In a couple hours Haley Blais will step onstage at a Toronto club for her first performance of Canadian Music Week, a showcase of new music for the public and industry.
She has a week of almost daily concerts ahead of her, but right now she has the “inevitable tour sickness” so she’s taking a nap.
“I haven’t really overthought whether or not this is a pretty big deal, even though I’m sure it is. I like to repress a lot of things,” the Vancouver-based singer-songwriter said.
Blais is currently on tour supporting her poppy new EP, Let Yourself Go. She’ll make her Nanaimo debut at the Vault on Saturday June, 2. It’s her first music recorded with a band: Brennan Doyle on drums and percussionist and Trevor Lang on guitar, bass and keyboards.
As someone who used to record with only a ukulele, Blais said her bandmates are helping her see her music in new ways and she’s eager to get back into the studio and continue experimenting once the tour is over.
“The inevitable shift from just me and myself on the ukulele to a full-band sound was something I really wanted to achieve and I’m really glad that we made it happen,” she said.
“And now that I’m just touring with a full band I can’t imagine myself ever going back to just a solo kind of stripped-down version of myself.”
Audiences have been responding to Blais’ new sound, with the EP’s lead single, Small Foreign Faction, topping 100,000 online stream within weeks of its release. Blais said its gratifying to find that her audiences already know all the words to her new songs.
“Being on this tour and being able to play them live almost every night is just really fun and seeing people learn the songs and sing them back is really something I’ve never really experienced before,” she said.
“If I just stop and put the mic to the audience, they’ll sing them back.”
Blais said she sees her music as her child, and since first releasing her ukulele tunes on YouTube five years ago, that child has grown into a young adult. Even though she’s now performing at Canadian Music Week, she said that people are relating to her music is all she can ask for.
“Of my greatest honours is – it’s a small honour – but just being on someone’s playlist … because that’s the kind of music that you just always want to listen to,” she said.
“So I’ve been getting those kind of [comments]. Things like, ‘I’m putting Let Yourself Go on my road trip playlist.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I made it.’”
WHAT’S ON … Haley Blais performs at the Vault on Saturday, June 2 at 8 p.m. Tickets $10.
arts@nanaimobulletin.com
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