a kind-hearted man. It is a song only a courageous and mature artist could conceive, much less accomplish.

Few artists I hear these days cover other people's songs as movingly as Beggs does. As she did on Paean, she takes care to choose a Carter Family song (last time it was "Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow"), here "Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes," which came into the world in the 19th century as a sentimental parlor ballad. Beggs does it with something of a honkytonk arrangement, as if to acknowledge the melody's later incarnation in the early 1950s carrying "Wild Side of Life" (Hank Thompson) and its sequel "It Wasn't God Who Made Honkytonk Angels" (Kitty Wells). She also turns in a subtly, if effectively, erotically charged reading of Bob Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight." The Jack Clement chestnut "Just Someone I Used to Know" closes the disc. One could complain that this classic country weeper has been done to death, but Beggs breathes into it some much-needed oxygen.

-Jerome Clark

Blue Bones Kim Beggs
Black Hen / Burnside

Kim Beggs sings country-folk influenced by her life growing up in northern Canada. At age 12, she began working in the trades, working with hands and muscle. But from her lyrical abilities, you can see that this physical labor just provided her with fodder for her songs.

Blue Bones included four cover songs, but these aren’t the only ones to look out for on her album. Her own songs burst with intelligence and observation. She is a storyteller, and a master of metaphor. From a song about folks who end up on the street: “The dust from the road and wind make her blue/For the sun wants to fade her memory’s tattoo.” Kim Beggs may not ever become a radio hit, but her bare-naked voice and imagistic lyrics will make a nice addition to your folk collection.
-Sophia Strosberg

Kim Beggs
Blue Bones (Black Hen Music)

Here’s a soulful and inviting collection of (mostly) self-penned tunes from Yukon singer-songwriter, Kim Beggs. As with most releases on Black Hen, Steve Dawson both produces and plays on Blue Bones, and brings a relaxed confidence to Beggs’ homespun songs. The end-result is a combination of top-notch musicianship and gentle humility that proves very winning! There are traces of country, folk, and old-timey influences in the songs, which topically run the gamut from yodeling in the car to losing a brother to just being lost and lonesome. The four covers are well-chosen (particularly a great rendition of Dylan’s I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight) and sit nicely alongside the originals. Guests include Laurie Lewis, Gurf Morlix, Steve Dawson, and a slew of others, but the focus is firmly on Beggs’ voice and songs. Blue Bones is a gem!
– By Richard Thornley

Kim Beggs: Blue Bones
Posted by John (Biscuits and Gravy) Davy on September 16, 2010 at 10:30pm

Hailing from Canada's Yukon territory, hard-bitten mining country, this is Kim Beggs' third album in a late burgeoning career that has brought her quite a lot of attention and acclaim. For this album she has enlisted the help of Vancouver's Steve Dawson, slide guitar player and producer - and not to be confused with Chicago's Steve Dawson of Dolly Varden fame. He has assembled a fine bunch of players to set the whole thing off and contributed some very stylish guitar playing himself.

The first thing to say is that Kim sings in a very light sing song way with an innocence of approach vaguely reminiscent of Iris de Ment and that at first pass this has the effect of making her music sound rather inconsequential. However, greater familiarity reveals the art in this apparent artlessness and her sound has been steadily creeping on me as I've grown to appreciate her individuality. Her own songs are far from inconsequential, dealing with everyday life as it is lived, from the chronicle of a working day in 'Bring Out Your Bones' to the sad regretful tribute she makes to her late adopted brother, who died young of cancer, in 'Firewater Bones' . Her lyrical approach is slightly elliptical so that you have to make some effort to join the dots but the lyric booklet supplied with this generously packaged album does contain some notes about the stories behind the songs, so that obviously helps.

There are four covers sitting amongst the nine original songs. Dylan's 'I'll Be your Baby Tonight' is relaxed to the point of indifference and I couldn't connect with that at all, but Patty Griffin's 'Trapeze' is quite affecting whilst 'Just Someone I Used to Know' features Gurf Morlix as Porter Waggoner to Kim's Dolly Parton. There's a whole handful of singers helping her out with the vocals across the album and the most successful is Natalie Edelson whose contralto harmonies fit Kim's bright voice like the proverbial hand in a glove. They sound particularly effective together on 'Longest Dream'; like all the best harmony singing there's just the right amount of contrast to make the two voices together way more than the sum of their parts.

The overall sound is a relaxed, unforced country-ish sound that would fit quite a number of Americana/off-Nashville singers; I've already mentioned Steve Dawson's playing but Chris Gestrin's organ playing is equally elegant - enriching the sound without stomping all over it. I guess the stand out song is the 'Can't Drive Slow Yodel' , a song that would suit Caitlin Rose with its self-deprecating humour and light heart. The tale she tells of learning to yodel whilst out alone on the Yukon River in a canoe really rings a bell for me; a neighbour of mine with something of a singing career could be heard practising his stage voice alone in his boat, half a mile from shore.

Blue Bones has a gently insistent charm to it and Kim Beggs has a distinctive voice - a nice addition to the tapestry of North American music making.
-John Davy

Album Review

Canadian country singer/songwriter Kim Beggs may hail from north of the U.S.-Canada border, but she maintains a familiar rural, working-class persona on her third album, Blue Bones. In her breathy, childlike voice, she recounts tales of lost souls, frequently drenched in alcohol, spending their time in bars when they aren't speeding down the road. The songs are set to country shuffles prominently featuring twangy string instruments or florid organ fills that contrast well with Beggs' singing. She throws in covers of Bob Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" and the country standard "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes," among others, but it's her originals that demonstrate the similarity between honky tonk sensibilities wherever they may be found in North America. There are more references to cold weather than might be expected if this were an album coming out of Nashville, but many of the concerns are the same.
- William Ruhlmann, Rovi

Kim Beggs
Blue Bones (Black Hen)
By Sarah Greene

Kim Beggs is the real deal. With an instantly recognizable voice that blends sweetness and grit, the Yukon-based singer/songwriter (and sometimes carpenter) tells stories of love, blues, bones and the North on her third album and first for the Black Hen label.

