With new music, upcoming shows and more projects than we can count on the go, Whitehorse’s star singer-songwriter, comedian, clown and more is everywhere at once
“I have so many different projects and stuff, that sometimes when I release things I don’t have the time and energy to promote them, so I just put them out and move onto the next thing”
“I’ve been working on a few different projects,” says Claire Ness, of course meaning a lot of different projects.
There’s the Riverboat Review, a show about the days of the Yukon river boats through the turn of the century until the 1950s when they shut down. It’s a mixture of music and stories, where Ness led a workshop presentation on the S.S. Keno in Dawson City, though the show ideally would have taken place in Whitehorse on the S.S. Klondike.
“It was amazing,” she says. “It’s a little show I would be able to do at conferences for tourists; it could be done at whatever venue. It’s a musical review and it’s got that Gold Rush old-timey feel, with lots of fun and audience interaction.”
Then there’s her children’s entertainment work, which sees Ness going around to schools to perform music for young students, a string of upcoming festival appearances including a return to the Atlin Arts & Music Festival and a round of circus camps in Yukon communities coming up throughout the summer.
While speaking to What’s Up Yukon, though, Ness is on a family vacation visiting her husband’s relatives in New Brunswick, where they haven’t made a trip in seven years.
“It’s quite intense and emotional and beautiful and all the things,” she says. “I’m definitely inspired by a lot of stuff out here and do some creation, art shows, and things, and make a place for myself out here as well.”
These are only a few of the many things Ness has going on right now, and to say she always has a lot happening is still an understatement. She recently released a live album of her “Jazz in the Hall” performance from last year, and more recently, a new single title “Red Sails,” with a stop motion animation video that was shown in the Available Light Film Festival and the Dawson City International Short Film Festival.
“I have so many different projects and stuff, that sometimes when I release things I don’t have the time and energy to promote them, so I just put them out and move onto the next thing,” Ness says. “But I’ve always got stuff coming down the pipe.”
“Red Sails” is a personal song for Ness, about her own relationship and some rocky times it went through.
“It’s a song about your life or your love life being a little sailboat out in a storm and maybe it crashes and then you put it back together and maybe all your your cargo goes overboard and sinks to the bottom, sort of like a nautical metaphor for a love story,” she says.
“Because it’s a metaphor, it can mean different things to different people which I love about metaphors. This song is really close to my heart because my marriage went through some real rough patches and we’re doing well now but it was a song I wrote after not having written one in two years of a lot of turmoil.”
Not wanting to dwell on the heavy emotions explored in “Red Sails,” Ness has turned her creativity towards more upbeat songs that dive into Yukon lore and historic northern stories.
“The Jazz in the Hall album was very personal,” she says. “Now. I’m going more into humour and the lighter, cheeky side.”
Armed now with a small recording interface, Ness aims to do some home recording to create music with just her voice and guitar. She’s found some songs work better that way, and not everything needs to be a full band production, especially as costs go up for recording and other related services.
“I’m gonna just do a bunch of, I don’t want to say rough demos, but record a bunch of these songs that I haven’t ever released and maybe do just a me and my guitar album or something, because I just write so much,” she says. “I don’t want to spend all the time and energy to do big productions of it. It’s a lot of money too — mostly money.”
Ness is just as comfortable as a solo performer as she is a bandleader. While she’ll be doing some shows this summer with a band, she’ll also be playing as a solo act much of the time, including in Atlin, where the festival takes place July 11-13.
“It’s so exciting,” Ness says of the festival’s full return. “I didn’t realize it was going to be the big version again this year. I was expecting something similar to last year, which was a much smaller family fun fair.”Some things never change, and one thing Yukoners can always be certain of is that Claire Ness has more creative endeavours on the go than most people could handle. To keep up with Ness, visit claireness.com.
