Gouchie at one with the universe

Kym Gouchie has a name to live up to.

Firstly, she is a Gouchie, which is synonymous with Lhiedli T'enneh First Nations artistry and leadership.

Secondly, she has another name and it is emblazoned on her brand new album Northern Shining Star Woman. It's who she is, in title and in deed.

"That name was given to me at a sweat lodge ceremony about 20 years ago," said the singer-songwriter-activist who splits her time between birth territory Prince George and adopted second home Penticton.

"Lee Claremont is a Mohawk artist and she did a painting called At One With the Universe that she told me was done with me in mind, so I knew a long time ago that I wanted that painting and that name to be the basis of an album. It's finally done."

Gouchie has a knack for attracting musicians to collaborate with her, producers to agonize over the details of her recordings, and painters to lay brush on canvas in her likeness. This past weekend she was in Vancouver playing a concert at the Wise Hall as the headliner alongside Prince George's Naomi Kavka, with Joey Only from Wells also on the bill, and other acts as well.

The new record is also a collection of interior B.C. power-players.

The mastering was done by famed mix-finisher Greg Reely (Sarah McLachlan, Coldplay, Skinny Puppy, Fear Factory, Juno Award nominee for his work with Spirit Of The West) who now operates out of nearby Osoyoos.

The main producer was Thurein Myint who runs Ellis Avenue Analogue Studio out of Summerland. This is not the first time Myint and Gouchie have put their musical heads together. She loves his new-age musical views that boil down to his strictly old-school form of recording. Gouchie is a living symbol of the ancient cultural roots of Western Canada, and she is from a generational musical dynasty in Lhiedli T'enneh territory, so it might not be surprising to learn she was attracted to the magnetic warmth of mylar recording tools.

"It wasn't that way at all, actually," she said. She was in the flow of digital recording conditions. "How it happened was, I was approached to start a band. I knew about Thurein because he was teaching my daughter (Shayna Desjarlais, who joined in on some of the recording sessions) guitar lessons and I knew he was just wonderful on guitar. I just wanted him to be the guitar player in this band. He said yes."

The band never really took off, but Gouchie and Myint now had a working relationship, and all her recording plans shifted to his studio and his production mind.

"We work so well together," she said. "He'd take things so far above and beyond my expectations, way more than anything I was used to from a producer. A lot of the success of the sound was all to do with him.

"And having Greg just an hour down the road was the beauty of it. Thurein could drive him the tapes and preserve that analogue process right up to the final point of transferring it to CDs."

One track on the album, the final song in the sequence entitled Cleansing The Highway, was a collaboration of a wholly different sort. She is never shy about staring social issues in the eyes, with her performance art. She sings stories about residential school inspired by her family members' survival of systemic abuse. She has written about cancer, based on the many people in her life who have battled the disease and its resonant effects. She has written about domestic abuse, gleaned from the observations of life.

Cleansing The Highway also came from realities that splattered across her brain like wounds slashed across northern B.C. along the Highway Of Tears. The excruciatingly numerous cases of missing and murdered women in the region was her motivation for taking part in one of the commemorative walks of Highway 16 between Prince Rupert and Prince George. Along the road, she beat her hand drum and chanted.

Those rhythms and vocal themes began to form into musical themes. She took it to local artist and hand-drummer Jennifer Pighin and her group The Khast'an Drummers for their compositional input. Brenda Wilson, mother of Highway Of Tears victim Ramona Wilson and an outspoken advocate for social reform, also consulted with Gouchie on the song.

When CBC Radio program The Current came to Prince George to broadcast a special national forum on the issue of missing and murdered women, Gouchie was invited to perform the song in its form to that date. It ended up forming the closing sounds of the broadcast and it was noticed by Toronto listener Angela Rudden, the principal violist for the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra.

Rudden contacted Gouchie and offered a unique affiliation. With Gouchie's enthusiastic support, Rudden scored a string accompaniment for the Highway Of Tears song, recorded the parts in Ontario conducted by Eric Paetkau, and emailed the finished product to Gouchie.

Gouchie then took those bed recordings into the recording studio of CFUR with Fraser Hayes at the control board. She added vocals to cap off this journey of a composition.

"It was a cross-Canada collaboration, and it came from the earth," said Gouchie. "When I listen to it, when I play it, I feel the presence of the missing and murdered and stolen women."

Gouchie also got to incorporate the ethereal past into this record. On the song I Am she got her grandmother Mary Gouchie to provide vocals in her Lheidli dialect of the Dakelh language.

"She is one of the few who speak it fluently, and I want to do something to bring it to light, keep the language alive," Gouchie said.

And the song Waniska is also from the murky waters of time. It is a traditional Cree song, in honour of Gouchie's partially Cree heritage.

"We have never been able to pinpoint an origin other than it is traditional, and it means morning. It would be sung in the teepee villages to welcome the new day. I learned it a long, long time ago, and I just love it," Gouchie said.

An album release concert is in the works for Prince George, but dates have not been announced. The CD is available for download on Gouchie's website (www.kymgouchie.com) and for purchase at Exploration Place, Books & Company, Angelique's Native Arts, and Ave Maria. It is also in participating retailers along the highways of the region.