A Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist and drone-folk artist who grew up on the Island will play Nanaimo for the first time in more than a decade.
Gillian Stone has two shows booked this month; the first at Nanaimo’s Vault Café on Jan. 14, and the second at Time and Space Continuum in Duncan on Jan. 21.
While visiting family, Stone said now felt like the appropriate time to reintroduce herself to the Island after so long.
“It took me a long time to get to a place where I felt like I was proud of what I was making, which has only really started happening in the last three years … and now I’m really excited. It’s like ‘now the time has come,’ and I’m really looking forward to it,” she said.
Stone moved to Toronto in 2012 to complete a master’s degree in ethnomusicology – the study of music from cultural and social contexts – two years after graduating from Vancouver Island University with a bachelor of arts in jazz studies. In the six years she lived in Nanaimo, the musician performed at the Cambie and Acme Food Co., but said she has never played the Vault Café before.
“I’m excited because it’s become such a fixture now, and such a neat venue.”
At the Nanaimo show, Stone will share the stage with Monica McGregor, also known as Truth, whom she’s never met before and only followed through social media.
“We have very similar stories … We both struggled with alcohol and all that kind of stuff and talk openly about that in our music… And I thought that would be a really cool show to collaborate on together … I have a very good gut feeling about it.”
Stone also considers the two Island shows as a “mini-release tour” for her latest album, Spirit Photographs, which released in mid-November.
Spirit Photographs is a concept album that expresses Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief theory.
The concept for the album, Stone said, came about as a grant application for the Canada Council for the Arts, which she ended up really liking as she reflected on the material.
Linearly following the theory, the album’s opening song, June, explores denial; Amends explores anger; Raven’s Song explores bargaining; a cover of Black Sabbath’s Solitude explores depression; and the final song, the Throne, explores acceptance.
“It’s less about the loss of someone and more about the loss of self,” Stone said. “It’s also the loss of certain relationships … people entering and exiting life and just managing emotional regulation throughout that, and staying sober throughout that. And trying not to lose self in other people, in emotional dysregulation.”
The global grief and collective trauma brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic is also reflected in Spirit Photographs.
“The world was in grief, and you could see the stages of grief throughout the pandemic – you could see how angry people were getting, and how depressed people were getting,” Stone said. “For me, songwriting is born out of big feelings. And it’s often born out of going into almost an alternate place and another world … It’s like a really sacred way to process feelings … a way to process uncomfortable feelings and psychosocial discomfort in a safe space.”
Although Spirit Photographs just released late last year, the musician is already planning her next album which will focus on her Icelandic heritage and examine generational trauma and defiance of gender roles.
Doors for Stone’s Nanaimo show on Jan. 14 open at 8 p.m. with tickets $10 at the door.
READ MORE: Nanaimo musician releases debut album of ‘emotional’ rock-jazz music
mandy.moraes@nanaimobulletin.com
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