I met up with Aysanabee at Source Eco Hub in nipaluna / Hobart prior to his gig there with Australian musician Kim Churchill. We sat on a veranda shaded beneath a grapevine looking out to a flourishing vegetable garden chatting about the beautiful unfolding of his musical career. He tells a heartwarming and moving story about how his debut album, Watin, came to be. The album is named after his late grandfather and it includes interludes of his grandfather tellings stories. The interludes are spoken word recordings from phone conversations during the pandemic. In their conversations, Aysanabee's grandfather told stories about his time in residential school. The album was nominated for a Juno Award.
Early 2025, immediately after Aysanbee's performance at Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland, Kim Churchill invited Aysanabee to tour with him throughout Lutruwita / Tasmania trekking across the island in a lovely van. I’m still counting my lucky stars that I was at their Copping gig. I’ve fallen quite in love with Aysanabee’s deep rich soulful voice and am so thankful he said yes to catching up for a conversation before he headed back to Canada.
From his bio:
"Aysanabee is a multi-instrumentalist, producer and singer songwriter currently based in Toronto. He is Oji-Cree, Sucker Clan of the Sandy Lake First Nation a remote fly-in community in the far reaches of Northwestern Ontario. Solemn and soaring, backed by a swirling blend of indie, soul and electronic soundscapes, mournful saxophone and pulse-quickening finger-picking, Aysanabee’s striking sound is equal parts hypnotic and melodic which has been compared to Bon Iver, Matt Corby, Don Ross, Kim Churchill, Kings of Leon and Sam Smith."
