CANADIAN Amanda Rheaume is making a special stop in Dorset for her UK and Ireland tour.

Touring as the Amanda Rheaume Trio, Amanda will be singing songs from her album With Holding Patterns.

She will perform at Marnhull Village Hall on January 29.

Produced by Ottawa singer-songwriter Jim Bryson, the album’s stand-out tracks include The Day the Mountain Fell, a true story Amanda’s grandfather told her about a second cousin in the 1950s who became known in media reports as a 'miracle child'.

After surviving a landslide near Mount Hays in northern British Columbia, the flow of rock lifted her crib above the debris.

The Wolf of Time, inspired by an image Amanda’s grandfather invoked to remind people to get on with their dreams, was written following the recent death from leukemia of Amanda’s close friend and musical collaborator Fraser Holmes, aged 28.

Many of the other songs are deeply personal and vulnerable reflections on the end of Amanda’s troubled long-term relationship and the unique struggles faced when two women – socialised to be kind, avoid conflict and solve problems by talking them out – stay in a relationship that was doomed from the start because nobody wants to be mean enough to end it, and everyone wants to believe they can work it out if they just try hard enough.

Time to Land is about repeating the same relationship patterns over and over again and expecting a different result – and about deciding to let those patterns go.

In contrast, Blood from a Stone is Amanda’s version of ‘You Oughta Know’.

For the song ‘Red Dress’, Amanda enlisted support from Juno Humanitarian Award winner Chantal Kreviazuk for a powerful statement about the role of intergenerational trauma and oppression in the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).

Written in a single evening and set to a gorgeous video featuring dancer Aria Evans, the song is, in part, a reaction to those who blame the victims themselves for the murders and disappearances – without considering how perceived 'high risk behaviors' such as sex work or substance abuse are the direct result of Canada’s decades-long attempt at cultural genocide.

With Red Dress, Amanda makes the personal political, reflecting on how each disappeared woman has both a story of family struggle and a world of potential that was taken away.

*Amanda will be performing with Anders Drerup (pedal steel, electric guitar and vocals) and Anna Ruddick (bass).

Go to amandarheaume.com for tickets.

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