H
ailing from the northern British Columbia community of Burns Lake, singer-songwriter and acoustic slide guitarist extraordinaire, Rachelle van Zanten is returning to Salmon Arm with her special blend of blues, folk and seriously guitar-shredding slide guitar on Friday, Sept. 21, 7 p.m. at the SAGA Public Art Gallery.
A lot of fans will remember van Zanten’s blistering slide guitar as well as her throaty voice from her performances on stage at the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival a couple of years back … they’ve been eagerly awaiting her return engagement ever since.
Van Zanten’s musical history is as varied as her music itself. Growing up in northern BC, she sang in her church choir, took piano lessons, played drums and trumpet in the school band and played guitar with her family in gospel, bluegrass and old-time country jams. At the age of 18, van Zanten heard the slide guitar stylings of Lester Quitzau while attending a local festival, and from that day on, has made slide guitar a focus of both her songwriting and performances on stage.
Van Zanten’s abiding love of the natural world and her deep desire to protect it can certainly be heard in her song lyrics, which she says these days are often inspired by the environment, politics and/or the events which sometimes arise from northern people’s concerns about the area where they live.
When not hiking, running or riding horseback, she spends the rest of her non-musical time fighting forest fires or working with tree-planting companies – staying as close to nature as possible.
As one of the front women for Painting Daisies, van Zanten has toured widely. Van Zanten and her band won Entertainers of the Year for the 2001 Prairie Music Awards. In 2003, she penned Walking Home Lately, the song which would win her top prize in CBC’s Great Canadian Music Dream competition.
More recently, inspired by images of Tahltan women blockading Shell Oil in defence of the sacred headwaters in northern British Columbia, van Zanten wrote My Country. She performed the song at the Iskut Music Festival a year later, where she filmed one of a number of videos that can be seen on her website: www.rachellevanzanten.com.
Over the last three years, she has shared the stage with the likes of Colin Linden, Ellen McIlwaine, Sonny Rhodes and Alison Brown. She has performed with Feist, Blue Rodeo and Clarence Gatemouth Brown, among others, and consistently toured, both with her band and as an acoustic solo artist throughout Canada, the UK, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, India and Nepal.
As busy as she is, van Zanten finds the time to produce the Rocker Girl Camp, western Canada’s music camp for aspiring young women musicians.
Those who are already fans, as well as everyone who comes out to see her for the first time, will be drawn in by van Zanten’s lyrics, blown way by her amazing guitar playing and captivated by her raw acoustic energy. As an added bonus, singer-songwriter, guitarist and show promoter Ted Crouch will be taking the stage, after too long a hiatus, to open for van Zanten.
Tickets are available at Blue Canoe Bakery and Café.
Advance tickets are $15 and $20 at the door. There are a limited number of tickets available.
