Kate Reid and Evalyn Parry are both collectors of stories, and their immense collection will be on display in Jasper in musical form on April 21. 

Reid is currently in the process of recording two much-anticipated releases. The first, Doing it for the Chicks, is a follow up to her critically acclaimed 2009 debut I’m Just Warming Up. 

“It’s going to be a really killer album; full production, great players. I love the way this album makes me feel,” Reid said. 

As if that weren’t enough, Reid is also working on a children’s and family album that will tell the stories of kids growing up in LGBTQ (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) households. 

Reid has interviewed over 40 children over the past two years to discover life inside LGBTQ families, and hear about their experiences outside their homes. 

“I turned those into songs exploring a range of issues that kids deal with who come from queer families,” Reid said. She also tackled the issue of kids who stand out from a crowd. “I also wrote some songs about kids who are different from the norm so it’s not just an album for kids who have queer parents – it’s also an album for kids who aren’t necessarily straight and narrow themselves.”

Telling the stories of LGBTQ families wasn’t quite enough – Reid invited a group of “queer” youths from Vancouver to sing back-up vocals on the album too. 

“It’s going to be a really fun album,” she said. “It’s been a really fun project to work on.”

Becoming a champion of LGBTQ issues wasn’t something Reid had intended to do, but she found writing songs about herself spoke to the culture. 

“I was writing songs about myself and how I fit into the world or see myself in the world,” Reid said. “It turned out that what I sing about feels important to a lot of people and that’s when I started realizing that I wasn’t just writing and singing for me anymore.”

Reid said that while the LGBTQ community has taken a giant leap forward towards equality, the fight is far from over. 

“We have come a long way in the fight for equality and human rights, but we still have a ways to go. Bullying, homophobia, discrimination and exclusion is still rampant in our schools and in so many communities. We still have a lot of work to do.”

As for the children’s album, it speaks to a group of families that are ignored by many children’s artists. 

“There are no songs out there in the world for them. All children’s songs that refer to family are talking about heterosexual families, not queer ones,” Reid said. “Our kids need to be visible and heard, and represented, too.”

If all that isn’t enough, Reid has been touring almost non-stop, besides a little bit of time off in the winter, where she fits in song writing, tying up loose ends on the business side of her act, and recording – all the while trying to have what she calls a real life. 

“I try to segment off the creative from the business,” Reid said. She has enlisted friends to help out with the business side of things as well. 

Parry said the two musicians work together because they both use humour and inject their views into their writing. 

“I think both of us approach writing from a very personal, honest place – so I think it’s going to be a fun combination,” Parry said. “Lots of laughs, as well as lots of substance.”

The show will be in what Parry calls a song-swap format; both women will be on stage at the same time trading back and forth and backing each other up. 

Parry’s newest album, SPIN, is all about riding her bike – the influence of the two-wheeled mode of transportation can be heard not only in the lyrics, but in the accompanying instruments. Parry used a bike itself as an instrument on SPIN. 

“The songs are inspired not only by my own love-affair with riding a bicycle, but also by the historical connection between bikes and women’s emancipation in the 1890s,” Parry said. “They also explore the more contemporary side of the word ‘spin’, as it pertains to advertising, and the way things and ideas get bought, sold, and ‘spun’. It’s a pretty unusual record in terms of instrumentation, and I’m super proud of how it turned out – especially how amazing the bicycle sounds.”

Parry grew up in a musical household, and continues to be inspired by her mother’s and brother’s artistic endeavours. 

“Growing up in a family of artists certainly made me see that the arts were a viable career option, and perhaps gave me the courage to pursue what has turned out to be a very unconventional, challenging but rewarding career path, creating and performing my own work,” she said. 

Her background has helped turn her music into what she describes as “whimsical and eclectic”. Her shows combine spoken word poetry with the rootsy guitar of a singer-songwriter. She uses not only a bike, but a water bottle and a shruti box as instruments. 

“The lyrics are always at the forefront of my music – for me it’s always about ideas, images, communicating,” Parry said. 

More information on show venues can be found at katereid.net, or evalynparry.net.