Alaskan folk singer Annie Bartholomew’s debut album, Sisters of White Chapel, is full of Yukon-inspired stories
Before taking on a Jenny House Residency in 2019, Annie Bartholomew had only visited Whitehorse once, on a school trip. The opportunity to work out of the Jenny House gave her the first non-stop weeks-long stretch in her life where she was able to focus solely on her music and art, without worrying about a day job, school or anything else. Out of her sessions at the Jenny house came her debut album and its accompanying stage play. Set for release on June 16, Sisters of White Chapel is a collection of songs inspired by old northern stories, particularly about the journeys of women who followed the gold rush.
“While I was at the Dawson City Museum, Alex [Somerville, executive director] showed me this book called Red Light Revelations, by Jay Moynahan, that was all these newspaper articles about women and sex workers during the Klondike Gold Rush, in Dawson and Skagway,” Bartholomew explained to What’s Up Yukon. “Reading through them just really got me thinking about that time, and the women who lived there, and the complexity of those stories. And then, of course, it’s filtered through the news of that time, and yellow journalism fuelled the Klondike Gold Rush; they were selling papers, so they wanted to write the most-sensational stories. So, we don’t know how accurate they were, but I feel like there’s elements of an emotional truth.”
Asked if it can be difficult to relate personal emotions to stories that aren’t personal to herself, Bartholomew had an interesting answer.
“I wouldn’t write the songs if I didn’t feel some kind of connection to them,” she said. “Even though I’m not a sex worker and I’ve never engaged in that line of work, I feel like there’s a lot of universal feelings and emotions and circumstances as a woman living in a capitalist system that drove these gals to make really hard choices out of survival.
“And so, even though my life isn’t their life or their reality, I feel like there are elements of any of these stories that can give someone courage or help them process trauma. Writing the songs kind of helped heal me.”
She may not be from the Yukon, but being a northern neighbour in Juneau, Alaska, Bartholomew can relate to Yukoners on a variety of life experiences, and like anyone who travels to the North with an instrument in hand, she felt herself extremely welcomed and well-supported by the Yukon’s music community, some members of which she’s since seen over in her state. She gives a special shout-out to Speed Control and Soda Pony, while expressing awe at the vast skill set of Ryan McNally.
“I think a characteristic of the small northern towns is that if you don’t create the culture yourself, you won’t have it,” Bartholomew said. “Everybody wants to support everybody. And I think everybody knows that.”
Along with Sisters of White Chapel, Bartholomew adapted a play to go around the songs, which has been performed in Juneau and will travel around Alaska this fall. Bartholomew hopes to break more into Canada and the Lower 48, as well, with a few shows in New York lined up for the summer.
“We’re playing Rockwood Music Hall, which is kind of where you first play as an artist coming to New York, and then the Jalopy Theatre, which is where they have a lot of folk shows and world music,” she said. “It’s kind of a dream to get to play these two venues.”
While COVID slowed down the process of creating her magnum opus and forced Bartholomew to abandon some plans to bring musicians from farther away, to work on the record with her, she’s immensely proud of the final product and thankful for the team she has helping her along.
“During COVID, at least in Juneau, people were not playing shows at all,” she said. “Usually, if you go into the studio, you’ve toured the music, you’ve figured out the arrangements, you’ve practised them together. And for us, it was a group of my friends. I’d planned to import some musicians from Lower 48, who I really love, but because of COVID we didn’t want to bring anyone north and expose them to small communities. The only place available to record an album was this cabin here in Juneau, and I invited all my friends.
“We were able to record two songs a day because we’d sit down with the pieces and then talk about the arrangement and debate them, because someone’s idea of what a folk song sounded like was not someone else’s idea. We learned the arrangements the day of and then recorded them the day of, and there was pretty limited overdubs. But it was seven days of recording; it wasn’t as fast as I think a lot of my peers get done. And that was just a feature of COVID. But it was really cool to have all Alaskans on it. In my dreams, I would have had Canadian musicians on it, but with border stuff that wasn’t possible.”
In continuing on her musical journey, Bartholomew hopes to make it out to other small towns with vibrant artistic communities and said that a tour of American mining towns would be a dream for her.
“I feel like if I could just stay confident and trust that rural communities are special, and so are the artists who are from there, I’ll do just fine,” she said. “But I’m trying not to psych myself out because that’ll be the thing that gets in the way. But being in a small town, everybody wants to support your art. And that was the vibe I got from Whitehorse.”
Before we finish our video call, Bartholomew makes sure to express her gratitude to Music Yukon, the Yukon Film Society, Jazz Yukon and the Yukon Arts Centre for their support.
“It was just so amazing,” the singer said of her time in the Yukon. “I had no idea what I was getting into.”
Annie Bartholomew’s Sisters of White Chapel is due for release on June 16. To keep up with Bartholomew, visit www.anniebalaska.com
