An ensemble of northern performing artists from the NWT, Yukon and Nunavut, called the New North Collective, is celebrating the release of a new album with a Canada-wide tour.
The group includes two Yellowknifers: composer and performer Carmen Braden and her uncle Pat Braden, a spoken-word artist and bassist.
The idea for the collective was first discussed in the early 2010s between Pat and Whitehorse music booking agent Debbie Peters. Pat said the two talked about “how it would be really cool to put together a northern show” uniting musicians from the three territories, performing and writing music as a collective.
That group came to be in 2015, calling itself the Circumpolar Soundscape. Pat was an original member of the group, while Carmen joined during its second writing session in Burwash Landing.
As the group grew and evolved, with some changes in members, it adopted current name New North Collective.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
Members alongside Pat and Carmen include:
- Sylvia Cloutier, a throat singer and drum dancer from Nunavut and Nunavik;
- Diyet, a singer-songwriter from Kluane First Nation;
- Graeme Peters, a guitarist and songwriter from the Yukon;
- Selena Savage, a trombonist and singer from the Yukon;
- Robert Van Lieshout, a percussionist from the Yukon; and
- Eric Reed, a multi-instrumentalist from BC.
They are joined by Greenlandic guests Jan de Vroede and Nive Nielsen. De Vroede brings “a level of European weirdness to the band that I cannot get enough of,” Carmen said.
Bringing together musicians from Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Greenland is no small feat. Months and sometimes years can pass between the group meeting up.
“It takes an enormous amount of time and energy, patience, to be able to coordinate,” Pat said. When they’re performing, “there’s nine of us on stage. It’s sort-of like moving a circus from town to town.”
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
Many of the members have music careers independent of the group. Playing together offers something different for them.
Carmen described that sensation as a “lightening of the pressure that I feel with my own solo projects, because we’re sharing the workload and doing things that are supporting each other’s work.”
“But then we get to play these tunes that we’ve all written together that have genres I might not be so familiar with or do on my own,” she said. “Lots of curiosity and fun happens.”
The group has toured in Greenland, had a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and played at festivals across Canada.
In 2018, they met in the Yukon for a gig at the Dawson City Music Festival. After the festival, they “took over” Debbie’s house in Whitehorse and turned it into a recording studio. With help from their friend and producer, de Vroede, they recorded 10 songs over about 10 days, making an album that would be called Road Warriors.
Road Warriors was initially slated for a 2018 release, to be accompanied by an extensive tour, but it got pushed back. Then the pandemic hit, meaning a much longer pause.
The group is back on tour now with seven shows planned in February across Alberta, Ontario and New Brunswick. Seven years after recording the album, they finally got to release Road Warriors on January 31 this year.
“I think that audiences across the country are curious about different parts of northern Canada and, depending on where they are, they may feel more of an affinity to one part than another,” Carmen said.
To her, having people in the group from a wide range of places allows audiences to connect with “the idea of north in different ways.”
“It’s pretty exciting to be able to come together again after so long,” said Pat, “but also to combine that with releasing the album at the same time.”
