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Western Canadian Music Award 2007 Nominee for Outstanding Solo Roots Album (Wanderer's Paean)! (WCMA)

Canadian Folk Music Award 2007 Nominee for Best New Artist! (CFMA)

Yukoner Kim Beggs’ infuses sweet old-time roots country with dark tales of Northern life

Whitehorse, Yukon may be a long way from the American south, but it’s notable for the same sort of hardscrabble lifestyle and unshakable sense of community that influenced early Appalachian music over a century ago.

It was that very sense of community that prompted Toronto transplant Kim Beggs to make her home there just over 15 years ago, and it’s that same sense of banding together in the face of adversity that has inspired her distinctive “sweet dark” old-time tinged roots music – a style that draws inspiration from old country and bluegrass, but which is unmistakably influenced by the expansiveness and desolation of the North.

Combining delightful acoustic arrangements with a voice that’s been described by Acoustic Live in NYC as a “cross between Nanci Griffith and Iris DeMent” Beggs reflects on the journey through life and death, the wanderer’s spirit and the loss of loved ones. Closer to home, she sings of the destruction of the Whitehorse shipyards and the struggles of a family member with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Yet for all the allusions to tragedy, the songs never sound “heavy” thanks to Beggs’ uplifting melodies. On her sophomore CD, Wanderer’s Paean, a who’s who of fine acoustic players fleshes out the lovely old-time sound. They include Handy Award-winning bluesman Rick Fines on guitar, Shania Twain accompanist Burke Carroll on pedal steel, The Creaking Tree String Quartet’s John Showman on violin, and another Yukon starlet Kim Barlow on banjo, as well as Anne Louise Genest and Natalie Edelson on harmony vocals. Tying the sound together is Juno-winning northern producer and member of bluegrass band Hungry Hill, Bob Hamilton (Kim Barlow, Jerry Alfred, Undertakin’ Daddies), who also plays dobro, mandolin and upright bass and sings harmony.

Wanderer’s Paean, released in the fall of last year, earned Beggs the 2006 Porcupine Award for “Find of the Year” and was named one of the Top 10 albums of 2006 by Doug Lang of Vancouver’s CFRO radio. The folk publication Penguin Eggs called it “a tasteful confirmation of a distinct talent” and declared "Lips Stained Red [with Wine]" “a contender for 'song of the year' by any reckoning.” Another song, “Walking Down to the Station” made it to the semi-finals in last year’s International Songwriting Competition, and “Shipyard Song” was featured in the CBC documentary “Shipyard’s Lament.” Wanderer’s Paean has been either in or near the top 10 Canadian albums at U.S folk radio since the beginning of this year, and from February through May it also charted in the Top 10 on the Galaxy Folk/Roots channel.

About Kim Beggs:

The theme of community is one that runs throughout Kim Beggs life and music. Born in Val d’Or, Quebec and raised in mining towns in Northern Ontario and later in Toronto, she is the second youngest of six children from a mixed-heritage household. Her parents adopted two children of Aboriginal ancestry giving Beggs a strong sense of connection to Aboriginal communities. Beggs studied Family and Social Relations at the University of Guelph and spent summers tree-planting in Northern Ontario and BC. In fact, it was the communal campfire sing-a-longs with her fellow planters that inspired her to start singing and playing guitar. She headed up to Whitehorse in the winter of ‘91 to teach herself her new instrument and visit with her sister for what was supposed to be just a couple of months’ vacation, but the Yukon’s strange combination of rawness and camaraderie grabbed her, and she never did go back to Ontario.

Beggs spent her first couple of years in Whitehorse working in a group home and working with the elderly – two occupations that exposed her to the hard reality of life in the north. She went on to establish herself as a carpenter – a trade she shares with two-time Juno-winner David Francey - while honing her guitar skills in her free time. Around the time she earned her journeyman carpenter papers in 2000, she began performing away from the campfire and writing her own material.

The very first song Beggs wrote, “Lowdown,” was featured as a hidden track on the Juno-nominated album Gingerbread, the second album by Whitehorse’s then-up-and-comer, Kim Barlow. Beggs’ own debut album, Streetcar Heart, came out in 2004, and earned praise from The Toronto Star, Now Magazine and the CBC’s Michael Enright among others. “Carry My Guitar” and “My Woes” were featured in the CBC Television series “Northern Town,” and a live version of “Gidyup Cowboy” was included on the CBC compilation CD TrulySomething2.

Beggs performs every Christmas on the Aboriginal People’s Television Network, and she recently co-wrote and recorded a song for a Yukon film about Dawson City. In addition to singing and songwriting, she also draws, paints, does sculpture and makes films.