Leading with her heart and a smile, the angel-voiced Miranda Journey, a singer since the age of eight, has been performing professionally since she was 16.

In 2018 Miranda came out with her debut acoustic EP Skin and Bones. Then she released a series of singles, leading to her first full length album, 2023’s The Art of Coping.

Miranda likes to let the integrity of each song spell out what her music is, and she recalls how a few years ago, fellow artist Shane Cloutier coined what she does as “new retro.” Which makes sense, Miranda having grown up in earshot of ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll courtesy her grandparents’ music collections.

A prevailing theme in her own music is the L word, and what she’s come to learn through heartache and self-discovery.

“When you feel safe within yourself and within the relationships around you, that’s when you start to understand what real love looks like,” says Miranda. “Staying inside of something even when it’s breaking two people down, that’s simply not love. It’s time to let go before you destroy each other.”

Miranda has a way of juxtaposing loss with hope, and creating counterpoint between sadness and the buoyancy of melody. In the opening cut of The Art of Coping, she transcends the feelings of drama and despair with the way she sings the melody. She says it came about enroute to the studio one day, listening to “One Fine Day” by the Chiffons, with its Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang and girl-group harmonies, and was inspired to play up the pop uplift of that, while paying tribute to what she’d gone through—what we’ve all gone through—in love and loss.

Playing such a big role in everything that she is and does, including her mental health and her music, says Miranda, is nature. “Every day I get up and out the door for a hike and it inspires me to be better.”

And while Miranda has made other places home, including Guelph and Vancouver Island, there’s a pull of family and friends and music makers near Blue Mountain. She calls this place “magical,” and talks of how the music and community here are so well-linked, healthy and cooperative. The music continues to be a huge part of her support system.

Her happy place as a musician, even more than on stage? The recording studio. Villa Sound Studio in Stayner, to be precise. With producer and owner Adam Fair, she’s found chemistry and the opportunity to fully realize the sounds in her head, in the songs she’s crafted.

What’s next? Finding her voice beyond the subjects of heart-wrench and the challenges of mental health, which she imagines will come from observation of other people’s stories and from collaborating within the music community. “I feel like my growth as a songwriter happens the most when I write with others,” she says.

Look for Miranda Journey performing all over Grey-Bruce and Simcoe County, and find out more at mirandajourneymusic.com.

Clue-chay. That’s how you pronounce Cloutier. Shane is an imposing figure, until he smiles. A gentleman through and through, who wields guitar with a competence beyond, writing and playing songs “based on life experience, perseverance and reflection.”

“When I was younger I didn’t know who I was,” says Shane. “I feel like a lot of music I came up with then was a matter of wearing reflectors, and how I was responding to things, but now it’s all about my experiences. Music has been my therapy—so much so that I’ve written songs never intended to come out, but simply as a matter of getting my thoughts out of my head”.

Shane’s former partner and the mother of his kids died seven years ago, an experience that left him with more questions than answers, so the music came as a kind of comfort and a matter of necessity.

It was Shane’s wife, Lydia, who encouraged him to record those songs. “I’m glad I did,” he says. “It resulted in the In Light album, and what happened was people reached out to thank me, because they could relate.” The feelings that came from the loss would comprise much of his first three albums.

These days, Shane is in a place of buoyancy and fun again. His recent song “We Used to Sit” reminds us of the playful ‘90s hit “Sex and Candy” and the guitar groove of, say, Alice In Chains or Stone Temple Pilots. There’s also a hint of so-called alt-country, to which he admits an affinity. Shane adds that it’s a song reminiscing about his teenage years in Orillia.

Shane’s growth has been a baptism by fire. And he’s found himself facing epiphanies, including that the days of playing other people’s music are over—with occasional exceptions. When he does sing other people’s songs, his tastes extend to artists like Rihanna, and The Smiths—her “Stay” and their “How Soon is Now” among them.

What does Shane care most about, beyond making music? That his kids (four in all, in the blended family) have the tools they’ll need to be independent humans.

And while he is a bit of a lone wolf, typically appearing as a solo artist all over the region, most often with an acoustic guitar in hand, there are also full-band projects on the horizon, in which he’d be happy to be the lead guitarist, rather than the frontman.
The reality of making a full-time living solely around music, for Shane, is versatility.