Beggs’s writing has never been better. She makes subtle adjustments to familiar folk forms, as on the excellent opener, Honey And Crumbs, with its shifting refrain and surprise high notes. Bring Out Your Bones and Firewater Bones delve deep into blues and death, while Can’t Drive Slow Yodel reveals her more buoyant side. Backed throughout by an impressive cast of Canadian and American musicians, Beggs shines in harmony with Gurf Morlix on pretty, slow-rocking love song Maiden Heart.

With original writing this good, covers by Bob Dylan, Patty Griffin and Jack Clement seem unnecessary, though Beggs’s interpretations keep the album seamless.

Top track: Maiden Heart

Kim Beggs plays Hugh’s Room August 17.

NOW | August 5-12, 2010 | VOL 29 NO 49

An on again off again conversation with Doug Heselgrave

Like many people, I have had a lifelong fascination with the Yukon. Growing up in Canada, my childhood hours were often spent reading Farley Mowatt’s dramatic tales of stoic Inuits and lonely trappers who endured the bitter hardships of life in the far north. As I grew older, I met people from Whitehorse, Yellowknife and other mythical cities from the Canadian outback and gradually came to understand that people who can live in places like that are different than the average souls who live safely on the south side of the forty ninth parallel.

Kim Beggs wasn’t born in the north, but she’s made her home there for the last few decades, and certainly paid her dues chopping wood and swinging a hammer on remote construction sites before devoting herself to making music full time. ‘Blue Bones’ is Kim Beggs’ third full length album, and is certainly her strongest release so far. Featuring a mixture of her distinctive original songs as well as a few well chosen covers, ‘Blue Bones’ has rarely left my CD player since I first heard the album in the spring.

I contacted Kim a month or two ago and requested an interview. For someone like Kim, the traditional question and answer interview didn’t really work very well, so after a few attempts at a ‘straight’ conversation, Kim suggested something I’d never tried before. She asked me to send her a few questions to ruminate on that she would answer via tape recorder while on a canoe trip with friends. Whether it was partly the influence of the early spring heat, the majestic scenery or the endless empty Yukon sky, Kim’s answers were thoughtful, poetic, revealing and always a delight to hear.

Kim is an artist who trusts herself and follows her own mind as is so beautifully represented in her creative deconstruction of the interview process. I hope you get as much out of reading Kim’s thoughts as I did first listening to them.

Kim: Hi Doug, I’m going to try this. It rained quite a bit on the river, so it has been hard to get the logistics right for talking about a few of the questions you left for me, but I did manage to find a sunny moment near Fort Selkirk and I found an old heritage desk and a bench placed out on the side of the river for some reason. I sat at the desk, looked at the river rush by, and I wrote your questions down. I wrote down my thoughts in my book and now I’m back in Whitehorse and want to give you some of the answers that I thought about while I was out on my canoe trip.

Doug: When discussing Canadian literature, landscape always comes into the conversation. There’s that famous quote of Margaret Atwood’s that all Canadian stories feature landscape as a character. Is that true of your songs? The far north is so big and empty with lots of room to expand into….Has this affected your music?

Kim: I really thought about this. I think it is true. Landscape is a character in some of my songs. The far north is really big and spacious with lots of room to expand into, however I had a very rich imagination growing up and that also fuels my songs. This isn’t to say that other countries and places in the world don’t have that sense of balance, but what makes Canadians so acutely aware of balance is that the country is so huge. It’s not filled up with roads and buildings. There’s a lot of wilderness and a lot of unknown, and when there’s a lot of unknown, there’s a little more awareness of fear. Wilderness is a taker and a giver. They say that about rivers and water, too. Canada has a lot of diversity – not just in culture, but in climate. We have four very distinct seasons. We have a lot of diversity in landscape from coast to coast to coast. Many Canadians have wanted to see this landscape, so it’s good that we have a good bus system here because all levels of society have access to travel. I figure that Canada is as rich and layered and fucked up as any human being, so it’s not a surprise that the landscape ends up as a character in Canadian literature and songwriting. I hadn’t really thought about this until you asked the question, but – yeah – it’s true.

Doug: So, you moved into Canada’s most extreme climate. Was moving to the Yukon in any way a creative decision?

Kim: I think moving to the Yukon really fuelled my creativity, but I have been creating since I was a kid. I had a wild imagination. I thought and wrote and dreamed – had nightmares – about post-apocalyptic existence and survival. It was depressing, but I think it was part of the generation I grew up in. There was a lot of fear about all of that in the environment. I also read a lot of Sci Fi and I believed there were other worlds out there in other dimensions and I didn’t really limit myself in terms of what was possible and what was impossible. I saw that the universe was so huge and we’re all just little specks on a little globe in a huge universe and how could I know whether something was possible or not possible, so when I was a kid, I had this tiny backpack that was ready to go to some other dimension or some other world. Maybe, in the end, it was a preparation for going up to the Yukon. In the pack, I had my toque, matches, some crackers and a little tin of some beautifully coloured beads. I took a needle, too, and figured I could make gifts of them with whichever aliens I met. I took some tea bags, too, so I guess I was crazy. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, but I guess I always thought something was going to open its doors for me.

Doug: Is playing music something you started looking into when you moved up north, or have you been playing since you were young?

