”Canadiana” is the word of the day.
The term “Americana” is used to describe various offshoots of American folk music that involves stringed instruments, but what if the band is Canadian?
”We’re pan-North American,” says Allison (Alli) Russell of the band Po’ Girl. The band was formed in 2003 in Vancouver, B.C., by Russell and Be Good Tanyas member Trish Klein. Neither of them were from Vancouver, but the band has always kept its roots in that area.
Now, more than ever, Po’ Girl has become more spread out. For the whopping seven weeks every year that the band isn’t touring, its members spend their time from Vancouver to Chicago, Olympia, Wash., to Montreal, and Colorado to Toronto. In fact, it turns out that a band that tours between 250 and 300 days a year doesn’t even bother paying rent on an unused apartment. Three-quarters of the band rents storage lockers and takes advantage of the off-time to stay with friends, family and partners.
Considering how much time Po’ Girl spends touring, and that not everyone can stand a life on the road for long periods of time, the band has a pretty permanent membership, right now. Klein left the group in 2007 after what Russell says was an amazing trip to Cameroon, in western Africa, where Klein got sick and never had much of a chance to recover, due to the heavy touring. Klein remains a member of the Be Good Tanyas, which doesn’t tour often, and now grows buckwheat and raises bees, “which I think is very cool,” adds Russell.
Po’ Girl is now rounded out by multi-instrumentalists Awna Teixeira and Benny Sidelinger, and drummer JJ Jones, who occasionally tours with other bands, as she is requested, but primarily belongs to Po’ Girl.
Russell, Teixeira and Sidelinger all switch between a number of stringed, woodwind and percussion instruments (acoustic guitar, banjo, dobro, washtub bass, accordion, clarinet, harmonica, keys, glockenspiel, bicycle bell, ukulele), but exclusively stick to Sidelinger guitars, built by the band member, himself.
As Po’ Girl prepares to head into a recording studio in late January, Russell laughs that the band broke all sorts of music marketing rules when they released two albums, this year. In May, they put out the studio album, “Deer in the Night,” and in July, they released “Po’ Girl Live.” The live album was a compilation of recordings primarily done in Berkeley, Illinois, and two stops in New Mexico, and acted both as a back catalog of the band’s material, and a hint of what they’re like in a live setting.
”We also wanted to capture some of the energy of the live show and the fact that we collaborate a lot with friends on the road,” says Russell. “That’s one of the things that keeps us inspired and keeps us going.”
Po’ Girl does most of its songwriting on the road (”We sort of have to, or the writing wouldn’t get done,” says Russell.), but Russell says she looks forward to a day and time when the band has the kind of money necessary to book studio time and mess around, like the Beatles did, when they created many of their masterpieces. Until then, though, Russell says they write prolifically and introduce the songs into the live set as they feel comfortable, allowing the tracks to “grow up in front of the audience.” It’s in a live setting that the band decides which songs are ready to be taken into the studio.
The next album will be released in waves, worldwide. It’ll come out first in the Netherlands, as the band tours there in April, then in the UK in May, and finally, it will hit North America in June.
Russell seems excited about the adventure of touring and recording, but lets on that the band is extra stoked on playing in Arcata this coming Tuesday, Nov. 17, as she says they stop through the area every time they tour up and down the coast (Sidelinger has friends around here), but they’ve never played a show here.
The show will take place at the Arcata Playhouse, an intimate venue in the old creamery building, on Ninth Street, between L and N streets, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 general admission and $13 for Humboldt Folklife Society members. They’re available in advance at the Works in Eureka and Arcata, and at Wildwood Music in Arcata.
A variety of tracks from Po’ Girl’s newest albums are available at www.pogirl.net .
