Siobhan Walsh Group: A Tribute to Aretha, Centennial Theatre, Friday, April 5, 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $37/$32, nvrc.ca/centennial-theatre.
Like all really good ideas, it came to her in the shower.
After four years spent balancing a fledgling musical career with running a landscaping company around the Courtenay-Comox-Cumberland area, Siobhan Walsh came to Vancouver to be a singer.
Raised by an opera director father and a music loving mother, Walsh trained as a jazz vocalist at what’s now Vancouver Island University. She knew volumes about singing but found herself wondering just how she should start her singing career.
Then she took a shower.
That rush of dopamine coupled the relaxation of the prefrontal cortex allowed Walsh’s mind to drift toward a new idea: paying tribute to the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin.
“It came to me,” she says.
Some performers might be cowed at the prospect of paying tribute to the singer Rolling Stone magazine picked as the greatest of all time. But Walsh felt she had the vocal power and nuance to do Franklin justice.
“My voice is really well suited to that style of music,” she says. “I really project well in my high register.”
Besides a similarity in their vocals, Walsh was one of legions who had trouble letting go of a legend.
Franklin died on Aug. 16, 2018, leaving soul, R&B, and gospel music poorer for her absence.
“I really wanted to bring that music to life again,” Walsh says. “It’s so beautiful and timeless.”
And in belting out Franklin’s songbook, Walsh also hopes to raise her own profile.
“I’m an aspiring musician in Vancouver, I write my own music,” she says. “But sometimes you have to . . . be creative about how you become known.”
Speaking from her home in Burnaby, Walsh recalls being struck by the deep resonance of Franklin’s voice.
“It stood out from all of the other singers . . . I love lots of current music but there’s something magical and special about her,”” she says. “Basically from 15 I was obsessed,” she adds with a laugh.
Despite Franklin’s musical versatility, her appeal is rooted in “raw experience,” Walsh says.
Writing for the New York Review of Books, novelist Darryl Pinckney describes Franklin’s music as his: “late-night and sad-morning soundtrack, a music of desire, consolation, and repair. I’d lift the needle and put it back on the same spot, and then again.”
Those records feel alive in a way that is absent on a great many pop records, Walsh explains.
“With her, it was like the beauty in imperfection,” she says.
Franklin’s career stretches from her Queen-in-waiting crooning period for Columbia records to the showstopping R-E-S-P-E-C-T era at Atlantic Records to “Amazing Grace” to upstaging the Blues Brothers to rocking Barack Obama’s inauguration. Through it all, her best music always felt spontaneous, Walsh says.
“That live, in the moment essence . . . that’s where she shines,” Walsh notes.
That essence allowed Franklin to take ownership of songs once thought to be community property.
After hearing Franklin’s version of “Respect,” Otis Redding famously commented: “I just lost my song. That girl took it away from me.”
In David Ritz’s Aretha Franklin biography, Etta James recalls running into Sarah Vaughan and asking her about Franklin’s version of “Skylark.”
Vaughan acknowledged that she’d heard it before adding: “And I’m never singing that song again.”
Choosing which songs to include in a tribute concern presents certain challenges, Walsh notes.
“You’ve got to play the hits,” she acknowledges, but she also wanted to highlight Franklin’s range.
“She can sing the crap out of so many genres,” Walsh says. “She sang opera! I’m not going to sing opera,” she adds with a laugh.
In some ways, Walsh has been readying for this concert since she was a teenager trying to emulate Franklin’s runs and match her passion.
Walsh recently wrote and recorded five songs and plans to release the first track early this summer.
But before that, she wants to pay tribute to the singer who helped her find own voice.
“I didn’t plan the way that I sing,” Walsh says. “I have the voice that I have, which I’m really blessed. It’s a gift.”