In 2023 he opened a music and game shop in Elmvale, called Jack’s On Queen. And he loves teaching. He taught three of the four members of the Orillia-born band Bleeker Ridge. He teaches ukulele to an online student in New Orleans. And—proof that old dogs can learn new tricks—one of his students is 74 and going strong with lessons.

Shane sees the music community in and around Georgian Bay as only getting better, as a rising tide lifts all boats.

Shane Cloutier knows the healing properties of music as well as anyone. But he likes to quote his mentor Frank Marino, the Montreal guitarist who was most often compared to Hendrix: “Remember to have fun, you’re not curing cancer.”

Find out more about Shane at shanecloutiermusic.com.

Southern Georgian Bay and music are synonymous with Craig Smith—a musical pathfinder focused on, in his own words, “putting musicians to work.” Himself a talented songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, performer, recording artist, producer, mixer and live sound engineer, Craig wears quite a few hats and is our go-to for all things music, from staging concerts and festivals to club shows, to street busking and jam nights.

To be a great musician and collaborator is to be a great listener, and that’s Craig Smith. You see it and hear it when he’s on stage adding just the right touch to other people’s music, and his own, with a warmth and honesty that permeates everything he touches.

Craig’s taste in music walks the line between the roots of rock and country, and the melody of pop.

As a kid Craig discovered his mom’s record collection and became obsessed with Neil Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Fleetwood Mac records. “At the heart of it is always the song. The melody, lyrics and sonic textures—that ‘vibe,’” Craig says. “I wouldn’t want to get boxed into one category, even though I understand some of the advantages of that. I mean, I love country music, but I also love Bowie.”

Craig’s home base is Collingwood on Pine Street, at Mad River Recording. Recent projects include new records from J.D. Crosstown and Kelly Jamieson, who Smith says is “a fantastic songwriter.”

“I love listening to music that I’ve worked on and hearing it sound as good as some of my favorite artists,” says Craig. “I had to learn as a producer to get out of the way of the song. It’s not about me, it’s about helping to make a song even better than the band or person might have imagined.”

Projects on the go for fall 2023 include finishing an album for the band Ontarians, of which he is a member, for release in the new year.

Craig is the artist in residence at Marsh Street Rocks in Clarksburg, his “rock school” with students of all ages. “We’re basically learning songs, in groups of five or six people, some who have barely played an instrument before. By the end of the first session, everyone’s playing an instrument, and playing a song. I love to just talk with the kids about what kind of music they like, and ask them, ‘What do you want to do? Do you sing? Well, let’s sing! Everybody pick an instrument!’”

As for Craig’s love for where he lives, “I thrive on the energy and love it here! It’s a special place in the world, Georgian Bay, a beautiful place to be, with some great places to get lost and do some thinking.”

Craig Smith is one half of The Happiness Mafia production company with Ariana Dalie, whose second annual Four Winds Music Fest at Riverstone Retreat in Durham goes July 12-14, 2024.

“Promoting live music for me is important because musicians need to be working,” says Craig. “And people need to be hearing music. It’s healing and it’s beautiful. And it brings us together.”

Find out more about Craig Smith at craig-smith.com.

Sylvie Kindree has incredible reach. She not only records and tours internationally as the front singer/rapper of the 12-piece brass funk beast My Son the Hurricane, she also sings with several other rock/funk/blues bands in Grey-Bruce, and has performed jazz, classical and rock songs as a soloist with choirs and symphonies.

Sylvie also co-wrote and performed a collection of songs about decolonization, with award-winning musician Mike Weir. She is deeply passionate about writing lyrics and delivering a message.

“I have a hard time actually writing a rap that isn’t very politically charged,” Sylvie says. “I’m a very radical person. And I love the reaction from the audience. When I see that they’re getting it and I’m talking about something really important, and they’re cheering, I’m like, ‘Okay, this is why I do this.’”

Sylvie is known for her highly physical stage presence, steeped in rawness and the dramatic. She credits her family, who put her in dance classes early. “I’m a performer first,” she says. “I don’t necessarily feel like I am a great singer. Performing is my thing. Drama, theatrics and using my body too. I can’t sing without moving.”

