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MEDIA/ARTICLES

New Artist At a Glance: Christy Vanden - Mark Allan 

April, 2017
Photos: Megan Sehn

Music and travelling have been and still are important parts of Christy Vanden’s life.

There’s more of both in her future.

 

Wielding her beloved Fender Stratocaster, the talented young B.C. guitarist raised by travelling musical parents will head back on the road soon, which is nothing new for someone who’s moved 18 times in 23 years.

 

She’s been busy getting her frets in order after making a jump to Vancouver with her partner from the musical hotbed yet small population center of the Comox Valley.

 

Vanden recently announced seven tour dates in a two-month period, beginning with a private corporate event May 6 in the Okanagan with Karen Lee Batten, who was a top-10 final­ist on Cana­dian Idol, and has been named the B.C. Coun­try Music Association’s Female Vocal­ist of the Year three times.

 

Vanden and Batten have also booked a private corporate event May 11 in Langley and on May 20 share a headline appearance at the Cloverdale Rodeo.

Vanden is performing twice May 21 with award-winning flamenco guitarist TL Douglas during the Cowichan Valley Wine-Art-Music Festival on Vancouver Island.

 

Although she recorded the CD Nineteen Hours with the trio She Could Be Trouble (nominated as Group of the Year at the 2016 Vancouver Island Music Awards), Vanden confesses she’s at an impasse with her debut solo recording.

“I’ve been at a stall with that for the last year just because I was on tour, and haven’t had the time to get that project done. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to get a Go Fund Me campaign started.”

 

Some financial help from fans she has acquired would allow her to buy some recording gear to properly record the album.

 

Regardless of financial constraints, lack of time remains a large obstacle to recording.

“I just finished putting up my website. I’m just doing my own artist development right now.”

Teaching music to pay the bills is another thing that keeps her busy. Reflecting her versatile playing in many genres that bely her age, she teaches pop, rock, country, jazz, easy listening, flamenco, blues and fingerstyle playing. 

 

Vanden has identified most of the songs she wants to record on her recording debut and intends her first album to be about 60 per cent singing and 40 per cent playing.

While Vanden often gets noticed first for her mature-beyond-her-years playing, her singing is immensely attractive. Her beguiling voice conjures a young Bonnie Raitt at her most poignant.

 

Vanden wants to record an EP that’s more generous than normal.

“Usually an EP is three to five songs. Because I have so many instrumentals, I don’t mind throwing in a few extra tracks like that. Right now, I have six or seven songs that are going to be on it.”

 

Choosing the title, Unexpected Road, was effortless.

“That one came to me pretty easily because my entire music journey has been a pretty unexpected music journey, and an unexpected road.

“And I took the name because I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan, so the unexpected journey, of course, is the hobbit where he’s taken out of a comfortable life and thrown into something that’s maybe a little bit beyond him. He acquires a joy for the travel aspect and the adventure.”

 

Her version of that began in a chance meeting with Comox Valley singer/songwriter/musician Brodie Dawson at a Courtenay music store, where Vanden later worked.

“When we met at Long and McQuade, I really wasn’t ready to get out on stage but … my life always seems to always unexpectedly turn into, ‘Here’s an opportunity for Christy. Maybe she doesn’t realize she wants it or needs it right now, but here it is.’”

 

Dawson added Vanden to her band for the summer of 2014. Their second show, at the 2014 Sunfest Country Music Festival main stage in Duncan, dealt with Vanden’s live performance anxiety in a trial by fire. About 40,000 music fans attended the festival.

 

Since then, she has played at about 100 Canadian tour dates, mostly with She Could Be Trouble, an excellent and versatile band led by Dawson with fellow former Yellowknifer Tracy Riley and Vanden.

Now Vanden has more gigs arranged as a new phase of her musical life begins to unfold. That, of course, is inseparable from the adventure of trying to make it in the big city after living in small towns.

 

“It’s been pretty full of different opportunities. I never expected … to be received as warmly as I’ve been received so far. Now things are really picking up for me.”

Now that she’s “got a bit more thinking and breathing room here in Vancouver, it’s definitely been a lot easier for me to switch my focus around to putting feelers out there and making connections.”

 

Expect to hear more about Christy Vanden. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to hear her appealing singing and wicked guitar playing.

 

Comox Valley freelance writer Mark Allan is a veteran journalist who has written for the All Music Guide. 

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