Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 43

CALGARY HERALD Thursday, November 29, 2007 D3 Calgary's Top 10 Music Source: SoundScan Country Alternative Current Hard Rock This week National Last week This week National Last week This week National Last week This week National Last week This week National Last week Artist Artist Killers Sawdust Artist Artist Artist Garth Brooks Ultimate Hits Corb Lund Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier! Carrie Underwood Carnival Ride George Strait 22 More Hits PlantKrauss Raising Sand Reba McEntire Reba Duets Various Artists Country Heat 2003 Rascal Flatts Still Feels Good Johnny Reid Kicking Stones Taylor Swift Taylor Swift Celine Dion Taking Chances JoshGroban Noel Alicia Keys 4s Am Anne Murray Duets. Friends Legends Garth Brooks Ultimate Hits Led Zeppelin Mothership Corb Lund Norse Soldier! Horse Soldier! Killers Sawdust Britney Spears Blackout Spice Girls Greatest Hits 1 Led Zeppelin Mothership 4 Foo Fighters Echoes Silence Patience Grace 3 Serj Tankian Elect The Dead 5 Linkin Park Minutes To Midnight 6 Seether Finding Beauty In Negative Spa 1 Alicia Keys 4s I Am 2 Jay-Z American Gangster 4 Timbaland Timbaland Presents Shock Value 5 Kanye West Graduation 3 Rihanna Good Girl Gone Bad 6 Chris Brown Exclusive 8 Jully Black Revival 7 Justin Timberlake FuturesexLove Sounds 10 Amy Winehouse Back To Black 9 50 Cent Curtis Hedley Famous Last Words Feist Reminder Colbie Caillat Coco Foo Fighters Echoes Silence Patience Grace 10 Hives Black White Album 6 4 7 8 2 9 10 Daughtry Daughtry Dropkick Murphys Meanest Of Times Avenged Sevenfold Avenged Sevenfold Kid Rock Rock Roll Jesus Finger Eleven Them Vs. You Vs. Me Serj Tankian Elect The Dead Linkin Park Minutes To Midnight Angels Airwaves l-Empire Raine Maida Hunter's Lullaby 25 10 9 11 27 10 10 10 10 10 ENTERTAINMENT MUSIC finds lonely inspiration I to "I imagined it being part of this interior world that this character and characters had. It's this one-street town on the edge of Manitou.

Acoustically, it's amazing. "But part of it was I wanted it to have this feel. That's what I felt about (these characters). They had a stage but nobody in the audience. It's this beautiful thing.

It's an empty little town and you'd occasionally hear a plow in the fields or see an old guy drive by on his riding lawn mower." EVOLMERSialTHEHERALD.CANWEST.COM siast Marianne Moore. Moore was a minor celebrity and lifelong spinster who played a small role in Cornell's biography. This, in turn, led Fellows to Moore's poetry, which was filled with imagery of nature and birds. "Which is funny, 'cause she's from Brooklyn," says Fellows. "Her observations really appealed to me, being from the Prairies, as opposed to someone from the mountains or the coast.

"On the Prairies, you are coming from this place of subtle layers of beauty and colour and incredible skies." Born in Ontario and raised in France, B.C. and various southern Ontario towns, Fellows played the role of wandering troubadour before settling in Winnipeg in the 1990s. She is married to Weak- erthans vocalist and writer John K. Samson, who took a similar approach to character-based writing on his band's latest album Reunion Tour. "I'm tired of writing about myself," says Fellows.

"I wanted to create little fictions. This one was more of a collage than anything else. That sort of thing interested me. When you're a singer-songwriter, it's assumed it'll all be confessional writing. I'm just not as interested in that." Fellows carried the album's theme of "solitude" into the recording process as well.

Nevertheless was recorded with a loose-knit collective of musicians at an old opera house in the town of Manitou a small farming community 90 minutes southeast of Winnipeg. "It's from the 1900s," she says. 1 laroYonqug tewusu Authentic Japanese Udon and Soba (Buckwheat) Noodle Dishes and a wide assortment of delicacies including sushi. Present this ad and id receive lr IF 4 receive 20 your food bill! Cannot be combined with other offers. Does not include alcoholic beverages.

Expires December 31, 2007. I the Fellows Nevertheless recorded with solitude in mind ERICV0LMERS Calgary Herald For an artist who thrives on the notion of "found" sounds and accidental inspiration, Christine Fellows couldn't have stumbled upon a more appropriate article stashed in the pocket of her moth-balled winter coat last winter. The Winnipeg songwriter was taking her jacket out of storage when she found a death notice for a mysterious spinster named Betty crumpled inside. Conveniently enough, Fellows had just been commissioned to write the music for a modern dance project entitled The Spinster's Al SPOTLIGHT Christine Fellows plays the Marquee Room on Saturday with Baby Eagle and Susie Burpee. manac, a process that had her deeply immersed in researching the lives of solitary men and women.

"I'm a fan of the obituary, they do them really well overseas, so I have people I know who will see an interesting obituary and cut it out and give it to me," says Fellows, 39. "A friend must have given it to me and I had forgotten. I reached into my pocket and found this obituary for a woman named Betty. She lived on Valour Road, which is my favourite road in Winnipeg. She grew gladiolus and travelled the world." Betty would eventually find her way into Fellows' fourth disc Nevertheless, an exploration of loneliness, death and nature backed by the multi-instrumentalist's trademark strains of folk, orchestral pop, jazz, classical music and the "found sounds" of chirping birds and barking dogs.

Aging prizefighters, dead robins, eccentric U.S. poets, reclusive artists and a peculiar breed of earth-bound racing pigeon called "parlour rollers" all show up on Fellows' 15-song disc, which grew out of her collaboration with choreographer Susie Burpee earlier this year. Burpee will be a part of Fellows' travelling troupe as it makes its way to Calgary's Marquee Room on Saturday allowing Fellows to pay homage to the project that set her down the path to Nevertheless in the first place. "About half of the record was based on that score and half of it was songs that didn't fit the score," says Fellows. "I knew right off the top that she wanted it to be a song-based work.

I liked doing research-based work and building characters. It's what I love to do and I knew I was going to make a record out of it. So I wasn't killing myself over writing extra songs. I just filed them way." While researching "spinsterhood" and lonely souls for Burpee's piece, Fellows became obsessed with the sad life of U.S. artist and sculptor Joseph Cornell, a recluse who is now believed to have suffered from Asperger's syndrome and didn't receive due recognition for his work until after his 1972 death.

That led her to an even stranger character cape-wearing U.S. poet-matriarch and baseball enthu Courtesy, Christine Fellows Winnipeg songwriter Christine Fellows takes inspiration from dancers, poets, artists and pigeons. INCOMPARABLE MISS SATURDAY, APHIL 1908 -2PM truuif utmntJAUK SINGER CONCERT HAU CALGARY Tickets on sale at all Ticketmaster outlets. Call 403-777-0000 or visit TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 10AM 5th St 11th Ave. SW www.sobaten.com 265-2664 3 UNIVERSITY OF I CALGARY BOOKSTORE hoop: $5 mti THE mime mwi 1 Japanese noodle house 25 OFF i GENERAL READING BOOKS, GIFTS, STATIONERY ITEMS Excludes Course Materials and Textbooks, Art Supplies, Medical Books, aWIl i Calculators, I 7S Computer Hardware and Software, -jJt Postage Stamps, I Magazines AUTHOR SICNINCS ytfliV Ki2fia233 www.ticketmaster.ca au wtrouft mn if' mm 1 a QTjOjBUIIjTJJQ.