Sweet Cowgirl

Shiloh Lind­sey and cat. Pho­to­graph by Tina Kulic.

Shiloh Lind­sey is the sweet­est cow­girl you will ever meet. Her steely voice holds steady even when lilt­ing over her deep­est heartaches and hang­overs. Lindsey’s music is no top 40 — it is coun­try in its most raw and pure form.

Born in Alberta and raised on a ranch, Lindsey’s fam­ily moved to McBride, B.C. when she was eight. Lind­sey describes a run-in from her farm days that exem­pli­fies her long his­tory of learn­ing the hard way, “We got in trou­ble by old man Froese… He owned some prop­erty and he had just seeded. I don’t know what they were grow­ing but we went out, drunk teenagers in the car, and did donuts. He came out and grabbed [my friend] by the throat and said, ‘You’re fuckin’ with my shit!’ Farm­ers – don’t fuck with their shit.”

It was at this time that Lind­sey started her musi­cal endeav­ors. She began singing at age ten and bought an elec­tric gui­tar when she was four­teen. “I got a lot of encour­age­ment from my friends and sib­lings — three older broth­ers and an older sis­ter. I could’ve totally sucked but I was their younger sis­ter so they were like, ‘you’re awe­some!’ Mean­while, every­one else is plug­ging their ears,” laughs Lindsey.

Lindsey’s first show took place in Dun­ster, on the out­skirts of McBride. “I think I per­formed half the song and had to walk off­stage because there was a boy I had a crush on in the audi­ence so I thought, ‘to hell with that! I’m outta here!’” Lindsey’s inter­est in the instru­ment faded until her older brother handed down his acoustic guitar.

In 1998, Lind­sey moved to Smithers and briefly joined a band called “Fiz­zgig” after a crea­ture in the “Dark Crys­tal.” Through­out the group effort, Lind­sey learned that she prefers to work on her musi­cal ven­tures alone and within the year she returned to solo gigs and moved west once again to Vancouver.

Raised on the likes of Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival and Hank Williams, Lindsey’s music first fell into the alter­na­tive folk vein before revert­ing to what she knew best. “I lis­tened to a lot of Sinead O’Connor and Kate Bush…and then I started writ­ing coun­try. I was sort of against the whole genre and then I just started pen­ning it and it’s been that way ever since. I just absolutely love coun­try. Top 40 coun­try, on the other hand, unfor­tu­nately, gives the genre a bad name. There are totally dif­fer­ent sec­tions of country.”

Lind­sey cites Lucinda Williams and Tift Mer­ritt as mod­ern heroes while her dad’s influ­ence remains strong. “’My Favourite Cow­boy’ is about my dad,” says Lind­sey as she points to the acoustic gui­tar on her man­tle with his photo shel­lacked on the back. “Mur­der bal­lads are one of my favourite songs to write. I think the first song that’s going to go on the new album is a mur­der bal­lad. ‘Hell in the First’ on [For Your Smoke] is writ­ten from the victim’s point of view from a chain­saw massacre.”

Although Lind­sey resides out­side of country’s geo­graph­i­cal niche, she feels com­fort­able in Vancouver’s music scene. “When I first started out, I was open­ing for punk bands at Pub 340 and peo­ple were really recep­tive, for some weird rea­son. I guess because coun­try might be the orig­i­nal punk, this is what peo­ple say – three chords and the truth.” When asked if she ever wants to migrate south, Lind­sey responds, “All the time! It’s like, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ Although, [Van­cou­ver] is a nice place to come back to. It’s home.”

All this time, Lind­sey has been finan­cially back­ing her records work­ing self-described dead end jobs and work­ing her way into per­sonal debt. “I put [For My Smoke] on my line of credit and then after­wards I couldn’t pay it and had to declare bank­ruptcy. I don’t know if you can print that but thank you, Canada Trust, for pay­ing for my last record!”

Sweet Cow­girl. Pho­to­graph by Tina Kulic. (http://tkphoto.ca)

Lind­sey excit­edly delves into a dis­cus­sion about her new record, “It’s called ‘West­ern Vio­lence and Brief Sen­su­al­ity’ and I got that from watch­ing ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’. It gives you that warn­ing at the begin­ning when nowa­days it’s ‘warn­ing: vio­lence, nudity, drug use,’ and so on.” She praises her back­ing band on this project, “being a solo artist you’re always hir­ing whomever you can – they come and they go, but now I have a solid lineup.”

When asked about her hopes for the record she describes them as plen­ti­ful. Her two stand­out goals are to “get some roy­al­ties to pay for the damn thing” by hav­ing her songs on shows such as “Heart­land” and to sig­nif­i­cantly increase her show sched­ule. “I def­i­nitely want to tour more but I’ve been afraid. I’m shy and it’s hard for me to tell peo­ple, ‘I want this, I need this from you.’ When you’re sen­si­tive or what­ever you just have to build up the cal­lous. Although I haven’t had to tour on a con­stant basis, and I’m sure it’d be a hard road as well, it’s some­thing my heart wants to do.”

Shiloh Lindsey’s CD release is June 10 at the Anza Club. Learn more at shilohlindsey.com.

Her first CD “For My Smoke” and her EP “Tired of Drink­ing” are avail­able online and at Red Cat Records.

– Rebecca Slaven