Amanda Rheaume Live at Fort York Powwow, Saturday, June 22, 2019

2019.6.22  

Amanda Rheaume, Saturday June 22, 2019 Ft York, Toronto. Indigenous Arts Festival and Na Me Mes Traditional Pow wow.

The Na Me Res Powwow was winding down by the time Amanda Rheaume hit the stage. She grew up in Ottawa, and didn’t know much about her ancestry until adulthood. She seized an opportunity to learn more when an elderly man at a show recognized her family name and introduced himself. Rheaume’s latest release, “The Skin I’m In” was written I the wake of Rheaume learning about her family’s history. She started writing songs in 2003, and subsequently worked with some well respected performers like Melanie Brulee.

She started with “Blood From a Stone” and kept the momentum with “The Light is Gone” before pausing to dedicate her next song to missing and murdered indigenous women. “Red Dress” is Rheaume’s response to that tragedy and its resulting Red Dress movement.

 Rheaume plays a fairly earthy sounding country style. One wonders if the term “roots” will soon encompass so much as to become irrelevant and go the way of “alternative” as a descriptor for music. Her music isn’t “ye olde” but it has a more classic country sound than much of what has been sold as country music in the last decade or three.

“Keep the Fire in the Rain” was preceded with an explanation about the song’s inspiration coming from Rheaume’s Ojibwe great grandmother from Lac Seul First Nation near Dryden. She married a Frenchman, resulting in Metis children who grew up struggling to fit in either community.

Rheaume has toured Europe regularly, and performed from Afghanistan to Attawapiskat. After “Picture of You” and “Skin I’m In,” Rheaume played another song from her trip to Lac Seul, “Return to the Water.” She was happy to see little kids dancing to her music and mentioned it a couple of times before she concluded with “Tell Me Anything.”