If there’s one name in music that has influenced Sylvie the most, it’s Betty “Nasty Girl” Davis, the controversial American singer, songwriter and model credited with giving her ex-husband Miles Davis his cool look. “Nobody sounds
like Betty Davis!”

My Son the Hurricane has evolved to the point that for most shows, it’s Sylvie going it alone behind the lead vocal microphone, singing and rapping.

“I kind of wormed my way in,” she admits of her audition with the band. “Instead of learning the one song that I was supposed to, I learned all the songs! And when I got there I said, ‘Just so you know, I know all the singing parts.’ So they let me do a bit more. The next morning, the guitar player, Chris Sipos, looks at me and says, ‘So are you coming with us to play our show tonight? Are you coming on tour with us?’ And I was like, ‘I’ll go home and pack my bag right now.’ I’ve played every show since.”

The collaboration with Mike Weir was a gift, she says. “We were married for 15 years and I can’t think of a better person to create music with. He dreams songs. Like the title track from the last Hurricane album, Ride the Bullet. He literally dreamed it up. And when he woke up, he went and recorded all the parts. I wrote the words, and helped with the music. I think it’s maybe the thing I’m most proud of, musically.

“I want people to know that we need to stand up and fight oppression. I have a degree in Indigenous Environmental Studies. So I think a lot about that. And I try to talk about whose land we’re on when we’re doing a show. We are settlers, and that’s a good word for us because a lot of us are feeling real settled. Like, we have to be allies, especially as white people—be an ally, not an asshole.”

Find out more about Sylvie Kindree at msthofficial.com.

Owen Sound-based Tara MacKenzie is a presence of passions. We first met at the 2023 Paisley Blues Festival, where Tara delivered a scorching performance fronting the MacKenzie Blues Band.

Surprisingly, blues wasn’t always her passion. “I wasn’t much of a blues person before I met (my husband) Trevor. It was in playing music with him that led me to find my voice in a blues context. The things that I really wanted to say didn’t completely fit pop. A turning point was when I went to a Buddy Guy concert. That broke me down and sent me diving into the blues.”

Tara has impacted countless other voices as a vocal coach, holding, as she puts it, “the operator’s manual to the core principles of being a singer. Because it’s mechanical and you do need a manual, but you also need a soul map to help you understand how to paint what is inside you with depth and color outside of your body through sonic tones.” Musicians she has helped include the Canadian singer-songwriters Lights and Samantha Martin.

Her own influences reflect her Irish heritage—her favourite singer Sinead O’Connor and “The Bob Marley of Ireland,” Damien Dempsey. “He’s fierce like a lion,” she says of Dempsey. “And he speaks truth about colonization, about nationhood, and personhood as an Irish person. That’s like a reflection of what I want to do. I have no reason to go out and do music other than to speak truths that I think people need—because I would really love to live in a healed world, as opposed to a tattered world.”

Locally, Tara’s impact is underscored by the Owen Sound Cultural Award for Outstanding Individual. Her studies in vocal performance and sacred music in Ireland, Hungary and Austria have significantly influenced her distinctive style, and complement her social justice and eco-awareness themes.

At home, minutes from Georgian Bay, the effect of this place is immense. Tara has written while sitting with her feet in the water, meditating about the songs to come. “Whether it’s from the Bay or the universe, being near and being in the water is almost as important to my spirituality as anything,” she says.

Tara and her husband Trevor started the MacKenzie Music Studio to serve artists in the area through teaching and recording, along with complementary practices like Bhakti yoga, gong work and drumming—all modes of what Tara calls “helping people show up for themselves.” Because, she says, finding your voice through music can be profoundly healing.

“When you study voice at a serious level, you will always be confronted with what’s inside you. Your traumas and your pain and your joy, they attach to your muscles or your organs. And sometimes you’re singing a song and it’ll pull the pin on the grenade, and now you’re facing it. But you’re already on the kite, you’re riding the kite. So when that emotion happens, you stop and crumble—or you keep going and you fly.”

Find out more about Tara MacKenzie at mackenziemusicstudio.com.