If you’re stumped about what to call your new Northern band, you might find inspiration at your local museum.
Then again, you could just check the age range in your group.
It’s not hard to figure out where 30 Years Different got its moniker.
As vocalist Katie Tait points out, double bassist Scott Wilson and guitarist Ray Tucker are both “60-ish”.
Tait, as well as violinist Alana Martinson and multi-instrumentalist Olivier de Columbel, are merely “30-ish”.
“There’s 30 years between us, so we just chose that name,” she says.
But what about The Bennett Sun, the all-female group that will share a concert bill with 30 Years Different next week at the Old Fire Hall?
According to singer/songwriter Dana Jennejohn, it began with a display of artifacts at the MacBride Museum when she and her band mates were looking for a name.
Among the Gold Rush-era items on view were a “Champion Hair Picker”, used to fluff horsehair for mattresses and seat cushions, and some Pulaski-style grubbing axes from the Hardy Patent Pick Co. of Sheffield, England.
“Lots of people who play acoustic instruments call themselves pickers,” Jennejohn notes.
“We thought The Hardy Patent Pick Company would be fun, but it’s a bit of a mouthful. So we were thinking about just The Pick Company, or something like that.”
In the end, they chose to commemorate the region’s first newspaper, the Bennett Sun.
“It told the news of its time and place, and I think we’re trying to capture the sound of our community,” she says.
Besides sharing vocal duties with banjo player Lisa Christensen and mandolin-player Roslyn Wilson, Jennejohn plays guitar and writes many of the group’s songs.
Other members of the group, which was formed in 2010, are Dorothy Williams on violin and Erin McKnight on double bass.
They recently finished recording a five-track demo CD of Jennejohn originals, including one called “If This Won’t Work”, about why people deliberately choose to live off-the-grid in remote places.
“When I write songs, they’re most often inspired by life in the North,” she says.
“I do think about what is the driving force to be out on the margins of the map and live there, if you’re not from there.”
The Bennett Sun’s instruments mirror those of a typical bluegrass ensemble, but Jennejohn says it’s not a bluegrass group per se.
“I describe us mostly as an acoustic folk band that plays some bluegrass, and some kind of pop songs, but we have a distinct sound,” she says.
“Our sound is a little difficult to classify. We play a wide range of songs and we span a bunch of genres.”
Tait uses almost identical language to describe the repertoire of 30 Years Different.
“We all listen to quite different music, so the genre is not specific,” she says.
The band has had only a few public performances so far, but already boasts a repertoire of nearly 30 songs.
The five members voted on what to include in the December 4 concert, which is a fundraiser for the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition (YAPC).
“There’s a country song, there’s a couple of jazz songs, there’s some indie songs, and some old-time country songs,” she says. “It’s kind of just all over the place.”
Tait traces the group’s origins to the night she and Martinson, a fellow nurse at Whitehorse General Hospital, dropped in for open mic night at the Gold Rush Inn.
“We got up and sang a song – I think it was ‘Lean on Me’,” she recalls with a laugh.
“After the first couple of notes that came out of her mouth and my mouth at the same time, I thought, ‘Oh, this is good.’”
She later met Tucker at a Whitehorse Folk Music Society coffee house gig.
“Ray must have been talking to Scott Wilson, and then we all just came together,” she says.
The group’s biggest outing so far was a slot last fall in the Junction Arts and Music (JAM) series in Haines Junction.
It was Wilson’s idea to mount a fundraising event to give both bands more exposure. Together with Duncan Sinclair of Jazz Yukon, he pitched the idea to YAPC coordinator Kristina Craig.
“They felt, I think, that a good partnership would be helping to raise money for the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition and the work that we do,” Craig says.
Jennejohn agrees.
“I think it fits the value set of our band in terms of contributing to our community in a way that we can, and doing something we also enjoy doing,” she says.
The event, including a silent auction, will take place Thursday, December 4 at the Old Fire Hall. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the concert starts at 7:00.
Tickets are $20, available at Dean’s Strings on Wood Street.
