Hilary Grist: Tomorrow is a Chance to Start Over, a children's storybook and album launch event, Saturday, June 6 at 2 p.m., at Book Warehouse at 4118 Main St., Vancouver. Free. hilarygrist.com.
Singer-songwriter Hilary Grist has fond memories of as a child, being whisked away from her urban environment for the summer, escaping to her family's cabin in the wilds of Galiano Island.
"We would just pack the car, and the day after school ended, go for two months and just have these long days stretched out in front of us, just exploring and having that time to connect with nature and with each other," she says.
The Vancouver-based artist, and graduate of Capilano University's Jazz Studies program, used those magical memories as inspiration for her latest multimedia project, a children's bedtime storybook and accompanying dream music CD, entitled Tomorrow is a Chance to Start Over. Rhythmic and rhyming in nature, the story is geared towards those five and younger, and was released Tuesday by Montreal's The Secret Mountain. Grist will read the book and perform songs from the album at a free, family-friendly launch event being held at the Main Street Book Warehouse in Vancouver tomorrow, Saturday, June 6 at 2 p.m. While this is her first children's book, the release marks Grist's third full-length album, a follow to 2014's Come Go. Her songs have also been featured on a variety of television shows - Grimm, Being Human, Arctic Air, Continuum and Degrassi included.
Tomorrow is a Chance to Start Over depicts the journey of siblings Ira and Isabelle who one night depart from their house in a noisy, waterfront city, setting sail for a quieter, faraway land. They befriend a robin who instills in them the potential of dreams coming true.
The groundwork for the project was laid following the birth of Grist's two nieces.
"I just started writing these little songs for them," she says.
Based on encouragement from her husband, Mike Southworth, who runs Creativ Recording Studios in North Vancouver and works at Collide Entertainment, Grist continued to pen lullabies, coming to realize a story was developing. The project continued to evolve, seeing her draw upon her childhood travels to the Gulf Islands for her storyline. Also a skilled visual artist, Grist decided to try her hand at making miniatures to be photographed to bring her tale to the page. She spent hours learning how to craft clay characters, a challenge due to their approximately three inch height. The process involved a tremendous amount of trial and error as she worked to construct their armature, or inner wire skeleton, to allow for movement, as well as their bodies and tiny clothes. "I have some pretty hilarious pictures of all the tests, because I did 10 heads to get it right. They look like Frankenstein. There's an evolution you can see of how it started off and where it got to," she says.
The book's sets were constructed by Grist and her husband, a continued collaborator and producer on the project, and their friends, artists in their own right, Adam Thomas (who has helped with set design on their music videos), and North Vancouver painter Dana Irving.
Papier-mâché, cardboard, plywood and paint were among the materials used.
"It was a lot of little pieces along the way but we had a lot of fun," says Grist.
For the photography, Southworth worked with photographer Dan Jackson.
The accompanying album includes a narrated version of the story, nine of Grist's original songs and a version of Johannes Brahms' classic work, "Cradle Song."
Tomorrow is a Chance to Start Over is already in daily rotation in Grist's nieces' homes, each now three-and-a-half-years-old.
"We totally beta-tested it on them," she says. "It's really cute, they go to sleep with it at night. It's part of their little bedtime routine. They put it on, it's Pavlovian, they get sleepy. I think their parents are happy about that," she laughs. Adding additional meaning to her current release is that Grist is currently pregnant with twins, identical boys due in mid-August. "Now I'm in that world. We just went and bought a crib, and all that kind of stuff, whereas I wasn't really in that world before," she says. "It feels like really nice timing, I have to say," she adds.
