ATHABASCA — Phyllis Sinclair knew from an early age she wanted to be a singer-songwriter.
The girl from Churchill, Manitoba, wrote poetry but never picked up a guitar until her family moved to Winnipeg when she was 13. From there she learned a few chords and now she'll be gracing the stage at the Nancy Appleby Theatre this weekend as part of the Heartwood Folk Club's fall concert series.
“I think music was always a part of my growing up years and we never had any instruments, but we always had lots of boot heel taps on the floor and spoons and little dances in the kitchen,” she said. "We moved to Winnipeg, and I learned three chords on the guitar and that's all I needed; I took off from there. I did start writing at that time, but I never kept anything that I wrote, but ya, I started singing and playing when I was 13 years old,” she said in an Oct. 13 interview.
Eventually she got married and it was her husband who convinced her to make a CD, even if only for posterity. Then it was a friend who talked her into taking it to Roddy Campbell at Penguin Eggs, a folk, roots, and world music magazine.
“Once I got into Penguin Eggs magazine and got the featured songwriter spot everything changed,” she said. "I began to be asked to perform at different places and so it took off from there.”
During the pandemic Sinclair had time to work on one of the most important albums she has released, Ghost Bones. It is a deep dive into some darker areas like missing and murdered Indigenous women and children.
“The isolation kind of gave me time to develop the thoughts that I had wanting to write an album like this,” she said. “It gave me time to really think about what I wanted to say and how to say it.”
As a singer-songwriter she wrote about what she knew, being Indigenous, but Ghost Bones took her to a different place.
“As I age, I think about the things that are important to me and so, this album dealt with a lot of socially conscious issues," said Sinclair. “I wrote about the missing and murdered Indigenous women. I wrote about the social justice system. I wrote about the treaties. Issues like that.”
She throws herself into the song "Unforgotten Lullaby," written through the eyes of a parent.
“I wrote it from the perspective of a grieving parent and what that might be like, and I really felt that I could write from that perspective, because I have lost a child,” she said. “I understand what it's like to bury your child, but I can't imagine what the grief would be like never knowing where this child is and never putting it to rest.”
The album was scheduled for release June 21, 2021, on National Indigenous People’s Day, and it ended up being a little over a month after the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the Kamloops residential school.
“It's unfortunate that this happened, but it really woke people up and it began a conversation that we're continuing to have,” she said. “Releasing Ghost Bones on (June) 21 … people really welcomed this album.”
Tickets are available at Value Drug Mart and Whispering Hills Fuels in Athabasca or by calling Harvey at 780-675-4158 or George at 780-698-3957.
