Mia Sheard 
Who: Mia Sheard
What: Intelligent progressive folk-rock
Where: Toronto, ON
Web Site: www.miasheard.com or www.maplemusic.com.
To Contact: or .

What's striking about Mia Sheard's second CD, Reptilian, is the way the Toronto singer/songwriter manages to occupy both the high plateau and the dark swamp -- the former sonically, the latter lyrically -- while keeping the listener enthralled. Case in point is he graceful lead-off track "The Tortoise and the Heiress", which moves with an almost classical sweep; musically grand in its reach, yet craftily disturbing in the portrayal of its co-narrators' parallel worlds. A former choir girl, Sheard uses her lovely and dextrous soprano to great effect, but knows when to rein it in when she needs to get down to ground level. That balance is complemented by the spacious, sometimes haunting production where her voice and acoustic guitar are sometimes wreathed in sonic ephemera, or, as in "Stubborn Bastard", nailed to the nitty gritty with crusty electric guitars. Her approach to songwriting leads to some fascinating subject matter. "Often I'll have empathy with someone; it could be someone I don't even know," she explains, "but I'll observe a situation and write about it as a third person. And sometimes I like just making it up." In "Comic" she probes for perspective in a cruel cubist's cartoon ("What a state you've got yourself into/What Picasso made this mess of you?"), while "Cover Girl" paints a nasty picture of men's desires -- veiled and otherwise. A well-chosen cover of Veal's "Mexico Texaco" seals the deal. Mia Sheard possesses a captivating voice, a riveting intelligence and a gift for truly artful songwriting. Hers is an evolution worth watching.

Billy Joe Green 
Who: Billy Joe Green
What: Blues with heart and spirit
Where: Edmonton, AB
To Contact: Steve Blackwell, 10411 Fairmount Drive S.E., Calgary, AB, T2J 0S6 (403) 607-0864, FAX (403) 278-5418,

The blues is a funny thing. In its traditional form, it often relies on repeated 12-bar patterns, a pentatonic scale and well-travelled lyrical themes. Sounds about as exciting as stale bread, doesn't it? But the magic in the blues occurs when individual artists bring their own unique spirit and emotion, and plug that into the form. Billy Joe Green is one such blues artist. Originally from the Lake of the Woods area on the Manitoba-Ontario border, raised in Winnipeg and now based in Edmonton, Green's second CD, My Ojibway Experience: Strength And Hope, mixes a few covers -- Robert Johnson's "Stop Breakin' Down" and "Love In Vain" -- with originals like "Nightmare Blues", the down-tempo dedicational "Together, Together/Ka-chi-tay-i-gah Song" and the scorching "Soul Search", a live-in-the-studio instrumental jam that pays homage to envelope-pushing axemen like Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. Green has the chops, but, more importantly, he has the heart. "It's all feel for me, and it's all emotion," he says. "Sometimes you close your eyes and it takes you somewhere. It's not just an exercise in playing." I suppose being from the Kejick Ojibway Nation makes Green rather atypical in the blues world. But in many ways he is the prototypical bluesman, for whom playing the blues was a form of salvation and a way to express his spirit. And that's what it's all about. Experience, strength, hope ... and some pretty hot chops. All of that comes across in Billy Joe's playing -- the only guy I know who turns the blues Green.

Credit: Jim Kelly is a Toronto-based freelance writer.

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