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Summerland Review: Joel Plaskett’s Kelowna connection

Joel Plaskett and his father Bill. - Image: You Tube

Joel Plaskett and his father Bill. – Image: You Tube

Halifax rocker/singer songwriter singing about Kelowna since a Flashback’s gig; Returns with father

By Kevin Parnell, Summerland Review

Celebrated Canadian musician Joel Plaskett has built a successful career on his own terms, whether as a rocker with his band The Emergency, or a singer-songwriter playing solo gigs. Never a commercial success or a staple of mainstream radio, he’s built a career on touring Canada, singing unique, original tunes. Plaskett comes to Kelowna this month touring behind Solidarity, an album he made with his father Bill. And Kelowna is a city Plaskett knows well.

Joel Plaskett has been singing about Kelowna for a long time; ever since his early indie-rock band Thrush Hermit rolled into Flashbacks on a dead Wednesday night in 1994.

Plaskett, a Nova Scotia native and now a multi-award winning Canadian musician (2010’s Three won a JUNO for adult alternative album; 2015’s Park Avenue Sobriety Test was nominated for the same award), was in the early days of his musical journey.

When Thrush Hermit and its alternative rock show rolled into Kelowna on a string of endless dates on that Wednesday night, it didn’t go well. The tale has been told (tongue-in-cheek) by Plaskett in the two decades since and was immortalized on his song I Love This Town.

“It was just one of those nights,” remembered Plaskett last week in an interview with the Kelowna Capital News. “It was just the wrong venue. It was a particularly dark moment in the history of my travels and I made light of it and ran with it.”

The Kelowna gig would find it’s way into I Love This Town, a song Plaskett was writing about his recollections of Halifax. [READ MORE]