The last time Skye Wallace came through Fort Frances was before the pandemic. Wallace is back next week with a new album and show at La Place Rendez-Vous.
When The Times spoke with Wallace she was not very long back from touring in Germany and is now preparing to set out on a month-long tour across Canada, the second show of which is in Fort Frances.
Wallace’s most recent album Terribly Good releases on Friday and three singles are already available on streaming platforms.
Wallace says she’s excited to be back on the road, and seeing crowds again.
“We did a tour with Crown Lands in Ontario and Quebec last year, which was awesome, but a lot of the shows were not too far from home, so this was the full going away for two weeks without any breaks. It was wild,” Wallace said of the recent tour in Germany. “It was really good to be back to it. It felt awesome. I’m just very excited to be doing it again. The live show is kind of the thing for me. That’s where I get my energy from.”
This is also Wallace’s first time since 2019 doing a big tour in Canada and she will be doing so with a full band.
“This is the first official headlining tour with the new record so I’m pretty excited,” Wallace said. “It’s with my five-piece band and we’ve got the rock ‘n’ roll show on lock and we’re playing all the new songs. [It will be good] to just connect with all the crowds and see everybody.
Wallace says she loves the rock genre, she loves to tell stories with the songs she writes.
“I really wanted to dive into that rock ‘n’ roll sound, sonically,” Wallace said of the new album. “I feel like rock and roll is a cool vehicle for emotion and kind of delving into your inner ‘stuff.’ I usually write from a storytelling narrator’s perspective. I like writing songs inspired by stories that inspired me about people that I learned about, [the last record] was largely about women. This was the first time where I was like ‘ok I’m going to write this whole thing from my own perspective.’ I did a lot of deep introspection while also wanting to keep the rock ‘n’ roll sound.
Wallace says she thinks rock has a sound that allows people to connect with the music.
“I think it’s a frequency that really lets people loosen up and access something within themselves,” Wallace said. “I see that at shows, I see people really connecting with each other and with themselves and really accessing their emotions. I think that was kind of the goal for me with this one. It took a lot of deep thinking and looking in but I’m very happy with how it turned out.”
The Skye Wallace concert is sponsored by Tour De Fort which is well-known in the district for its annual concert series. This is the second show this year that Tour De Fort has put on outside of the series. Earlier this fall it was My Son the Hurricane at the Memorial Sports Complex.
Charles Fisher is the president of Tour De Fort, he says they have been able to put these extra shows on thanks to an additional grant from the federal government.
“We were fortunate enough to get some additional grant money through Heritage Canada this year,” Fisher said. “We get a grant from them that we use as part of how we fund the series, but then they made some more money available through a re-engaging audiences program. For post-COVID recovery for live events. That’s how we were able to put on the My Son the Hurricane show and that’s sort of how we’re doing this one as well.”
Part of the reason other shows aren’t included in the series is that the series is booked about a year in advance.
“We book our series a year ahead of time, right now we’re working on booking for ‘23-’24,” Fisher said. “We do that with a long lead time but we get different artists that have passed through before or that we’ve worked with before that will reach out to us. In this case Skye reached out to us because she’s been in Fort Frances before and really enjoyed it and wanted to come back. Shows like these don’t necessarily fit in with what we’re doing with the series. It’s a little bit more rock-y than some of the acts that go in the theatre. So other venues are another way to bring different types of acts into the community.”
At this time Fisher says there aren’t any other plans for acts outside of the Tour De Fort series but something could come up.
The Skye Wallace Terribly Good Tour comes to Fort Frances on Tues. Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 and available at La Place Rendez-Vous, Ski’s Variety, or at SkyeWallaceFortFrances.eventbrite.ca.
