Soaring harmonies, catchy original songs, foot-stomping fiddling, and it’s all coming to the MAC on Saturday, May 13.
Genevieve and the Wild Sundays is an all-female quintet that feature the award-winning songs of Vancouver-Island homesteading, guitar-playing mama Genevieve Charbonneau.
With songs that run from insightful love ballads to rollicking political hootenannies, the music of the Wild Sundays is rooted in old-time country, incorporating Eastern European folk, Americana, and indie-pop.
Charbonneau began crafting tales of love, loss and rural living while homesteading in the Cowichan Valley, in between raising her three sons, harvesting veggies from the garden and hauling firewood to fuel her earthen home.
In 2013, longing for vocal harmonies and instrumentation for her songs, she brought together long-time bluegrasser and fellow Balkan Babe Kelly Sherwin, vocalist/percussionist Laura Carleton, and Yiddish Columbia State Orchestra’s mandolin player Chandra Crowe to create the Wild Sundays.
Five-time North American fiddle champion and 2017 Juno winner Ivonne Hernandez is the latest addition, having joined the band in July 2016.
The package of players delivers a powerful and engaging live show, with songs that will stir your heart one moment, make you laugh the next, and wow you with dazzling instrumentation and spitfire lyrics.
Their new studio album Fine Line was released in May 2016 to critical acclaim. Fine Line was produced at One Ton Studios in Victoria.
Charbonneau’s debut album Updraft garnered a Producer of the Year Award for Marc Atkinson, and her song Farmer Ain’t in the Dell was nominated for Country Recording of the Year at the 2014 Vancouver Island Music Awards. Charbonneau’s song Down Down Down was a 2017 International Acoustic Music Award finalist.
Genevieve and the Wild Sundays have graced stages at Rifflandia, the Islands Folk Festival, and Butchart Gardens and have toured the west coast.
Their performance on Saturday, May 13 starts at 7 p.m. and tickets are $15 or $12 for OCAC members.
— Submitted by
the McMillan Arts Centre