After a series of flights, totalling over 13 hours and taking her over 6,000 kilometres, singer/songwriter Allison Crowe is finally home.
“It’s always nice to be home,” Crowe said. “This is a yearly thing that I do now. I get to see all my friends and family and I am really excited.”
Crowe, who resides in Corner Brook, N.L., will be performing at St. Andrews Church on Dec. 14. The Nanaimo native is currently on her first tour of the year, which will also see her perform in Victoria.
“This is my first tour all year,” Crowe said. “I am really excited to get back to performing. I did one show in Corner Brook last Saturday and that was my first full show that I have done all year.”
Crowe is no stranger to performing throughout North America and around the world. The Corner Brook resident has previously performed across Europe and says there is no one particular place that she enjoys playing in.
“I just like performing anywhere and everywhere,” she said. “I always love coming home to Nanaimo and I love doing shows in Corner Brook because I basically have two homes, but I love playing everywhere.”“Out of all the stuff I do, the writing, the recording, performing is my favourite thing to do,” she added.
Crowe’s musical journey began at an early age. Her first public performance came when she was just six years old.
“I was lucky that I grew up with a lot of people in my family and extended family that were musical,” Crowe said. “I always had it around me. There were great music programs in the schools and I had great teachers.”
Crowe then began performing in bars and coffee shops. When Crowe reached her early 20s she was offered a record deal from Bardic Records. However, she turned it down because she felt it restricted her creative and artistic abilities.
“I am pretty hard headed when it comes to my own creative stuff,” Crowe said. “I want to be able to create and write what I feel, not what someone is telling me to feel.”
“I am glad I went the way I did,” Crowe added.
Since then Crowe hasn’t looked back. The songstress has released more than 10 albums and launched her own record label, Rubenesque Records.
“The hard thing is growing up you think that you play music, you get the record deal and then that’s it,” she said. “But that’s not really necessarily that way and it doesn’t have to be that way, either. The way I’ve done it is more grassroots and maybe a bit more of a slower build.”
“I’ve personally found it rewarding,” she added.
Crowe’s most recent album, Heavy Graces, was released to iTunes in October.
“It’s just a mixture of a couple of songs that I went back to over the years and a couple of new songs that I wrote,” she said.
The Newfoundland resident, along with her music, was featured in the 2013 summer blockbuster Man of Steel.
“I had never done anything like that before in my life,” Crowe said about the filming.
Prior to the filming, Crowe signed a confidentiality agreement, which restricted her from telling anyone outside of her close family about her upcoming appearance in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.
“The filming of it alone was an amazing experience for me,” she said. “It was fantastic and I got to go see the premiere of it in New York.”
In the film, Crowe makes a cameo appearance where she performs ‘Ring of Fire’ by Johnny Cash. The scene was filmed at The Cassidy Inn Pub in Nanaimo.
“It was really cool because at the same time I got to come visit family and friends,” Crowe said.
For more information on Allison Crowe visit www.allisoncrowe.com