Kim: I’ve been very musical ever since I was a little kid. I figured out how to play the piano, so I was signed up for some lessons. I lasted in lessons for a few years, but I soon got tired of it. I wasn’t very good at being in structured lessons. I didn’t really enjoy them. I felt too contained. That was how it was going to be for many years – whether I was taking lessons or playing the trumpet in school. It was always structure, and never about making things up. When I was a young teenager I made up a little tune. I forget it and then it comes back to me. No matter where I would have ended up at this time of my life, I think I would have been writing songs and it was just a matter of having the right trigger point. For me, a trigger point was hearing a concert on CBC radio. (Canada’s national radio station) I heard a concert by Iris DeMent. I’d never heard of her before. This was about ten years ago. I heard this show while helping a friend work on his house. I had to sit down and listen to the whole damned thing. I had this feeling right away and I said to my friend, ‘Do you ever have the feeling that a door has just opened?’ It was very soon after that when I started to write again and more in a way where I was really trying to say something in a song. Around the same time, I started to perform. I could have been anywhere in Canada when I heard that concert, but it was like somebody turned a tap on, and I thought ‘oh my God’, there’s so much I have to say. I wanted to say everything in a song. As I said before, I’ve been musical all of my life, but I’d never sang before hearing that concert. I might learn something on the piano like Greensleeves, but if I was going to play it for my family, I’d only play the instrumental part. I didn’t think anyone would want to hear my voice. I couldn’t’ stand my voice. A friend of mine and I were goofing around with a tape recorder when I was about twelve, and when we listened back I couldn’t believe what my voice sounded like. So, the idea of recording myself singing was – well – another twenty years would pass at least before I did it again. I think I would have been writing wherever I was. Now, I think one of the things that the Yukon gave me was the space to hear my own voice and share it. It’s very nurturing up here and people really make space for other people who are being creative. It’s pretty amazing. I was incredibly shy, so that even when I had to play trumpet at a school, I’d be so shy that I’d just laugh and giggle through the solo part I was supposed to play. It was a real problem for me doing things in front of people, so it took a while to overcome it. But, I wanted to overcome it because it was such an obstacle in my life. So, the will to overcome was part of the going thru that door and finding a way to feel comfortable expressing myself in front of people other than my buddies. So, yeah, I think the Yukon was a big part of it and I don’t know if I was still in Toronto, I’d be getting up and singing or trying to meet people who loved music the way I did or sang songs or wrote songs. I really didn’t know a lot of people like that.

Doug: You spend a long time developing each song you write. You seem to be in no hurry to rush anything. What makes a good song in your estimation?

Kim: A good song goes right to the bone. It’ll go there for different reasons. I listen to songs in layers, so that at first I might not hear the exact meaning of the song, but I hear just the melody. Then, I’ll hear the rhythm and the choice of words. Words are just sounds that the voice makes and do I like those sounds? Do they resonate with me? In some songs it’s more important for the melody to be really interesting and really intricate. In other songs, the melody is not so important because the meaning in the song is more important. But, I know a good song when I hear it because if I feel something when I hear it no matter how many times I’ve heard it, it’s a good song. And, then, there’s the mystery. Something unsaid in the song, I don’t have to know exactly what the song is about in order for it to resonate with ne or for me to like it. Most of the songs, the seeds from my songs begin with words and ideas and emotions. Melodies usually come after, but sometimes they come at the same time – usually when I’m driving. But, even then in order for the song to progress, I often refer to my black book or books and look for other ideas that would go along with the melody and words that came up in the car. When words and melodies come at the same time, it’s hard to separate them, tear them apart when they came into being at the same time. It’s like they were born together. Song writing is a very interesting process and I usually take a long time on songs unless it’s something that’s just been sitting right beside me waiting to come. ‘Longest Dream’ was a song like that and it has a really simple melody. I didn’t want it to be complicated because I really wanted the idea to come across. It was the last one that I wrote before recording the album. I couldn’t believe how that one came to me in just a few hours. Occasionally that happens to me. Many of the songs I’ve written have taken at least a couple of years to write from the time the seed first started to grow from the time when I was willing to try and record it. I spend a lot of time getting the words just right so they have the feeling I want to communicate. It’s like a puzzle. It can also take some time to get melody the way I want it and to have it interesting enough to support the lyrics.

Doug: Do you see yourself working in a tradition of Canadian or Yukon song writers or are you about something different than that?

Kim: It’s interesting to think about whether I am working within a tradition. I think it would be self-centred to say that I wasn’t, but I think there are many traditions. I’m probably more in the tradition of troublemaker. I don’t think of myself as any kind of fabulous musician, but I like to sing and I like to write my stories with a melody. I also like to remember other people’s stories and their melodies. I keep things alive in the way that I can. It’s not perfect and it’s not about preserving. In carpentry, they talk about renovation and restoration. In restoration, it’s about preserving something in exactly the way it came into being - you know keeping it exactly how it was first built. But, I’m not a good enough musician to preserve things ‘just as they were built’ – I’m more of a renovator. Some of the old songs that I’ve been singing they’re different from how they first came into the world, and though I actually feel pretty good about myself, I’m good at laughing at myself too. So, I can say that I’m a story teller and just another carpenter making bad renovations. I think that when musicians change traditional songs, it’s upsetting for other people and certain musicians who want to keep things the same. I don’t think people do it on purpose, but singers do change things with their bad renovations and that’s just part of how the world turns. For the most part I find that people and fellow musicians are pleasantly surprised at my interpretations of other people’s work. I like making people happy and I like making me happy, too. I was having a discussion with a fellow musician about music and old music and why some songs survive and some don’t. There’s lots of music out there and some of it’s pretty complicated like Bach and Beethoven all those fancy composers. Part of the reason their music survived was that it was written down. It would be very complicated for music like theirs to stay alive in an oral tradition. They were too complicated to simply exist in memory, and it’s very important and amazing that these complicated pieces of music were written down in such detail. There are other songs that survived that weren’t written down and survived as a part of an oral tradition. What was it about those songs that made people want them to stick around? Over hundreds of years, these stories were passed between friends and family. When at different periods, people lost the ability to write even their names down, the songs that stayed alive were the ones they kept when they listened to their hearts. It was a case of a song being true, a person would make the decision to keep on singing it. Maybe things didn’t get too complicated musically, and it was the ideas contained in the songs that were important and helped people remember them. I’m sure that these songs evolved over time through generations of people singing them.You know, through the years and generations and centuries, we’re all working with the same twelve notes but what is it that can make music original in different earas? I would say there’s lots of repetition in music and people using the same kind of melodies, but what I think makes each generation or each musician or songwriter unique is that there is a different combination of influences at play every time someone writes a song. Each musician takes a mixture of the music they love or grew up listening to and everyone adds the music they were introduced to later on in life to that, and everyone is a mixture of what their influences are and however similar some of the combinations are, each player is in some way unique. My influences are a combination of Raffi, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, old country songs, and old traditional songs. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has that combination of influences, but some of it is also ‘what I’m made of’ and part of it is a reflection of my ability. I’m pretty much self taught on my guitar and as a singer, so I’m round in corners and doing the best I can with what I have got. In a way, I think that’s where creativity stems from – people doing their best and not knowing how to do everything. The best storytellers are not always the best musicians, and the best musicians are not always the best storytellers. If they’re both, that’s pretty lucky for the world.

