Artist of the Day | QUOTE THE RAVEN
ARTIST OF THE DAY
25.11.2020
QUOTE THE RAVEN
LOCATION
Newfoundland
GENRE
American/Folk-Pop
CURRENT MEMBERS
Jordan Coaker & Kirsten Rodden-Clarke
With the current pandemic, the state of the music and touring industry has dramatically changed. Where were you when everything was brought to a halt?
When we first started hearing about other countries shutting down and taking huge precautions against the virus, we were about to start a 6 week long tour around Eastern Canada. We had scheduled a joint tour with our friends Jessica Pearson and the East Wind where we’d leave Newfoundland, tour up to Toronto, pick them up, and then tour back with them. We had multiple conversations with Jessica leading up to that day. We kept asking each other if we should cancel the tour but kept holding off with the hope that it wouldn’t hit Canada hard enough to shut the country down. In the back of our minds we knew it was inevitable but we didn’t want to deal with that reality.
How has that affected your plans for the coming months? Did you have a tour planned, upcoming album release?
On top of the 6 week tour, we had some of our biggest Canadian festival gigs to date scheduled over the summer, our first big festival in the U.S, and the “Can’t Hold The Light” album release set for August. It was hard to wrap our heads around having months of planning and touring completely gone.
What have you been doing to fill/make the most of your new-found free time at home?
At first we found it hard to find the motivation to do anything. Like most of the world, the shock took a long time to wear off. Having to quarantine kept us from jamming together but as soon as it was safer to do so, we started doing live streams and trying to stay connected with the people who enjoy our music. We also did a bunch of co-writing with friends online, eventually expanded our bubble enough to write and record an original Christmas song (released Nov.20th) and started to work on an Atlantic Canadian bubble tour for April/March!
What was the first thing you did/place you went to now the country is starting to slowly re-open?
We’ve been super fortunate being in Newfoundland because the number of cases has been so low. We were able to do a small run of shows in Central Newfoundland to a socially distanced sold out crowd during the summer, which was phenomenal! We also travelled to the West Coast of Newfoundland with some other local musicians on a writing retreat, which allowed us to experience some sort of normal in the midst of everything.
Do you have a message for everyone at home reading this?
The world is anything but normal right now, so it’s fine to feel completely unmotivated, but it’s also a time for creativity to thrive and to try things that you never thought you would. Please keep safe out there and we will see you all as soon as we can!
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