Karan Casey
Connie Kuhns - Author (BC)
We appreciate your help!
2023
PM
MEL LEHAN HALL AT ST. JAMES i
3214 West 10th Ave, Kitsilano
Accessible 
All ages
This event has already taken place.
This event has been sponsored by Dan & Ursula Bowditch. We thank them for their support of live music presentations and Rogue Folk shows in particular.
Legendary Irish folk singer Karan Casey has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Japan, singing songs charged with a sense of social responsibility in a career spanning over 25 years. The songs draw inspiration from a wide range of sources from the personal to the historical and political, touching on themes of family, loss, love, the empowerment of women and Irish revolutionary struggle.
Karan is joined by Niamh Dunne on fiddle and vocals, guitarist and accordionist Sean Óg Graham (both of the Irish folk band Beoga) and Niall Vallely on concertina. The evocative trio have toured together for several years and this show premieres new material developed and recorded since the start of the pandemic as well as favourites from Karan’s back repertoire. She has also collaborated with such diverse musicians as James Taylor, Bela Fleck, Boston Pops Orchestra, Liam Clancy, Maura O’Connell, The Chieftains, The Dubliners, Peggy Seeger, Karen Matheson, Tim O’Brien, Solas and Lúnasa.
In 2018, Karan helped to found FairPlé, an organization aimed at achieving fairness and gender balance for female performers in Irish traditional and folk musics.
Karan has released 11 albums to date. 'Hieroglyphs That Tell the Tale' was released on the Vertical Records Label in 2019 and her song “Down in the Glen” was nominated for Best Original Folk Song at the RTE Folk Awards.
Karan continues to push boundaries for herself and as an artist. She completed a PhD in music in 2019. Her new solo drama performance I Walked into My Head, directed by Sophie Motley, premiered at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2021. She is currently working on a new stage show to be produced at the Everyman Theatre in Cork in 2023, as well as an album of new songs about women in the Irish revolutionary period, drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources from the personal to the historical and political, touching on themes of family, loss, love, the empowerment of women and Irish revolutionary struggle.
RUBYMUSIC BOOK LAUNCH - DOWNSTAIRS 6 TO 8 PM. BUY A BOOK AND ATTEND THE SHOW FOR FREE!
In Rubymusic, award-winning journalist and broadcaster Connie Kuhns takes readers on an explosive journey through the Pacific Northwest’s groundbreaking women’s music scene in the 80s and 90s.
Rubymusic started as a successful program on Vancouver Cooperative Radio, running for fifteen years, introducing listeners to countless artists through radio, magazines and newspaper columns and on stage at Vancouver’s annual Folk Music Festival. It served as a powerful platform for the feminist movements taking place in Vancouver’s punk scene and throughout music history in the 80s and 90s. Rubymusic also served as the launching pad for Kuhns’ life-long passion — the preservation of the histories and stories of the women with whom she crossed paths on the airwaves.
The book is a time capsule of a pivotal moment in women’s music history, with special emphasis on the women’s music movement in Canada, including the only written history of the women involved in Vancouver’s punk rock scene. Rubymusic also includes over two dozen first-person interviews going back into the early 1980s, featuring a diverse group of women, including Ferron, Etta James, Roni Gilbert, Lillian Allen, Koko Taylor, Gloria Steinem, kd lang, Michelle Shocked, and Ellen McIlwaine, as well as essays on Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, and why Yoko Ono matters. Rubymusic: A Popular History of Women’s Music and Culture is a necessary reflection on fifteen years of radio history and forty years in music journalism that contains unparalleled stories of women who fought for the right to be heard.
“I was too young for the ‘Feminist Soundtrack.’ When I came into the women’s movement in 1981, ‘women’s music’ was already old hat. I was a fan of punk rock, not Meg Christian and Holly Near. But I was lucky. I worked at a feminist newspaper, Kinesis, and our best move was hiring Connie Kuhns to write a column about women in music called ‘Rubymusic.’ Connie showed me you can have a soundtrack for feminism that claims Joni Mitchell, Yoko Ono, Aretha Franklin and The Slits. I listened to the records and thanked my lucky stars. In this book, Connie has created the ultimate feminist musical comprehensive reference. Tag along with her as she visits the unstoppable forces of feminist music, delighting in interviews with the likes of k.d. lang, Ellen McIlwaine, and Elizabeth Fischer. I didn’t get to all the concerts, but Connie did, and this is a gift.” - Emma Kivisild, aka Lizard Jones, writer, activist, former editor of Kinesis
Our COVID-19 Policy: The Government of Canada issued a statement on January 27 2023 that said in part ... "As COVID-19 activity continues and hospitalizations remain elevated in Canada, layers of prevention, including keeping up to date with COVID-19 vaccinations and personal protective practises remain our best approach to reduce the risk of developing severe illness and limit the burden on the health system." We agree with this.
Sponsorship Opportunities: These are available for all our shows. For a nominal cost, individuals or businesses can sponsor any of our shows and reap a number of benefits - free tickets, reserved table, recognition on literature, our web site and at the concerts. For more information simply contact our Sponsorship Director Morris Biddle at mobiddley@me.com