The Canadian prairies are a long, long way from the Mississippi delta, but that hasn’t stopped Kat Danser from embracing the Deep South as virtually a second home.
Edmonton’s Danser, who released her fourth blues album, Baptized By The Mud, in fall of 2013, returns to Mount Engadine Lodge for its Music in the Meadow series, Saturday (June 21).
Baptized is the culmination of years of study, travel, mentorship, songwriting and graduate studies at the University of Alberta, where she focussed her thesis on the representation of blues music over the last century.
Danser has played Engadine a half dozen times over the last several years, including to record 2012’s The Engadine Sessions: Come to the Mountain, which was recorded with Cori Brewster, Karla Anderson, Chloe Albert and Susie Vinnick.
“It’s a favourite place for me and a great situation,” she said. “It’s a real change of scenery and there are great people and a spectacular setting. This will be the first time I’ve performed songs from Baptized By The Mud there.”
With Baptized, Danser has already put in tour time to major Western Canada centres, and is now making further rounds at smaller venues.
“For me, I’ve got a lot of things going on, musically, so I’m not touring a lot. I’m working on my PhD at the U of A, I’m teaching songwriting and sometimes in Saskatchewan I’ll be doing some shows, stopping in at school, or doing some teaching in the evening.”
Much of her inspiration for Baptized came when she spent six months living in the deep south in 2008, “where I was learning from the legends, really. It was a major musical study and I go back two or three times a year.
“I’m learning from different musicians and learning regional styles. In each region of the south there are one or two families keeping the tradition alive. The music there is mostly DJs or Chicago electric style blues; there aren’t many artists in the delta playing delta blues.
“People used to make a living playing the blues there, but they are so impoverished now you can’t make a living. With digitized music, anyone can get it and it’s reduced the opportunity for live presentations.”
In an effort to help out in the heartland of the blues, Danser has hooked up with an Edmonton agency to book tours into the south. “They need people like me to go down there and help keep alive through cultural tourism,” she said. “Mississippi is the poorest state in the Union and they’re trying to figure out ways to preserve the traditions and keep the traditions.
“Not many people in Mississippi can afford to leave the state; you have to bring people in. We do what we call Beyond the Guide Book, the underground blues scene. We go to places not on the tourist track, with blues, soul food and information on the early development of the blues; how it progressed and became a valuable music form.
“It’s cool. We’re in the backwoods and in the swampland. I learned the blues hanging out with escapees from prisons and with moonshine on my tongue.
“The tours are mostly North Americans and Europeans who are fanatical for the blues and they will put their money where their mouth is. People want to hear the blues from real blues players and see the cabin where Muddy Waters lived. It helps strengthen the economy.”
Danser continues to develop a blues network in Mississippi and Louisiana as a way of giving back to the blues community.
One aspect of Baptized that she is proud of is that she was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award for Spiritual Recording of the Year. “The goal was to show how blues music and spirituality are the same. One is preached from behind a pulpit and one is from behind a plow.”
As well, Danser continues to learn by working on her chops with Wyoming blues guitar man Mike Dowling and with a vocal coach.
According to Danser, you can never play or sing too much. “If you don’t play, your hands get tight, and if you don’t keep up your singing, your vocal chords get tight.”
At Engadine, her blues selection is one designed, “to make people feel good. I feel a responsibility to send people away enlivened. It will be spiritual and uplifting and I hope people go away with a better understanding of the blues.”
Future Music in the Meadow events include Luft on July 5, Vinnick, July 12 and Wil on Oct. 4.