-- Doug Heselgrave

Kim Beggs
Blue Bones
(Black Hen)

So you're an aspiring singer-songwriter living in rural Northern Ontario, and you want to try your hand at the music business. Do you strike out for a big Canadian town, such as Toronto or Montreal? Do you take it a step further and cross the border to try and make a dent in the the Los Angeles or Nashville music scenes?

If you are Kim Beggs, you do neither. Instead of heading for some music-rich environment, Beggs moved to to the Yukon in 1991, secured a day job and began working on her craft.

If the results found on "Blue Bones", Beggs' latest release, are any indication, I predict that more than a few aspiring artists might try out the Yukon for inspiration. The remoteness of the area gives the music on "Blue Bones" a definite home-spun quality, not unlike the mountain music that comes from Appalachia.

With a vocal style that is similar to that of Nanci Griffith, Beggs doesn't just sing her songs; she breathes life into them by performing them. The sheer beauty of songs such as "Honey and Crumbs", "Can't Drive Slow", and "Firewaterbones" are undeniable. While not every song on "Blue Bones" hits the mark, there are still more than enough good tunes here.

While talent of this kind definitely deserves all the the recognition it, part of me hopes that success won't cause Beggs to relocate. There is something up there in the Yukon that is conducive to her songwriting.

KEY TRACKS: "Honey and Crumbs", "Can't Drive Slow", "Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes"

--Sound Advice

Kim Beggs one of folk's old souls on Blue Bones
BRYAN BORZYKOWSKI
METRO CANADA
July 22, 2010 3:34 p.m.

Kim Beggs
Album: Blue Bones
Label: Black Hen
****

If Kim Beggs was making music when Joni Mitchell and Neil Young were getting their starts, this Yukon-based singer would be huge. Instead she’s part of an underappreciated group of folk musicians.

Hopefully that will change with her third record, which is loaded with touching country folk tunes. Lyrics about loss, the north and searching for oil are backed by smooth slide guitars, delicate acoustics and rich harmonies.

Outstanding track: Maiden Heart

RECENTLY REVIEWED       WOOD, WIRES & WHISKEY
Kim Beggs
Blue Bones
By Rachel Sanders

Kim Beggs is blue right down to her bones, but the Whitehorse, YT singer-songwriter doesn't let it get her down. On her third release, Black Hen Music's Blue Bones, Beggs wears more of her melancholy heart on her sleeve than ever before. Her list of woes runs the gamut from two-timing lovers to the plight of the homeless, but her bright, old-time vocal style, not to mention her keen wit and occasional yodelling, keep the album as light and airy as the translucent butterfly that adorns its cover. Beggs (whose 2006 album, Wanderer's Paean, earned nominations for both Canadian Folk Music and Western Canadian Music awards) has teamed up this time with Black Hen's brilliant Steve Dawson, who brings variety and polished instrumentation to the arrangements. Amongst beautiful covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Patty Griffin and Jack Clement are compositions that demonstrate growth in Beggs's songwriting. The finest example is "Maiden Heart," commissioned by Yukon writer and performer Ivan Coyote for a collection of Northern love songs. The sweetly meandering melody, combined with countrified guitar and the gritty harmonies of American musician and producer Gurf Morlix, is the very definition of rootsy charm.

How did you choose the cover songs for this album?
There's a lot of sadness in those songs and I feel so good when I sing them. It's nice to see that other people write sad songs too. I feel a sort of kinship to the writers of these songs. I think a big part of me is sad. And sadness can be sort of a taboo; you're supposed to be happy. And if you're not, then there's something wrong. I mean, I laugh, I have a sense of humour, but my place of rest is not really with a smile on my face. And when I'm singing somebody else's sad songs, it makes me feel like it's okay to be blue.

How was it working with Steve Dawson?
I loved working with Bob Hamilton for the last two records, but I wanted to explore different sides of myself and I thought I could do that better with some new DNA. We've got amazing musicians up in Whitehorse, so it's not so much about better musicianship; it's just about having access to different people. An artist's sound develops through many records and different collaborations. I wanted this to be a roots album, but I wanted Steve to be able to explore a bit as well. I'm really pleased with the results.

How does the Northern landscape and culture affect your songwriting?
I think the land connects to the people. Maybe it's all that gold in the ground. Gold is powerful when you dig it out and make jewellery out of it, but the stuff is also powerful when it's left exactly where it is. It's in the water and I think that feeds people; it has a way of speaking to people and they discover their creative side. And there are fewer people that live up here, so there are fewer demands on your time. It gives you time to explore your creativity. The landscape creates a pretty strong community too. It's raw, it's rugged, so people help each other out a lot.

You're a carpenter by trade. Do you still do carpentry?
Mostly I've been focusing on my music career, but I did a job this summer, got back to swinging the hammer, hauled out the tools again. I was just working on a deck, putting up the railings and building stairs. My favourite thing to do is stairs. I find it really peaceful and meditative, and I get a lot of joy out of making things that are functional and beautiful, and using my hands.

What are the similarities between stair building and songwriting?
The beautiful thing about stairs is that you don't need a lot of nails to attach them at the top. They have a way of just sitting there on their own. You put a couple of nails in there at the top to hold them in, but if they're cut right, you sit them on the floor and lean them against the wall and they'll just sit there and they won't move unless there's an earthquake. And I love that: the way the physics of it just works. Stairs get you from a lower level to a higher level. And songs are kind of like that too: they can give you a lightness of being and a kind of a joy. If a song is well constructed, you get through this emotional journey and feel joy, peace or satisfaction at the end of it.
(Black Hen)

Kim Beggs
Blue Bones
Black Hen Music

Based in Whitehorse, Kim Beggs has lived across our country and her music captures the influences that have contributed to her development as a singer and writer.

