Anishinaabekwe Crystal Shawanda finds her musical direction in blues

By Colin Graf

WIIKWEMKOONG UNCEDED TERRITORY— After storming into the world of country music with a US Top-20 hit 13 years ago, and following a serious change of musical direction four albums back, Crystal Shawanda feels she’s finally “found her groove” with her new release, Church House Blues.

The 10-track album, featuring seven songs written or co-written by the Wiikwemkoong singer, is “an emotional roller-coaster” she says, with songs that “make you want to get up and dance and others to help you get through your day and maybe leave you a little hopeful.”

Releasing a recording during the time of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is an unusual experience, says Shawanda, who was in the middle of touring and mentoring young musicians in Canada when the US border was closed, preventing her and her husband, guitarist, and producer Dewayne Strobel, and their young daughter from returning to their Nashville home.

The family has been living on Manitoulin Island since March, spending time with her parents and staying in her home community. Rather than putting a stop to her career, Shawanda has been busy getting creative in shooting promo videos with local help and without the usual professional production crew.

She developed an interest in video production over the last few years and has put her new skills into action, both behind the camera and in front. She and her husband have been shooting and editing a promo reel for Church House Blues in and around her community in different churches, their backyard, the village, and in the bush, she says.

“It’s a good thing I’ve been trained by a lot of amazing professionals. I’ve been paying attention the whole time I’ve seen these people at work. I watch what they look for, what they troubleshoot.”

With her new album set for release in April, her team at True North Records decided to keep moving forward despite the pandemic.

“The wheels were already rolling and we couldn’t really stop them,” she says.  “We all have to keep living, and it’s the arts that will help us get through.”

While country music gave her a chance to break into the music business, she says her heart has always been with the blues.

“The blues has always been there. My parents listened to country but my older brother listened to blues. I knew of a lot of other Indigenous blues musicians and for me, I love the soulfulness of it, the rawness, and was always really drawn to it,” she recalls.

With the bluesy “grit and growl” in her voice ready to show at any time, Shawanda remembers her producer telling her while recording her first country album to “hide” parts of her voice “because we don’t want to scare everyone away”.

“Let’s get you a hit and then we can show everyone all the cool things you can do with your voice,” she recalls.

With that accomplished, the singer says making her first blues album felt “like letting a bird out of the cage.” With three previous blues recordings under her belt, Shawanda now feels like she’s truly found her musical home.

The title song on Church House Blues is about avoiding being judgmental, she says, and recalls how black American musicians such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe sometimes courted controversy by playing the blues on weekend nights and then singing and playing in church on Sunday.

“We all find something that helps us get through the hard moments. Some blow off steam in church or some go to bars to blow off there,” she explains.

Shawanda sees parallels to that experience in her life, starting her singing career at age 13 in bar and grill places near home, while also singing in church.

“I’m very comfortable in both worlds.”

She also feels a connection between the black community experience and that of First Nations’ people.

“That oppression is very similar. I constantly talk about that. We see ourselves in that struggle and oppression and it inspires us.”

Shawanda has even drawn on First Nations experience in her own songwriting. Her song, Blues Train, from two albums ago, draws comparisons between Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the missing black women in the USA.

“We’ve been through similar struggles and we continue to experience similar hardships,” she says. “I feel [the connection] comes from the rawness of the blues. Music has always been our [First Nations] way of healing, of praying, of connecting, and that’s what blues music is. We love the release that comes through it… You’re laying it all out on the table; you’re vulnerable and that’s maybe why we’re drawn to it.”

As a First Nations woman trying to make a career originally in American country music, Shawanda has faced discrimination, but ascribes it more to fear and ignorance rather than hatred.

On one of her first trips to Nashville years ago, she remembers “a very famous” music executive  telling her, “I don’t think Native Americans within country music makes sense, I don’t know how I would market you, I don’t know if country music fans are ready for you.” His reluctance to sign her really came down to fear, she says.

“He was afraid of losing his job if he signed me, pushed me out there, and I failed,” she believes. “I’ve tried not to read too much into it but it’s hard when it’s right in your face.”

Another unexpected connection to current experience is with her new song, Bigger than the Blues, which deals with mental health and depression.

“It’s kind of a reminder to people that you are bigger than your sadness,” she says. “[A message that] just fits perfectly with the times.”

One of her recent promo videos for the new album dives straight into another social problem surrounding First Nations’ relations with organized religion; the troubled legacy of church-run residential schools.

“I’m kind of born out of that conflicted history with the church,” she explains, with generations of her own family affected. “Church House Blues can mean a few different things.”

The problems caused by the schools is a “common theme” in First Nations across Canada, she says.

“Alcoholism, addiction, depression, abuse; those were all handed down from generation to generation.”

Shawanda credits music as her “saving grace”.

“I truly believe music saved me from my depression, from that lifestyle of alcoholism, and addiction.”

She hopes her music will now serve to share some of the hope and positive experiences from her life.

“The sad thing is people sit around thinking, ‘My family is no good’, but no, your family were victims,” she insists. “We shouldn’t be ashamed; we should talk about our history. It helps us reach a better understanding of ourselves and can hold our heads a little higher knowing that this was not a choice, it was something done to us [that] we are all still healing from.”