Dana Wylie
Friday 19th & Saturday 20th August 2022
Dana Wylie is a singer of rare gift and a dedicated crafter of deeply felt and sharply observed songs. Praised for being as dexterous with words as she is with her guitar, piano and remarkably powerful voice, she writes with equal parts craft and passion; Penguin Eggs magazine once called her the only artist about whom they have “felt comfortable comparing favourably to Joni Mitchell in the scope of her talent EVER.”
Cutting short a promising career in the Canadian theatre scene at the age of 23, Dana decided musicians were her tribe. She moved to the unlikely locale of Taiwan, where she cut her teeth playing with jug bands, blues bands, bluegrass bands and cover bands, singing jazz in hotel lounges, and doing some of the most bizarre corporate gigs you could possibly imagine. Moving to the UK in 2005, she formed her own band and toured steadfastly for five years, releasing three critically-praised albums in the process. She then landed back in Canada in 2010 to pursue graduate studies in musicology at the University of Alberta. She also returned to her theatrical roots in 2015, producing, writing, performing the critically-acclaimed and Sterling Award-nominated Fringe hit The Second Line: Two Ladies and the Old School Blues.
Dana’s fifth record, The Earth That You’re Made Of (2017) earned her a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for Contemporary Singer of the Year, and was described by journalist, broadcaster, and festival director Peter North as “one of the finest contemporary roots recordings to have ever been produced in Alberta, period.” Dana is also the writer/performer of the theatrical song-cycle Makings of a Voice, which debuted Edmonton’s SkirtsAfire Festival in October 2021, and her latest album How Much Muscle is set for release any minute now.