Hello Delaware album release Dance Movie, CAMERON Friday, September 30, 7:30pm The Seahorse Tavern, 2037 Gottingen Street $10/$15
Dana Beeler knows a thing or two about change. Two years ago, the Halifax-based musician found herself writing songs with a broken heart and an ache to move away from the bluegrass-inflected sound with which she made her name.
"I was just writing songs for the emotional release," she says. "I'd written a few songs before my last break-up, and when I went through the break-up, two months after that I booked a show in Alberta. I thought, 'I'm going to book a show super-far away and then I'm going to somehow get there,' so I went on this life-changing trip and drove across the country by myself."
Beeler says that the songs she wrote during that period demanded a different sonic feeling than her earlier work. So she decamped to Lake Echo to record with producer Daniel Ledwell and came out the other side with the poppy My Mistake, her debut with her new band Hello Delaware.
The album's sentiment is unapologetic but its delivery is tongue in cheek. My Mistake is fundamentally a break-up album, but taken in the context of Beeler's musical reinvention these songs speak to the cathartic potential of music and our ability to remake ourselves. —Brennan McCracken
