After a few years spent performing with a group, Lindsey Walker found her own voice and ran with it.
It has worked for the Winnipeg-born singer-songwriter, who has been turning heads in the music scene in Edmonton, where she now lives, and beyond.
“I had been writing and performing and touring with other musicians. I just felt it wasn’t purely my words and my voice that were coming out,” Walker told OrilliaMatters. “I wanted to challenge myself to investigate what I would write from my own heart.”
Since going solo in 2012, she has been voted Best of Edmonton Solo Artist by Vue Weekly (2017) and has been nominated for Female Artist of the Year for this year’s Edmonton Music Awards, which will be held in June.
St. Petersburg, a song from Walker’s sophomore album, This Desolate Bliss, earned her a spot as a semifinalist in the Canadian Songwriting Competition. Window, a track from the same album, was nominated for Indie Rock Recording of the Year at the Edmonton Music Awards. A year after she went solo, she was recognized as an “Artist to Watch” at the awards.
The awards and nominations have helped get her name out among the local scene and across the country, but that’s not why she does it.
“It’s kind of like your parents telling you they’re proud of you,” Walker said of the recognition. “I write music to express myself, and if people enjoy it, that’s awesome, but the idea of objectifying art and having awards, I find a little strange.”
While she has been touring across the country, she has yet to make it to Orillia. That will change May 17, when she plays The Brownstone Café.
“It’s a difficult jaunt as a western Prairie musician,” Walker said of touring Ontario.
It’s worth the effort, though. In 2015, she drove to Toronto and other areas of southern Ontario, as well as Quebec and the Maritimes.
“It’s a process of building connections and building familiarity with the areas,” she said. “It’s still a gamble to get people out to see someone maybe they haven’t heard before.”
It’s no secret folk music is a favourite in Orillia. But what about “doom-folk,” as Walker describes her sound?
“The tone of my music and some of the lyrics take on a sort of doom-and-gloom aspect at times,” she explained, “but there’s always a tone of hope in the songs. I am a very optimistic person.”
That approach is obvious on her latest album, as well as her debut EP, Our Glory. A similar mixture of emotions can be found in the music and lyrics of some of her influences, including Kathleen Edwards and Leonard Cohen, with Walker admiring the latter for his diversity of themes: “love, sex, religion — things that are greater than us,” she said.
Walker is excited to introduce her material to a new audience in Orillia, sharing songs and stories from This Desolate Bliss.
“I’m proud of the album. It’s a good snapshot of where I was in time when I recorded it and, kind of, where I still am,” she said. “(The songs) all felt like they belonged together.”
Find out more about Walker at lindseywalkermusic.com.