Biography
"Anyway you cut it, roots singer/songwriter Tamara Nile did not have your conventional upbringing. No birthday parties at Pizza Hut for her, no little soccer ball hanging from the Windstar rearview mirror.
She grew up on Galiano Island [+]Biography
"Anyway you cut it, roots singer/songwriter Tamara Nile did not have your conventional upbringing. No birthday parties at Pizza Hut for her, no little soccer ball hanging from the Windstar rearview mirror.
She grew up on Galiano Island. Mom is a French Canadian musician and artisan, so Tamara spoke French exclusively around the house until she was seven. Dad is a guy you might have seen in years past busking on Granville Island or Lonsdale Quay. He goes as Dan the One Man Band and pilots this contraption that lets him play harmonica, accordion, tuba, trombone, cymbals - it's a crazy thing. He plays bass with foot pedals. He made, says Nile, a dammed good living at it.
Until she was 15 or so, every school holiday she traveled with her father around the Vancouver Area, Victoria, down to Venice Beach, San Francisco, even Australia.
She learned balloon twisting at a Hollywood magic shop and remembers standing a couple of car lengths away from her dad at Venice beach dressed in a rainbow wig, the squishy red nose and oversized checkered jacket and amusing the California rich kids, talking Harpo Marx-style with a horn in her pocket.
It was a good way to grow up. Nile is still a little amazed when she sees television. Growing up, there was no TV in the house.
"My parents played music every night, every single night of my childhood," says Nile. "I read a lot and I listened to stories from my mom and dad...My dad had has read more books than anyone I've ever met. I feel like our family's culture was an oral culture. I think that's why I can remember a melody the first time I hear it, usually. But mostly it was all about telling stories."
At 19, Nile moved to Vancouver to see if she could launch a music career. She soon figured out the roots scene was doing well at the Railway Club and she took to hanging out, getting to know people, swapping songs and ideas. Eventually she became quite the scene-builder, hosting a monthly showcase at the railway originally called "Connect" now known as T. Nile Presents.
Meanwhile, she was working on her songwriting, applying her unique and very fresh ideas of what roots music could sound like. She plays banjo, so of course everything she does has that earthy feel, but she has pop sen
|
 |
Genre/Tags: 
Ringtones
Full Tracks
