Andy Siegel
Special to the Review
The Last Drop has two live music acts this Saturday with no cover charge, John Michael Lind will be playing the outdoor patio at 6:30 p.m. then She Hangs Brightly taking the stage inside at 10 p.m.
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She Hangs Brightly
This is a band that will demand your attention and draw you into their unique world of visual sound. With a strong female lead vocal, they boast a unique sound reminiscent of 1960s west coast psychedelia and the underground 90s alternative scene.
Their debut EP Wolf Moon was released in March 2019.
She Hangs Brightly was born within the musty, crumbling walls of ‘the stone room’ (the rehearsal space in the basement of a century old farmhouse) on a cold night in January, 2016 in Vernon, B.C. Appropriate beginnings for a band heavy with mood and a distinct sound of west coast psychedelia.
The band was started as a collaborative writing project between singer Eryn Kleyh and guitarist Dean Gordon-Smith (formerly of Redfish). Progress was steady but slow. Drummer Ken McGregor, a friend of Gordon-Smith’s with decades of playing time together, was added in spring of 2017. Things started to really move when Kleyh officially moved back to her hometown of Vernon, and bass player Luke Kowalski was added to the line up in November, 2017.
Driven by vocal power and emotional delivery, you can hear the influence of singers like Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick, early Tina Turner, the ever inventive Cat Power, moody Nancy Sinatra, and the band’s namesake Mazzy Star.
Instrumentally the band pulls from classics like The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The White Stripes and the ever-present Beatles.
Gordon-Smith’s organic and atmospheric playing style takes Kleyh’s original acoustic compositions to new levels. Lyrically you will connect with Kleyh’s personal journey as an artist, trials in love, true friendships and the struggles that come with trying to find your way back home. Instrumentally you will be transported to the lush landscapes of Western Canada by textured guitar that sparkles, a bassline you feel in your bones, and a drum beat to pound it all home. She Hangs Brightly is music you will experience with all of your senses.
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John Michael Lind
For JML music is all about truth and emotion. What you feel. What I feel. What we all feel. Music transports us, and the emotional journeys it takes us on are the real juice. JML’s soulful voice, his uncanny ability to plumb the depths of a song and sing out its essence and its core emotions are what set him apart. Like a method actor, JML inhabits a song, he wears it like a comfortable old shirt while at the same time baring all, tearing open his chest and sharing his heart and soul with the audience.
Accessible and powerful guitar playing drive behind a voice that smiles, soars and dances through the landscape of a song, making it real for the listener. As JML says: “I see music as a hologram, every little bit of which contains the whole picture. In music, the hologram is a slice of the artist’s life on display. Their exterior life or, more often, their interior life.”
Whether playing his own deeply personal songs, or playing songs by masters like Bob Dylan, John Prine, Steve Earle, Hank Williams, and Townes Van Zandt, JML puts music and words together in a way that produces a unique, satisfying, and unforgettable experience.
In concert, JML is surprisingly open and engaging for one who dives into the deepest parts of the psyche for material. He’s not an angsty, overwound performer. Even in the heaviest of songs there’s a current of light and hope coursing through the music that ultimately leaves you feeling a little more blessed in the world, a little more open to the beauty and majesty, a little closer to grace. And all this through simple, basic music played well.
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It’s easy to hear JML’s other influences: people like Neil Young, Jonathan Richman, TvZ, Leonard Cohen, Blue Rodeo, Van Morrison, Miles Davis, Tom Waits, Jerry Jeff Walker, David Byrne, and Rodney Crowell inhabit his songs in spirit.”
Raised a Prairie boy, JML is based out of Vancouver, and travels extensively throughout B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan as well as Vancouver Island.
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