Evalyn Perry at MERA

Feb 02, 2014

Singer/songwriter and spoken word artist Evalyn Parry is no stranger to the MERA school house. In 2011 she performed there at a sold-out engagement in the Girls With Glasses trio. Last Sunday, January 26 it was all Evalyn in a solo performance that sparked off the winter segment of Sunday Schoolhouse Concert Series at MERA .

Parry definitely lived up to her reputation as a lively, intelligent, witty and multi-talented performer in a show that demonstrated her strengths both as singer/song writer and spoken word artist. Accompanying herself alternately on acoustic and electric guitar, shruti box, loop pedals and a water bottle, she opened the first set with a rapid-fire spoken word piece, “For the Non-Conformers”, which was her hats-off piece to all those who dare to be different and who stand up and fight for what is right and against what is wrong in this world. She named them all in back-to-back rollicking verses, in one of which she gave a nod to, “everyone who dares and everyone who speaks....for the freaks and the punks and misfits and the nerds …..for all who know they will never marry... for the outlaws and the in-laws and everything with wings...for everyone who when given the choice, always chooses 'Other'”.

Parry performed a number of tunes from SPIN, her celebrated one-woman show, part poetry, part music, part politics, which centers around and celebrates the bicycle, its invention, its history, and Annie Londonderry, the first woman to ride one around the world in 1894. In the SPIN piece, “She Rides”, Parry combined rapid-fire spoken verses punctuated by the soaring sung chorus, “She gets on her bicycle, she gets on her bicycle, she rides...” She also performed her famed “Bottle This”, her irreverent, clever jibe and musical critique of the bottled water industry, a song that she said she almost did not record. While shaking a lone water bottle as percussion accompaniment she sang about the madness and unsustainable practice and total sham of buying into the 1 billion dollar bottled water industry that is owned by corporate giants. In the song Parry states, “We are swallowing the idea that good water isn't free and that of course one must pay for water of quality.”

Parry's second set was a great deal looser than her first and she bravely decided to venture into new territory, and into a new project and a piece titled “To Live in the Age of Melting- Part 1”. The piece was inspired by Stan Rogers' iconic tune “The Northwest Passage” and the traditional folk song called “Lady Franklin's Lament”, which was written either for or by the widow of Sir John Franklin, the famed Arctic explorer. “I'm playing with Rogers' definition of folk music and the notion of the tradition that the music gets reinterpreted as it passes from musician to musician", Parry explained. The piece opened with a section of the Rogers' tune that quickly moved to spoken word. In the song Parry explored the idea of the human body's vagus nerve, the longest in the body and how it can represent our wandering nature in the world.

Later in the set she ventured into more unknown territory with multiple musical layers that she created with voice, guitar, looper and with the help of the crowd, to whom she taught a repeating chorus. She sang and spoke, creating an aural impression of the Canadian north, adding descriptions that she collected from the crowd prior to improvising the piece.

Parry is a brave and captivating performer who not only treated her audience to her well-known pearls of tried and true performance pieces but also offered up a chance to see and understand how she goes about creating newer work in less explored places.

Upcoming in the Sunday Schoolhouse Concert Series will be performances by Terry Tufts and Kathryn Briggs on February 23, and The Boxcar Boys on March 30.