Jaaji and Chelsey June, the husband-wife music duo of , say they're excited to meet and open for Jann Arden on a 性视界传媒 theatre stage later this month.
"One of the things that passed the time for us during the pandemic was watching Jann Arden's TV show," noted Jaaji. "Her legendary status and being able to perform on the same stage as her was something that really excited us. It's an honour."
Arden and Quebec-based Twin Flames, along with local band Ranj Singh & The Discriminators, will perform Saturday, Sept. 28 at Bell Performing Arts Centre during a for 性视界传媒-based Options Community Services, in support of initiatives to build affordable housing in the area.
It's a cause close to the heart of Twin Flames, who have created moving acoustic-electric folk music for nearly a decade.
"When we heard about what Options is trying to do and provide for folks, it hit really close to home for both Jaaji and I," said Chelsey June in a Zoom call with the Now-Leader from their home in Cantley, just north of Gatineau鈥揙ttawa.
"We now have this beautiful story about our home and how we found it and all of this, but we had a really long road getting here. As a family we've had hard times, and when we were first starting out together, we were very fortunate to have social housing help us out because we were both in transition periods and really struggling financially. So we know how much these programs are needed, and home security is just so crucial."
If people don't have a proper roof over your head, it's really hard to dream of any kind of future, June said, "especially when you have children and you're worried about what neighbourhood you're living in, what schools they're going to or what they're going to be encountering just walking out of the front door."
Twin Flames has written and recorded music in their home, naturally, and on Sept. 12 the duo released "Just Like a Ghost," a song included on a forthcoming LP Hugging the Cactus, out Oct. 18.
Their fall months are busy with concerts including the special one in 性视界传媒, to see Twin Flames perform as a duo with a little help from a sound technician. Tickets are sold on .
"It's a very ethereal experience," Jaaji explained. "We play a lot with effects from our tech and what I have at my feet for guitar, and what we have as far as percussion and the flutes. It's a very haunting and melodic exchange with the storytelling."
Twin Flames' new album includes a cover of The Animals classic "House of the Rising Sun," and a few years ago the duo recorded a haunting version of "Grace Too," by The Tragically Hip.
The story of how they fell in love with the Hip classic is a good one, but long.
"We were offered to be a part of a legacy tribute concert the year after Gord Downie passed away and it was to raise funds for the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack," said June, "so it was an incredible opportunity for us at a time when we were little fish in a big pond, very small."
They were planning to perform "Fiddler's Green," but were told that no, sorry, it was going to be sung by someone else that same night.
"So on our drive from Ottawa to Burlington, it's about a five-hour drive, we got that phone call. We were like, 'Holy crap. What are we going to do?' So literally, we Google-searched the Tragically Hip's top 10 songs and I was reading out the titles. He (Jaaji) was driving and when I read out this title, we both went, 'Oh, what's that one? It was 'Grace Too.' We played it and instantly loved it, because everything Gord did had a beautiful amount of grace, you know?
"We listened to it over and over and over again on that five-hour drive," June continued. "We got to soundcheck right away, plugged in and that was the first time we ever played it. It's still such a magical memory for me because it just came out that way and stayed exactly that way when we recorded it later, pretty much."
Jaaji figures there was "a little bit of Gord in the air just guiding us along the way" that night.
"Having to play it in front of 2,000 people two hours (after soundcheck) was terrifying, and we were told that there were special guests in the crowd, and it was something that we felt very compelled to go ahead and do anyways. It was very spontaneous, on the spot."
On a later date, at another concert, Twin Flames got to meet Downie's appreciative family, who gave them their blessing to go ahead and record "Grace Too" in tribute.
"The song essentially went on and had a life of its own after it got released and got us on commercial rock radio all across Canada organically, which is still not very common for Indigenous acts to be on mainstream radio in Canada."