Apparent from the opening track, the organ-fueled road warrior lament Honey and Crumbs, is that Beggs has more homespun charm in her voice than many Appalachian-born singers. Not only does her voice contain attractive, easy warmth, but it has strength and depth lending Beggs the power to authentically convey intense emotions.

Based in folk traditions, Beggs’ third release defies easy categorization. The instrumentation is roots rock with country overtones. Lyrically, lively wordplay reminiscent of Loretta Lynn is customary. Has anyone attempted the following in a country song, as Beggs does within Terrible Valentine?: “Huck-tuu to you for making me blue, I wanna spit in your shoe!”

Beggs and producer Steve Dawson have structured this collection wisely. The original songs blast out of the gate, establishing Beggs’ voice and perspective. It is only midway that covers are sprinkled in, beginning with Dylan’s I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight; it is difficult to imagine a finer interpretation of the John Wesley Harding classic.

There is a spry loneliness filling these songs. The bitterness, however, doesn’t overwhelm either Beggs or the listener; in the finest country tradition, she sounds plum pleased to be singing these occasionally mournful tales. She hits the mark throughout the collection, perhaps never more accurately as when singing of her lost brother in Firewater Bones.

Available Tuesday, Blue Bones maintains the new standard for Western Canadian folk music established by John Wort Hannam, Maria Dunn and Rae Spoon.
-Donald Teplyske

Blue Bones
Kim Beggs
Black Hen Music - BHCD0064
Available from Kim Beggs' online store.
A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
by Mark S. Tucker
(progdawg@hotmail.com)

Kim Beggs has the soft gentle voice of a dreamy-eyed teenage girl, the heart and soul of a young woman who's discovering the world is not as romantic novels portray it, and the experience of a world-weary adult who understands the pains and crushing disappointments of life's dramas all too well. Blue Bones, her latest release, recruits the doughty Steve Dawson not just for production work, nor just his marrow-deep knowing musicianship, but just as much for a sepia toned authenticity in employing a surprising array of elder instruments in their period voices: weissenborn, National Style-O, pump organ, mellodica, Phillicorda, National Tricone, Wurlitzer (!), and pedal steel (even a mellotron and mandotar). Though Beggs hails from Canada and has a very folky base, there are strong Appalachian strains and laid back bluegrass running through the release.

Terrible Valentine is simultaneously hilarious, unsettling, and 40s reminiscent all at once, a kiss-off to a bastard lover who's stepped on the singer's heart one too many times. And on Can't Drive Slow Yodel, she does exactly both, confessin' to a back-country version of Sammy Hagar's Can't Drive 55 while yee-hee-hawin' like a Jimmy Rogers pro. Then there's her innocent and hearthfire-warmed version of Dylan's I'll be Your Baby Tonight, simple, unpretentious, sweet, and as quiet as a snowflake falling through air. Special notice should be made of Grant Gestrin, who adds a very Levon Helm-esque set of keyboards to various cuts, bolstering Dawson's sterling guitars (and Dawson's no Robbie Robertson but much more like the brilliant Lloyd Maines). When the CD ramps down, I guarantee you'll be a bit baffled as to what to make of it all. That's 'cause there are very few doing what Beggs is doing, and, whatever it is, it's going to force a number of returns to the stereo.
Track List:
* Honey and Crumbs * Mama's Dress * Maiden Heart * Terrible Valentine * Can't Drive Slow Yodel * Bring out your Bones * I'll be your Baby Tonight (Bob Dylan) * Firewater Bones * Trapeze (Patty Griffin) * Summertime Lonesome Blues * Thinking Tonight of my Blue Eyes (traditional) * Longest Dream * Just Someone I used to Know (Jack Clement)
All songs written by Kim Beggs except as noted.
Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)

BLACK HEN MUSIC
KIM BEGGS/Blue Bones: Award winning Canadian folkie is about as far from Joni Mitchell as you can get so don’t look for those comparisons. Purely a down home, back porch singer/songwriter with a vulnerability that betrays her background as a laborer who took the long way around to music. Making the most of the miles on her odometer, Beggs will win you over right out of the box with her little tales of every day life, its wins and loses all tempered with a hope for tomorrow. Simply smashing contemporary folkie sounds that are first class all the way. - Chris Spector

"Kim Beggs plays and sings country music like they did in the old days. The arrangements are mostly acoustic, and nicely understated. Beggs knows that the songs don’t need a heavy hand to work. She sings in a wonderfully sweet soprano, and this brings a beautiful tenderness to all of the songs here. There are four covers on the album, and each is a marvel. But I wanted to feature an original song, and Longest Dream is here because I felt It was one of Beggs’ best lyrics. A woman stands by her man as he lays on his death bed. Beggs presents his state of mind, grateful for her faithfulness, anxious about the end, hopeful for the afterlife. Beggs sketches all of this in with very few words. It’s a beautiful example of her artistry, one of many here."

Oliver di Place

Said Michael Enright as he introduced Kim Beggs for her performance at the 500th episode of CBC Radio One Sunday Edition Celebration on Nov 25th at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto.

As you might expect of a singer-songwriter who has for the past 15 years called Whitehorse home, Kim Beggs peppers her 2006 CD Wanderer's Paean with odes to wilderness, mountain streams and the Yukon River.
But the journey on which Beggs takes us over the course of 13 songs is ultimately an internal one, as the folksy artist relates personal tales of life, love and loss. On Heartache Shoes, a message to Beggs' brother who recently passed away after a lifelong battle with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, she communicates all three.
"I played a rough version of it for him," Beggs recalls, "and he said, 'Wow, that sounds like my life.' I was able to sing it for him a second time, at his funeral.
EMOTIONAL MOMENT
"Somehow, I found the strength to get through it without choking up. I've tried to rehearse it since, and it's too hard for me to sing it now. But I want to be able to talk about the disorder. I want to sing it again."
We'll forgive Beggs if she decides to omit the song from her set tomorrow night as she and accompanist Bob Hamilton transport us to another time and place through song. Such is the speciality of this wanderer who grew up in rural Ontario and big-city Toronto before finding her rightful place in Canada's True North.
"I crave remoteness," says Beggs, who last month paddled her way to the Dawson City Music Festival. "I crave isolation. Even before I moved to the Yukon I fantasized about being the one person left after the nuclear war.
"I think it's because I grew up in a big family you have to learn to find your own psychological space if you can't find physical space. Now, I'm lucky to have found both."

