An Okotoks singer has doubled down on a major night on the Alberta music scene.
Kelsey Raine earned a pair of nominations at the 2020 YYC Music Awards as a finalist for Inspirational Recording of the Year as well as being up for the People’s Choice Award for the second time in as many years.
“It’s totally awesome,” Raine told the Western Wheel. “I was nominated last year in the People’s Choice and it’s just that much more encouraging when you can meet what you did the year before and (then) some.
“I kind of got into music later on in life and it’s almost a survival mode just as much as it is artistic expression. I tried not to do music for a while just because I was busy with raising my son and all those types of things and it just didn’t seem convenient and my life went severely downhill.
“I got back into it and now look at what’s happening.”
For the People’s Choice, Raine is a finalist for her track Set You Free – a journey through sound detailing the push and pull of realizing that in order to do something good for yourself you have to get rid of something else.
“Essentially it comes down to two main things, one of them being when you realize that there’s certain thought patterns or things you’re doing in your life that are no longer serving you – you’re hitting a road block,” Raine said. “Sometimes that comes in a really dark place, that realization.
“You get to a place where you hit a road block every time and realize you have to change or stay stuck and that’s a really scary thing because often that means you have to destroy a piece of yourself or let go of a piece of yourself that you used to feel really strongly in.”
The People’s Choice category is based on fan votes with the preliminary group narrowed down to the final five and from there the final two. Supporters can make their vote count on the YYC Music Awards website at yycmusicawards.com. Voting runs until Aug. 15.
“You have to really put yourself out there and try and get people to get it,” Raine said. “Last year they just went to top-five and then we found out on awards night who the winner was, but this year it’s even tougher because they’re making us do a round-two voting.”
There’s no fan vote in the Inspirational Recording of the Year category, instead it’s decided on by industry experts.
Raine was nominated for On the Outside Looking In which was her adaptation of a poem by High River’s Alise Kuipers about her first guide dog, a black lab named Syrup.
“Alise came to me about a year and a half ago now and I knew her because I’ve worked with children with severe behavioural needs for like 20 years now,” Raine said. “Alise helps run the Inclusion Foothills in High River and that’s how I know her, crossing paths.
“She said I have this poem and I have this journey I went on in my life and I was wondering if you could help me turn it into a song of some kind? And then we would donate the proceeds and anything that comes from that song to for the (Lions Foundation of Canada Guide Dogs).”
Raine said it was a long process to take a poem and make it a musical number, from creating melody out of lines that weren’t written melodically to editing and fine-tuning Kuipers’ words while still staying true to its content.
“I’ve never taken another person’s words before and put them into a song, it’s a little bit more of a process especially because she’s not a musician,” Raine added. “It wasn’t easy, so to get to a point where it’s being acknowledged to this level is so fantastic.
“It really is full circle that we put all this work in and all of this love and all of this energy into something just to basically give it away to something else and have it come back around is an acknowledgement for all of that effort.”
The track was produced by Craig Carswell from RedBlack Recording in High River with the production, recording, mixing and mastering done at Calgary’s Audiohouse Recording Studio. Okotoks’ Aaron Asher played drums on the record, with High River’s Rick Kroeker on guitar and Asher’s uncle Rick Woyiwada on piano
“When you pour your soul out to the world it’s a scary thing and there’s a lot of opportunities for rejection,” she said. “So when you get acknowledged in a way that’s super supportive of that, all of a sudden you’re like, ‘well maybe being myself is good enough.’ That’s a great thing to have.”
Okotoks’ own Brettyn Rose earned herself a pair of nominations as well.
The singer is nominated for Country Recording of the Year for her track Running out of Borrowed Time and is up for the Zackariah and the Prophets Memorial Award – recognizing artists who take the right steps showcasing possibility and progress at every level of their career.
Bragg Creek and Chestermere based group Taken By Sanity is also a finalist for the Zackariah and the Prophets Memorial Award while also nominated for Group of the Year and People’s Choice for Glass Hands off the City of Contrast album. Taken By Sanity won the People’s Choice award at last year’s event.
For more information go to yycmusicawards.com
