GALLERY MUSIC: Familiar musicians team up in new band to play Grand Forks

By Contributor

This new band, born around the campfire of the 2007 Artswells Festival in Wells, B.C., named Morlove is the creative collaboration of Corwin Fox and Miss Emily Brown, both dyed-in-the-wool songwriters and multi-instrumentalists. These familiar musicians bring their new folk sound to the Grand Forks and District Art and Heritage Centre (Grand Forks Art Gallery) at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 25.

Morlove is developing an authentic, yet experimental folk sound, blending autoharp, banjo, guitar, mandolin and hushed vocal harmonies. Lyrics range in theme from isolation and homelessness to seed technology and urban design, delivered in hushed, layered vocal harmony.  Morlove has just released their debut full-length album, All of My Lakes Lay Frozen Over.

After a year and a half of writing, arranging and gathering support, including a recording grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, Morlove returned to Wells in January 2009 to record their debut album. From the tiny, snow-covered Wells United Church came sounds of voices, banjo, guitar, mandolin, autoharp, vintage keyboards, flugelhorn, the upright bass of Tobias Meis and the melodic beats of drummer Jordy Walker (Kim Barlow, Buck 65, Tanya Tagaq).

Pieces on the album range from sparse, evocative folksongs with hushed vocal harmonies and delicate strings to explosions of horns, pulsing pianos and choirs of banjos in unorthodox time signatures. All the while, borrowed instruments from local attics and salons – including sousaphone, player piano, pump organ and typewriter – whisper the history of the 1930s gold-rush town.

“I think the music that prevails is unhurried and fully-developed, like tea left to steep for a long long time,” says Emily Brown.

Tickets for the Morlove concert (limited to 60) are available at the Grand Forks Art Gallery: $12 for Art Gallery members or $15 for non-members. To reserve your tickets, please call the Art Gallery at 442-2211. For more information about this concert, please call Kim or Zak at 442-3854.

http://morlove.ca/