THE BATTLEFORDS — A year ago, when CBC named her one of Saskatchewan's 40 under-40s to watch, Kjelti Anderson said, ""I have this compulsion to make an impact; I feel the need to change things and make waves."
That has not changed for this granddaughter of Jane and the now late Dave Shury, and Eric and Janet Anderson since moving to the Battlefords to live with Jane several years ago. Kjelti Anderson - or, as she is happy to be known, Kjelti Katherine - continues to move through the currents of community activism in the Battlefords, ever expanding her sphere professionally and personally.
A champion of artists, she is one herself in many way, and is increasingly adding musical performance to her repertoire.
The former Edmontonian will be performing as one of three female songwriters at a house concert entitled Spring Songstress Soirée April 10. Also performing are Megan Nash, originally from the Mortlach area, and Mary Caroline of Yellowknife, N.W.T. The soirée will be held at the Gog, a former synagogue which is now the North Battleford home of Kelly Waters. Waters regularly hosts travelling musicians in the renovated space as part of a growing live music scene in the community.
Anderson says, "The house concert is happening because of a chance encounter I had with Megan Nash, one of the other two songwriters who will be performing at the Spring Songstress Soirée on April 10th."
Nash's band, Pandacorn from Moose Jaw, was in Saskatoon auditioning for Ness Creek Music Festival on the same day Anderson was auditioning with her band, A Long Side.
"We ran into each other afterwards in a coffee shop on Broadway and I told her I liked her performance," says Anderson. "She said I had a nice voice and was interested in working together."
That was the germ of an idea. As a result, Anderson sent her an email about hosting a house concert in North Battleford featuring Nash with herself as the opening performer.
"It just so happened," says Anderson, "she had a tour booked with Mary Caroline from Yellowknife, who she's toured with before, and they would be passing through here on April 10th. I made some phone calls to find a possible house concert host and Kelly Waters generously offered her beautiful space."
Anderson says once they had that settled, the ball started to get rolling with promotion ... and, she says, practice!
The poster announces, "Kjelti Katherine: She trades silence for thoughtful gestures in melody and blushing lyrics that betray her prairie secrets. Megan Nash: If a thunderstorm had a voice, it would sound like Megan Nash - Craig Lederhouse, CBC Radio. Mary Caroline: The heart of a frontier's woman, the soul of a poet, Yellowknife's Mary Caroline captures the edginess and beauty of her northern life."
Anderson is not new to performing when it comes to music, drama and dance. But this upcoming performance is different in that it is a solo endeavour.
"Although I've performed many a time for family, friends, and those joining me around a summer campfire or at an open mic., I consider this to be my second true performance ... where I get to promote myself and share a bill with other talented musicians."
The first time was as recent as Feb. 28 at The Lady Show held at Paved Arts in Saskatoon.
"I performed a four-song set along with other emerging female musicians. It was a really inspiring learning experience for me. We raised over $600 for a Girls Rock Camp being held this summer in Saskatoon."
She says the upcoming show at the Gog will largely feature her own material along with a few songs that she has co-written with others. There will also be a couple of covers thrown in for good measure, she says.
"A good cover is a beautiful thing."
Anderson prescribes to Cat Power's take on covering other people's songs. Powers, an American singer-songwriter, is an influential icon of Anderson's.
"To paraphrase, she believes that music is channeled into the world by the individual artists, but the songs themselves belong to everyone. That translates into my own music in the way that I strive to not simply mimic the original but instead to create my own interpretation of the song. I will perform one of her songs at the Gog house concert."
Anderson says her own writing process is intriguing and mysterious.
"The other day I woke up in the middle of the night humming a melody. I had a stern internal dialogue with the part of me that, craving sleep, insisted I would remember it in the morning, and I crawled out of bed. I now have a 20-minute recording of my bleary lyrics formed into 16 verses of a song about returning home."
And how did it sound in the morning?"
Anderson says, "It's funny to listen back to what you wrote semi-coherently ... obviously some of it isn't stellar, but some of it is quite lovely."
It seems Anderson, at least musically, is a morning person.
"Most of my songs come out in the morning, all at once, and every song I've written has a very specific feeling associated with it," she says. "I am closely drawn into my songs as they feed so much on my own experience."
Anderson says this is what she means when she says, as on the poster, that she is trading silence for sound.
"There is a story to that, too, and maybe I need a song to tell it. The story would tell of a young woman whose voice retreated into silence for many years because of a deep hurt she carried. It wasn't until a few summers ago when I began earnestly developing my musical skills that I was able to overcome the part of me that was so afraid of my own voice."
Where does the music come from? It's in the genes, it appears.
"My grandpa Eric Anderson, who was well known in the Battlefords for his acting career with Battleford Community Players, was a musician."
Her dad, Nathan Anderson, always talked of coming home from school to find his father strumming the guitar playing old country classics, she says.
"My father has been a drummer for over 30 years and he's probably only missed a handful of days of practice in that time. He's ALWAYS stressed the importance of keeping at it, day in, day out."
But it doesn't end there.
"My younger brother Cordell is another inspiration. He sort of reminds me of Brian Wilson; he's got the talent and the oddball genius of a true artist."
In addition to having a musical family, Anderson finds music in her relationships.
"Kurtis J. Kopp, as a partner and collaborator, has always supported my musical development," she says of the musician who was commissioned last year to write North Battleford's centennial theme. "His passion for music is contagious. He helped me find my voice in a pretty little waltz that we wrote together which may just be my most favourite song in the whole world to sing."
The commitment Anderson has made to the Spring Songstress Soirée is also spurring her along.
"I'm looking forward to playing for a hometown audience here in the Battlefords alongside these two brilliant artists who are passing through," she says. "It's pushing me to practise every day (Dad's so proud) and to work on new material that I'm excited to share."
As a relatively new venture, the consequences of moving into solo performance is a definite unknown.
"As for the future, I'm not sure where music could take me," she says. "I'm not even thinking about it. I'm just happy to wake up and stay in bed strumming my guitar before I even have to put pants on," she laughs.
Well, once she's up and at it for the day, Anderson can be found accomplishing any number of things other than music.
In addition to working for the City of North Battleford's galleries, including overseeing the Allen Sapp Healing Garden project, she is also a project co-ordinator with Midwest Food Resources, a community-based organization that supports local action to help make healthy eating easier. Among her projects with that organization is cooking classes in local schools.
She has also taught permaculture classes at Sakewew High School.
Permaculture is one of Anderson's passions, having taken root while she pursued a university education in Sweden. One of the aspects of permaculture is working with and learning from nature by observing, says Anderson, "allowing nature to do its thing and us benefiting from that."
Anderson is involved with the Saskatchewan Boreal Forest Learning Centre, a not-for-profit organization that provides nature-oriented classroom workshops in high schools throughout the province, and holds programs at the Ness Creek Cultural Ecological Site, a shared 320-acre retreat site, 20 kilometres northeast of Big River.
Although she has been living in the Battlefords for only a few years, Anderson has established numerous connections with a community of like-minded individuals, from organic farmers to professional permaculturists.
She is also passionate about culture and has become involved in arts, drama and dance locally as well as the Feed the Artist initiative and its arts and culture magazine.
She also serves on the Battleford Opera House Gallery committee.
The Battlefords are home by choice.
"I'd been all over the world and there were so many places I could have decided to move," she says.
There were plenty of opportunities in the places she'd travelled and her professors in Sweden were encouraging her to apply for positions there, but she said, "Nope, I'm going to the prairies."