WANDERER'S PAEAN
Kim Beggs
Independent
8-out-of-10
Kim Beggs' Wanderer's Paean is another of the Western Canada Music Awards finalists for Best Solo Roots album, and one listen tells you she has a voice that is one so clearly suited to roots music it is hard to envision her playing/singing anything else. This is a CD that has the flavour you might expect from a roots performer from down Tennessee or Alabama way, having that deep south feel. That is interesting when you consider Beggs has lived in Whitehorse, Yukon for the past decade-and-a-half. At the same time one can easily see how the sort of frontier feel of Canada's north would be a fertile place for roots-style songs, and Beggs has written a number of very nice folk tunes here, including Lay It All Down, Lips Stained Red With Wine and the CD's title cut. This CD has been recorded in what I would call a relaxed, and yet intimate manner. Instrumentation is generally minimalist, allowing Beggs unique vocals, and the often powerful lyrics. Sit back and get into the words on songs such as Up From The River, and you get into the heart of roots music, compelling words that tell a story, a story which takes the spotlight over the instrumentation with Beggs. As I mentioned, Beggs has a rather unique voice, almost adolescent in its simplicity, yet again thanks to the realities of roots music, it carries maturity arising from the music itself. It is really a contrast of vocals and material which is compelling here. Beggs shows here that she is a fine writer, yet does mix in some material not her own as well such as the traditional Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow and All The Good Times Are Past And Gone, both adapted nicely by the artist. This is one well worth searching out at www.kimbeggs.com

Kim Beggs - Wanderer's Paean (Caribou)
If you wake up hungover with half a soul on a Sunday morning, you will want to listen to this. It's like Emmylou and Suzanne Vega decided to hunker down around Michelle Shocked's camp fire. Like all good Americana, folk / country music, the melodies and structures go where you'd most like them to and it's a damn fine collection of tunes revolving around what preoccupies us most: who we love, why we love them, why we made them angry and, finally, why they left us. Issues people like Yukon based Beggs, former miner, have been telling and warning us about for years. And we still don't learn. There's some trad. country bits (Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow) and traces of the Eagles (All The Good Times) but, even with all points of reference, this is Kim Beggs. Heads up Lucinda Williams. www.kimbeggs.com

Wanderer's Paean (Caribou Records)
From the Whitehorse studio where Caribou Records co-founder and prolific musician/producer Bob Hamilton gently guides a large crew of exceptionally gifted singer-songwriters, born wanderer Beggs emerges with her second collection of bright, pensive, personal songs - some of them pure Yukon whimsy and good folksy humour, others darkened by ineffable lonesomeness and barely concealed sorrow. Beggs' engaging and unaffected voice is all the adornment these simple, three-chord songs need, though she gets some very tasteful assistance from Hamilton on steel and mandolin, guitarist Rick Fines, label mates Anne Louise Genest and Kim Barlow on backing vocals, and Toronto fiddler John Showman and dobro picker Burke Carroll.

Kim Beggs and Friends Offer Serious Reminders
This new CD from Kim Beggs is an interesting departure from her first CD, Streetcar Heart. Wanderer's Paean is a far more serious and mature mix of songs that showcases her love of that particular style of Americana Folk that harkens back to a simpler, harder life and where character and situation clashed to create elementary truth from the most complex of emotions. These songs are the musical equivalent of flipping through an old black-paged photo album with each song a photo, sepia toned with age, full of detail as only an old photo can be. Each song, like those long forgotten images, subjects staring out to the future, formally dressed, static, proud, vignettes of personal history communicating the fear and folly as well as the truth and beauty of the human animal. Beggs is able to create an aura of tactile emotions that envelops each song. It is as if each song has its own atmosphere in which its inhabitants, for those brief few moments, live and move about. This quiet animation allows the listener into an emotional bubble, to breathe the same air and to discover personal and private moments as written by the author. This is the essence and strength of Beggs' writing. In Banks of the Yukon and Shipyards Song we are able to participate in the cold of the season, warmth of the heart and smell the buildings long gone. Lips Stained Red With Wine is a sad and beautiful walk through memories of one soul, cognizant of her past failings, but never forgetting the future has beauty unknown. All heady stuff. Though songs of desperation and melancholia, like Heartache Shoes, suffuse the CD there are true moments of musical joy. The title song, Wanderers Paean, showcases another of Beggs' strengths: the ability to drive along a finwaltz and vocalize a fine "hoo hoo hoo" or a "yodleaaheehoo" or even an "eeodelee aayday". These lines are full of hope and joy, conviction and sentiment as much as any of her fine lyrics. Kim Beggs enunciation and wide, moist mouth combine to create an "eargasm" of tone surviving the harsh electronics of the recording process to envelop the ear. The musicianship is deceivingly simple and the use of vintage instruments in expert hands is only one of the musical treats that this album delivers. I believe the albums timbre and tone is realized by its being recorded at Bob Hamilton's Old Crow Recording Studio. Being able to translate Beggs' ideas and vision to final product would be difficult if she had to travel out of the territory. The small galaxy of Yukon musicians who surround Beggs on each song reinforces this idea of a homegrown studio culture and is a tribute to an artist and her appeal. Kim Beggs maintains a website at www.kimbeggs.com. Check it out for her current tour and get your friends and relatives in these areas up and out to see her.

