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February 15, 2012
Chrissy Crowley is a fiddler on the go
Laura Jean Grant, Cape Breton Post
Busy year
ahead as Margaree musician tours
and prepares to record new album
SYDNEY —
Chrissy Crowley’s phone has been ringing plenty over the
last few weeks and 2012 is shaping up to be a busy year of
travel, touring and new tunes for the talented fiddler.
The
Margaree native has been keeping pretty busy with local gigs
over the winter months, but things will kick into high gear
in the next few weeks, with trips to Cuba, the eastern
United States, and Europe in the works for the spring and
summer.
She’ll do
two tours to the eastern U.S. over the summer, sharing the
bill at various points with Darren McMullen, Colin Grant,
Sprag Session, and Rachel Davis. She’s also set to perform
at BBC’s World of Music Arts and Dance Festival in England
with Cape Breton bagpiper Kenneth MacKenzie; at the Festival
Interceltique in Lorient, in Brittany, France; and at a
high-profile event in Ireland in June.
“I’ll be
doing the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention over in Ireland
and that’s really exciting because the Chieftains will be
performing and a couple of pretty major Celtic acts so I’m
really hoping I’ll get to brush shoulders with them and get
to play in front of them maybe,” said Crowley.
But up
first in April, is a return performance at CeltFest Cuba in
Havana, Cuba, and a trip to Moncton, N.B., for East Coast
Music Week, where last year she was nominated for
instrumental recording of the year.
Crowley —
who plays with Jason Roach on piano, and either Darren
McMullen or Ian Hayes on guitar — is also set to return to
the recording studio in 2012, to work on a followup to her
2010 album “The Departure,” and her debut, self-titled
album, released in 2007.
“We just
kinda decided recently that it was time to go back in, so
there is no timeline on it. We’re not sure when it’ll be
done, if it’s going to take three months or three years, but
we are going back in (to the studio),” she said.
Crowley
said “The Departure” featured several traditional tracks and
a few acoustic contemporary ones, an area she’d like to
explore more in her next album.
“There
will still be the straight-up traditional ones here and
there, but we’d really like to focus on showing the musical
creativity a little more and getting to incorporate a couple
more genres here and there, all the while maintaining that
Celtic acoustic sound So there won’t be drums or bass, but
there will be lots of melody instruments like pipes, and
fiddle, and flute, and banjo and mandolin and whatever comes
to mind,” she explained.
People
looking to catch a Crowley show before she hits the road,
have several opportunities. Her upcoming performances on the
island include Saturday at 9 p.m. at the Cedars Club in
Sydney with Colin Grant and Jason Roach, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m.
at the Cape Breton Fudge Company on Prince Street in Sydney
with Cape Breton singer-songwriter Jason MacDonald, and Feb.
26 at 2 p.m. at a ceilidh at Daniel’s Pub, located on
Charlotte Street in Sydney.
Crowley,
who now lives in Sydney, said she’s happy to be living in an
area where musicians are so supportive of each other and
where there are always opportunities for collaboration.
“Sydney
has such an incredible music scene, everybody is so giving
and everybody just wants to play music with each other,
that’s the sum of it all,” she said. “When you’re getting a
little bit in the slumps of writing and you feel like your
musical creativity is going out the window, all you have to
do is go to open mic or a session and just watch everybody
else, and it’s just a reminder that there’s a reason why you
started doing this in the first place and you feel a little
better.”
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