For Australian musician Toby Beard, the Canadian people and landscape keep drawing her back.
“It’s the people, really – we find the Canadian people in general are just very beautiful people to be around – they’re very generous and giving and hospitable and know how to have a good time,” she said, in an interview on Canada Day.
“And of course your landscape is very different to Australia,” she added. “We don’t have mountains where we live and every single time I see the mountains over here it just takes my breath away, like it’s my first time seeing them.
“Areas like Canmore I just fall in love with every time I arrive.”
Touring with a full band, Toby will play three shows over the next 10 days, first at Wild Bill’s (July 10), then the Drake Inn (July 14) and finally at Communitea Café (July 16).
“I had my birthday one time in Canmore, and they put on a really very lovely birthday surprise for me,” said Toby, remembering her previous experiences in the area. “In general, I love our gigs at Communitea Café; they’re my favourite shows just because of the atmosphere and it’s so different to the bars that we normally play at – with people sitting around on bean bags and pillows and really listening to the music.”
She had good memories of Wild Bill’s too.
“Wild Bill’s I love as well, because you can just get people dancing, it’s a great venue with great sound,” she said. “The town itself is wonderful. I’ve got quite a few Australian friends who came over to visit Banff and ended up living there.”
Over the last several years, Toby has had seven previous tours of Canada.
“We also like building up our fan base over here,” she said. “We keep coming back to keep that going.”
The music itself is a fusion of many different styles, said Toby.
“It’s a real mixture – it’s blues and roots, but we also have reggae and European-infused jazz and some folk and rock, so it’s a real mixture of acoustic rock,” she said.
“With this particular band we’ve got myself on guitar, an upright bass player, and then we also have a fantastic saxophone player from Perth and a guy from Winnipeg joining us with a mix of drums and percussion.”
For the audience, the live shows are a deeply emotional and joyous experience, she said.
“We offer such a variety of music,” she explained. “We have our 18-year-old fans, but we also have 60-year-old fans, so it’s a real mixture of people coming along to the shows, which is awesome.”
This tour involves two months of playing throughout Canada, followed by three weeks of solo East Coast touring and then 25 shows in Europe. The time in Western Canada will be the best though, she stressed.
“There’s something so peaceful about being in the mountains that I just can’t get enough of,” she said. And I think people see that when they come to Australia and see the ocean for the first time, it’s like that for me with the mountains.
“Perth really is the most isolated place in the world, so it makes travelling quite hard and expensive.”
To hear her music or find out more about her, visit Toby’s website at www.tobymusic.com.au
