www.lloydminstersource.com/Entertainment/tabid/67/entryid/938/Default.aspxNorthern girl, through and through
Terri Clark will be headling the Thorpe Recovery Centre Building Hope Gala on May 19.
By Katie Ryan
In her own words, Terri Clark is “back in the saddle again” and it feels good.
Following a trying year – her mother lost her battle to cancer – Clark is dusting herself off and setting her sights on the road ahead.
“I am feeling musically, like I really want to lighten up a bit, live life and value what I have, have a good time and cherish the moments,” she said over the phone from Salt Lake City.
“Music has been very healing for me. And you only know half the story, all the stuff you know I’ve gone through there’s been more that I don’t discuss, but it’s been a very hard year, a lot of loss and making this record and touring, it saves my life. It’s healing. It is how I express myself.
“It feels so good to get back in the saddle again.”
And Clark is the only one in the saddle on her new tour. She’s been on the road south of the border touring her one-woman show – just Clark with her guitar and a “percussion-type thing” attached to her foot.
“I started about a year ago, just to try it out and see how it would be attended. I want to blaze my own trail and do something that I know I can do rather than doing what’s just easy and what everybody else always does. My manager came to a show and he was just blown away with the show and thought that we could grow it and keep doing it down here,” she said, adding feedback has been overwhelming since the tour started from fans.
“People think it’s refreshing, there’s no bells and whistles. It’s just me and a guitar telling stories, jokes and being really connected to the audience.
“I’m going to be pretty sick of myself by the end of the tour,” continued Clark with a laugh. “It takes a lot more focus, it takes a lot more energy. I can’t lean on a band to take a solo, it’s me for two hours straight. It’s a harder kind of show to do, to be quite honest, than a band show but I think it’s very, very rewarding to be able to connect with all of those people just by myself for that long and keep them there.”
With her guitar in hand, Clark will also be heading to Lloydminster soon. While not part of her Unplugged and Alone tour, Clark is headlining the Thorpe Recovery Centre’s Building Hope Gala on May 19.
“It will be a show that people never see me do in Canada,” said Clark of her acoustic set that will include “A Million Ways to Run,” a song she wrote on her last album, The Long Way Home, about people who struggle with addiction, and people who “see the light” and change.
“I think we’ve all used ways to escape our uncomfortable feelings and things, and sometimes it can be damaging and sometimes for some people it’s debilitating so it’s an important song.”
Clark promises to deliver a mix of old favourites and cover songs, plus new songs from her forthcoming album to be released in May, including her latest single “Northern Girl.”
“It was the first song I recorded for the album because it’s kind of like ‘Better Things To Do’ – when we wrote it I knew it, I knew that there was something special there,” said Clark of her latest single, which she’ll head to B.C. on May 3 to shoot a video for.
“It came from a very honest place. I had lost my mother from cancer and I decided that I needed to just get away from everything, so I rented a cottage in Ontario on a lake for a month.”
Surrounded by family and friends, Clark said she took stock of her life and from those moments “Northern Girl” was born.
“I remember sitting in the summer, watching the Canadian flag flying one day and I wrote the first chorus to ‘Northern Girl,’ just sitting and watching the flag with the sun setting,” recalled Clark. “You know you have one of those moments and it’s just like, life doesn’t get any better than this. I felt at that moment that was where I belong, I needed to be there. I remembered all the times growing up in Alberta and I remembered all the stuff – the winters being so long and moving to Nashville when I was younger to make it in the music business – I never forgot where I was from. I do think where I am going to grow old and die will be in Canada, it’s not going to be in the States because I am a Canadian through and through.
“It’s a wonderful thing and the song was born at a very vulnerable time where I was really taking stock in my life,” she added. “And there’s enough songs about the south, we need more about the north.”
To purchase tickets for the Building Hope Gala, May 19 at the Lloydminster Exhibition Grounds, call 1-877-875-8890.
