Song Premiere : “Whitehorse” by Kim Barlow

From The Artist : Whitehorse is a very personal song about youth, change, letting go. I lived in the Yukon for twenty years. Twenty. Years. I didn’t plan to stay so long. Like most people I met there, I went on a whim one summer and got drawn in. It is an intense, wild, gorgeous, scrappy place and I made all my best friends for life there. “We grew up tough and bent together/ figured it would stay like this forever”. I moved back to Nova Scotia with husband and babies because it was time to be closer to family, and because I love it here, too. In the blur of life since we left, I haven’t had time for closure or reflection. Sometimes when I sing this song that I wrote, I cry because it all hits me. Imagine, crying at my own song, but there you have it.

Whitehorse is a love song for this massive body of land that we criss-cross for work or wanderlust. We break our hearts with the vastness of it, when we realize it’s impossible now to always be near the ones we love.

World travelling, multi-award nominated Kim Barlow is relaunching her musical life in Nova Scotia after many years in the Yukon and a recent parenting hiatus. A creative and eccentric writer of songs, skillful on guitar and clawhammer banjo, Barlow has recorded six albums of her own work and many collaborations. Her newest recording features some of Nova Scotia’s finest: Mark Adam on drums, Nicholas D’Amato on bass, special guests including Old Man Luedecke, and strong new songs about domestic minutiae, the larger picture, and a wild slant on some traditional Maritime tunes.

Latest single ‘Whitehorse’ is a brilliantly eccentric take on folk songwriting. Starting off with an almost dreamlike keyboard, the song quickly opens up to Barlow’s confessional vocals. But what starts off as a sparse, intimate affair quickly builds to a glorious cinematic landscape. Percussion and hand claps echo the “I’m galloping home, on my own white horse” refrain, building with each repetition. What started off as a small musical universe quickly reveals itself to be filled with melodic colour. Kim Barlow has taken slices from multiple genres and created an idiosyncratic tressure. Her new album ‘How To Let Go’ is out September 28th.

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