Joanna Chapman-Smith

by Chelsea Comeau

When Toronto-born musician Joanna Chapman-Smith planned to meet with me on a hot Thursday morning, I assumed I’d be heading to a downtown office building, but I instead found myself in front of a house along King Edward in Vancouver. I walked through an archway of shrubbery and up a small set of stairs to find Joanna rehearsing on the porch with a few friends. She quickly ushered me inside and handed me a much-needed glass of water, then lead me to the living room to sit and answer a few of my questions. When asked how often rehearsals such as the one I saw go on, Joanna divulged that she practices up to three times every day. In fact, she plays for dance classes, privately teaches Indonesian music, and is a part of six different bands, sometimes chalking up a total ox six rehearsal hours in her day.

While that amounts to an impressive plethora of musical feats, Joanna wasn’t always able to make a living honing her talent. Chapman-Smith’s previous day jobs include barista and waitressing positions; she only just decided to make singing and performing her livelihood a year ago when she finished at Simon Fraser University with a major in music and a minor in English.

The tunes on the porch continued with Chapman-Smith absent, drifting through the open door as Joanna went a little deeper and discussed her philosophy as a musician. For someone so deeply immersed in music, Joanna surprised me by telling me she believes very strongly in taking time to “wrestle with life apart from it”. She explained that drawing the positive from the negative, confusing right and wrong, is also a good way of coping with life, and its that very idea that crops up throughout Chapman-Smith’s new c.d., Eyre Corvidae. The album features a black and white cover of six crows in flight, a perfect example of Joanna’s philosophy. The birds’ dark connotations contradict their attraction to the shiny, aesthetically pleasing trinkets they are so famed for stealing. This is Joanna’s way of allowing listeners a brief glimpse into what truly makes her tick.

We chatted a little while longer before I ventured back out into the heat, now equipped with a sealed copy of Eyre Corvidae. I took it home, popped it into my computer, and slipped on a pair of headphones to listen. Booklet of lyrics in hand, I played the first track, “Hit the Drums” and was immediately struck by the haunting lyrics “hear the tears from my eyes hit the drums, dear friends, for we soon will die”. Intricate guitar plucking followed, dynamic lyrics of the tragic mingling with the beautiful, as in “Beautiful Space”, track number three, which makes mention of a “kaleidoscopic crash course”. By the time I reached “Closer”, I felt as though I had been granted a truly privileged peek into something deeply personal. When Chapman- Smith’s narrative speaks directly to the listener, pleading “please trust me” there seems no other option but to comply. Eyre Corvidae amounted to an experience only truly explainable if one listens to the album, a heart-on-the-sleeve guide to finding the shiny thing nestled amongst the pain.

Listen to Joanna at
http://www.joannacs.com/