Among the most highly rated hotels the Canadian Rockies has to offer, Mount Engadine Lodge has reopened for the season and with it comes a great lineup of summer entertainment.
Among the artists playing Engadine this year are Kat Danser, Del Barber, Lori Reid and Ann Vriend, to name a few – and kicking off the season is Chloe Albert, with a performance Saturday (June 15).
Located south of Spray Lakes on the Mount Shark Road, the lodge has been under the management of innkeepers Chris and Shari-Lynn Williams for the past seven years.
“The first year we came up here, we thought it’d be great to have live music at this venue,” said Chris in an interview at the lodge Saturday (June 8). “Before we came we had been to a few small house concerts and thought it was a great experience, and then we came to the lodge and thought it was a natural fitting.”
The first year they hosted a band called Barley Wick, and the sound ended up being unbelievable, he said.
“And then we bumped into Corey Brewster, and that propelled everything,” he explained. “She was local, we signed her on for our second year, and Corey recommended some people – she brought up Kat Danser – and then Kat in turn was friends with Susie Vinnick, and it just perpetuated itself after that.”
For the first couple years, the innkeepers had to search for acts, but now that’s no longer the case.
“For this summer, I had 60 acts apply to play here – and out of them 15 Juno nominees or winners,” said Chris. “They’ve heard we’re a good venue and get treated well, so it makes it fun for us. I’m already getting people applying for 2014.”
Albert, in speaking with the Outlook, was ecstatic for the chance to return to the lodge.
“It’s stunning there, and on top of that the couple that run the lodge are the most wonderful people, and then it’s fun to play a really intimate performance,” she said. “It’s a little something special, different than your regular bar show.”
During the spring of 2012, the lodge closed its doors to the public for a month and invited a circle of women songwriters, including Albert, to come together to write and record music.
“That was an amazing experience, I had an incredible time and two of the songs I wrote there for that project were on my new record,” she said. “I’ve made some really good friendships through that project and I think it helped, because it had been so long for me between recordings, it was nice to have stuff going on again musically.”
Albert’s second album, Dream Catcher, is in the process of being released.
“It was recorded over six months, at the end of last year and early this year. I put it under the folk pop category, more mainstream folk,” she said. “When I released my first one, in 2008, I was just learning the ropes of the music industry and I was juggling everything, with a regular job and navigating how to make a living as a musician.
“So I toured and travelled a lot to get my music out there and I was exhausted after my first record. And I had a little of a songwriting break and stopped for a while and then woke up one day and knew I needed to be writing and creative again. It took me a couple of years to write enough songs for the record, and they needed to be the right songs.”
The theme of the album is that of being inspired, she said.
“There’s a strong theme in a lot of the songs about the struggle of the pursuit of happiness – ‘who am I, what do I want to do with my life?’ – and I was feeling inspired, because I felt like I had a pivotal shift of heart between these two albums,” said Albert.
“It was a hopeful feeling, and I wanted to write a lot about that.”
Tickets for the June 15 show, which starts at 7 p.m., are $90 and available by contacting the lodge at [email protected] or 403-678-4080. Tickets include a gourmet, all-you-can-eat dinner and stunning views, which almost always include moose sightings in the bog below the lodge.
The next show after Albert is Kat Danser, June 22, followed by a Canmore favourite, said Chris.
“We’ve got Lori Reid out of Canmore – we always try to have a local if we can – and Carla Anderson at the end of July,” he said. “We call her ‘The Voice’ – one of the most powerful voices I’ve heard in music – and then we’re fortunate enough to have Del Barber at the end of August.”
“We tend to have mostly women – because the women who play here recommend us to other women – but Matt Barber’s played here, so has John Wort Hannam. Of the 60 acts that applied this year, at least 45 were women.
“We finish off with Ann Vriend out of Edmonton,” he added. “She’s got a new CD, due out this fall, entirely of her versions of ’60s soul songs.”
As the lodge is quite small – just 15 luxurious rooms – the concerts tend to be quite small and intimate too, with most concerts capped at an audience of about 30 people.
While staying at the lodge is a treat unto itself, concerts begin and end early enough to allow those who stay just for the show to head home while there is still some daylight.
“It’s fun for us, it’s become a neat series for ourselves, and we’ve gotten a lot of attention for it. Last year WestJet, in their Up Magazine, one of the editors top picks of things to do was see a concert at Engadine, and a few years ago another site named us one of the top five spots in the country to see live music, so it’s a pretty cool thing,” said Chris.
“Cool not just for us, but for the Kananaskis-Bow Valley area to have a venue like this, doing this kind of music. I like to call what we do roots – it broadens the scale a bit more than folk – singer-songwriters are what it’s all about for me, and predominantly Canadian.”
In addition to being a hotel, the lodge can also be booked for dinner, with 24 hours notice, and is well-known for its afternoon tea. All foods served are homemade from scratch, utilizing local ingredients whenever possible.
“And then we’ll throw in a few ‘Sing for your Supper’ shows,” added Chris. “If I have an opening on a Monday to Wednesday at this time of year, I’ll have a promo on our Facebook and get 10-15 people out here for a dinner concert.”
The lodge can be found online at mountengadine.com and facebook.com/mountengadine.lodge