"She is one of a growing number of singer/songwriters who are putting the Yukon on the roots map. Wanderer's Paean is the follow-up to Streetcar Heart, Beggs' 2004 debut. Like its predecessor it's a stripped-down, low-fi offering of songs that pull at the heart. Beggs' sweet, Appalachian-style voice and guitar are placed against an appropriately sparse backdrop by award-winning producer Bob Hamilton, who handles double bass, in addition to Anne Louise Genest on backup vocals and John Showman on fiddle. Beggs' own material fits seamlessly with the two traditional tracks Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow and All the Good Times Are Past and Gone and Bill Monroe's classic Close By."

I was introduced of Kim's music from my friend Doug Lang of Vancouver on his radio program "Better Days"CFRO. I was blown away by the music. Kim's voice is of such purity that you are taking away to crystal clear mountain air that leaves you refreshingly inspired. I was in such awe that I bought her new CD.

Kim Beggs - Wanderer's Paean. Kim Beggs moved to Yukon from a mining town in Northern Ontario and, swinging a hammer, worked at building and renovation, while teaching herself guitar. Whoever taught her to sing should get a medal. While she doesn't have what you'd call a big voice, she gets a whole lot out of her high, feathery alto, a cross between Nanci Griffith and Iris DeMent, and her lean, spare delivery. She sings original songs that have an old-timey, traditional sound. She sounds right at home in the middle of the down-home country airs set up by pedal steel, mandolin, banjo and fiddle, creating a warm, earthy spot for the listener's psyche to drop into.

The Yukon's Kim Beggs took her first bold steps in 2004 with the release of her wonderful debut, "Streetcar Heart". For "Wanderer's Paean", she has recruited several of the same strategic characters who added much of the spirit to that first effort. So producer and multi-instrumentalist, Bob Hamilton's sympathetic approach, again, allows Beggs lots of breathing room to sing her heart out. So here and there a country fiddle makes a subtle appearance, as does a steel guitar. An acoustic bass warrants the odd mention. A tasteful mandolin, too. But really the songs-- grand tales, largely set in the north--stand on their own, swaddled in that unique, warm and distinctive voice. The measure of this record is surely the country-folk of "Lips Stained Red [with Wine]"-- a contender for 'song of the year' by any reckoning. "Wanderer's Paean" then, is not a departure from "Streetcar Heart" but rather a tasteful confirmation of a distinct talent.

"The Yukon River is like a moving lake, a gentle giant that will take you where you need to go ... whether you're paddling or not," is the way Whitehorse songwriter Kim Beggs remembers her recent voyage, by canoe, from Minto to Dawson City.
She usually drives, occasionally flies, but last week the adventurous singer, her pure and expressive voice likened to Nanci Griffith and Iris DeMent, paddled her way north on the Yukon, with her guitar bundled in a buoyant foam case wrapped inside a plastic garbage bag, to perform at the Dawson City Music Festival. It's a trip that would normally take about four days.
"I stopped off in Fort Selkirk for about 10 days to catch up with myself and get started on some new songs," Beggs said in a phone interview from Dawson. "Eventually I met up with some friends who were canoeing to Dawson as well - (singer-songwriters) Natalie Edelson, Kate Weekes and Kim Barlow - and we put on a concert in the Anglican church at Selkirk. CBC showed up to record and film it.
"Then we all paddled on to Dawson, eight of us in four canoes with banjos and guitars and all kinds of instruments."
This time of year, the Yukon is like a highway, she added, "carrying musicians from all over Canada, even from the U.S., up to Dawson City."
Born in Val d'Or, Que., Beggs spent her adolescent years in Toronto before heading into the Yukon wilderness in the winter of 1991.
"I got to Whitehorse and stayed. It felt good to me, it started feeding me. Sometimes I think it's a hard life up here, but Whitehorse gives me what I need." ...

"Life's a riddle, like a rock in my shoe," chirps the buoyant Kim Beggs on the dulcet twang of Lay It All Down, her voice, a pure quavering pitch, nestled somewhere between hardened heartbreak and hopeful naiveté. On her sophomore release, Wanderer's Paean (released last fall), she sounds seemingly carefree, riding the rhythmic rails of sparkling mandolin and swooning pedal steel with near breathless wonder; her playing rolls along like a dusty iron horse making time and destination unknown.
Beggs is no stranger to the twists and turns of the road. But it would seem that since Paean's release, she's shaken loose that perpetual rock in her shoe, having found solace in solving at least one of life's nagging personal riddles: She now knows music is in her blood. The revelation, like a slow train coming, took its sweet time.
Born in Val d'Or, Quebec, and raised in mining towns, Beggs was constantly on the move across the country's great expanse. Consumed with the persuasive power of song, Beggs, with her guitar in tow, eventually wound up in Whitehorse.
"I just felt drawn to the certain rawness of the reality there, and the extremes: the extreme cold and dark in winter and extreme light in summer. And the extreme sense of balance - if you've been a little selfish, not giving enough, you know it right away. If you're needy, it won't work for you there," she says. Naturally, Wanderer's Paean reflects that very dichotomy as it searches for a light in the darkness, beauty in the face of severity.
Though steeped in the old-time mountain music of the American South, her recent record nevertheless exudes a timeless quality throughout. Beggs - much like Iris DeMent, with whom she shares much common ground - sings about the events unfolding around her: tales of a pioneer looking for a new home, or a weathered soul with cloudy eyes searching for comfort at the end.

Kim Beggs grew up in small-town Quebec and Ontario before ending up in Whitehorse, and her second disc (Wanderer's Paean) is full of intimate numbers about love, rivers, trains and family - tunes only a folkie living in a town of 22, 000 could write.
There's no shortage of hook-laden tunes that are perfect to play around a cottage campfire or during a late night alone at home, but it's the record's intimacy that makes this a great piece of Americana... er, Canadiana?
Beggs avoids muddying these delicate tracks, forgoing drums and complex instrumentation. Instead, she keeps things simple with just a guitar, one harmony and the occasional pedal steel or banjo.

Kim Beggs' latest album, Wanderer's Paean, is a reflection of the solace and success the Toronto-born roots musician has found in her present Yukon home. Undoubtedly, it's odd to hear about an artist picking up and moving away from Canada's musical epicentre but Beggs has done it for the sake of sincerity. Wanderer's Paean contrasts the lost, lonely feelings associated with Canada's unending stretches of land with those tight communal bonds that form between small-town dwellers. "Walking Down To The Station" opens the record, introducing listeners to Beggs's innocent, honey drizzled vocals while capturing the wandering traveller's carefree spirit. The same sauntering acoustics can be found elsewhere but "Lay It All Down" and "Ain't Gonna Work" put a bit of spice in their step, making for a couple of enjoyable hand-clapping tunes. If anything, Wanderer's Paean is one of the few roots records that has honestly, and so beautifully, captured Canada's rustic back roads.

The Whitehorse, Yukon music scene has produced a surprising number of quality artists in recent years, and quite a few of them have been lucky enough to have been produced by Bob Hamilton and to have had their albums released by the Caribou label. Unfortunately, Caribou is currently phasing out its operations, but the labels productions will remain available for the foreseeable future. Wanderer's Paean is Kim Beggs' second CD for the label, and ostensibly one of the labels last releases. It's another one that bears the stamp of Hamilton's impeccable taste. There's a stark quality to the sound that's partly reminiscent of old-time country, and Beggs' endearing voice brings out the best in her songs. Musicians providing support include Hamilton himself, and singer/songwriters and label-mates Anne Louise Genest and Kim Barlow on vocals and banjo, respectively. It's not surprising that Wanderer's Paean has been nominated for several awards in Canada. Everything about the album, from the songs, singing and production, to the album graphics is tastefully rendered.

From a mixed family, her feet in both Anglo and aboriginal worlds, Kim Beggs lives in Whitehorse in Yukon Territory. She grew up in Quebec and Ontario, but she's called remote northwest Canada her home for more than a decade and a half. When we were exchanging e-mails after I'd requested a review copy of her CD (this is her second; I haven't heard the first), she remarked casually that it was -22 degrees Fahrenheit in Whitehorse that evening, then added -- without apparent irony or humor -- that "it's a dry cold." Somehow, the bitter Minnesota night encircling me suddenly felt warmer. Her music richly endowed with sense of place, Beggs is a folk singer in the best old-fashioned sense. She mixes her own strong original songs with charmingly atypical arrangements of otherwise-familiar traditionals such as "Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow" and "All the Good Times are Past & Gone," plus a plain-spoken, seriously moving reading of Bill Monroe's meditation on love and death, "Close By." The arrangements are largely acoustic, an updated approach to the old-time string-band sound, which means fiddle, banjo, guitar and upright bass, of course, but also dobro, slide, pedal steel and lap steel. Her interesting voice -- difficult to describe (let me try anyway: a little girl's with an old soul) but not like anybody's I can easily relate it to -- embeds itself in the lyrics, confiding with blunt honesty some very dark tales without the cliches too often associated with such narratives. Most of her characters are victims of harsh circumstance -- poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, desperate rambling, wounds psychic and physical -- but they bear their burdens with stoicism and without self-pity. She traces their lives elliptically, which is to say she drops in at the apposite moment to provide color and detail while leaving the listener to fill in the stories between the verses. It seems evident at least one or two of these are true and pointed accounts of lost souls whom she knows and loves; no other reading of, for instance, "Heartache Shoes" is possible. The beautifully wrenching title song plays on "paean," a word used interchangeably with "pain." Perhaps less cosmically, her "Feel a Little Glum" -- were this a just world and, say, I my own grandpa -- would be a bluegrass standard. Wanderer's Paean is the full-bodied, fully realized statement of a major artist. One might compare Beggs broadly -- only broadly -- to Iris DeMent or Gillian Welch, but a more accurate comparison might be to a young Sara Carter, if Sara Carter had lived and sung in a much colder climate. I am certain, at the very least, that Carter would be more than pleased with what Beggs has made of her 1928 recording of "Ain't Gonna Work." Wanderer's Paean is the full-bodied, fully realized statement of a major artist. One might compare Beggs broadly -- only broadly -- to Iris DeMent or Gillian Welch, but a more accurate comparison might be to a young Sara Carter, if Sara Carter had lived and sung in a much colder climate. I am certain, at the very least, that Carter would be more than pleased with what Beggs has made of her 1928 recording of "Ain't Gonna Work."

"Kim Beggs is another wonderful singer/songwriter from the Yukon's emerging music scene. Bob Hamilton produced her recently released Streetcar Heart (Caribou Records), and it features Beggs' wistful, iconoclastic lyrics and ragged, sweet whisper of a voice backed by a crack northern studio crew. Such songs as Carry My Guitar capture Beggs' blue-collar background and love of the local jam-session scene where the sun never sets. Bus Driver conjures up the darker side of the calendar year and hints at a California/Neil Young fixation that seems so real it hurts, but reaches fruition on her album-capping reading of Young's Like a Hurricane. Much of Streetcar Heart has an old-time, wood smoke country feel, folk art that cuts to the core on songs like Beautiful where Beggs warbles "Amazing and beautiful/She'll cover your eyes with wool/and if you let yourself see her/ you'll get something you won't have to give back." Neil Young, Iris Dement, Gillian Welch, the McGarrigles... add Kim Beggs to that exalted list of unpretentious charmers. Streetcar Heart's hook-laden, homey songs get stuck in your heart, and that's a good thing."

Yukon resident Beggs is a masterful writer of engaging personal narratives that evoke place and time in a manner of the finest folk traditionalists. Blessed with a fascinating, sweet voice, surrounded by the distinctive and careful instrumentalists--bassist/producer Bob Hamilton, accordionist Andrea McColeman, fiddler Moritz Behm, and pedal steel guitarist Gene Brown, among others--Beggs conjures up a rugged northwest peopled by battlers whose quirky resilience makes these story songs a compelling listening. Standouts are "Old Pal", "I Carry My Guitar," "Her Big Yellow Backhoe," the title track, and a live version of Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane".