Treasa Levasseur - Jan/Feb 2009
Friday, January 16th, 2009Take equal parts Carla Thomas, Etta James, Merry Clayton, and Shirley Brown. Place in blender. Add spice, passion, and any combination of bass, keys, guitar, and harmonica. Punch up with horns. Serve hot.
That, more of less, is how you build a Treasa Levasseur. Levasseur, a native of Winnipeg who’s called Toronto home now for many years, is a highly versatile singer, songwriter, and in demand multi-instrumentalist who at any given time plays with as many as three or four different bands, though she’s been spending a bit more time of late playing with friend Claire Jenkins’ band.
She has played everything from show tunes, heavy metal, and hip hop to sugary pop tunes during her career to pay the bills – but her real passion is old school soul and on her most recent album, Low Fidelity, she pursues the material with a fervour befitting Carla Thomas during her heyday at Stax Records.
The title track on that record has an insanely good grove, but it’s only one of several tracks that could go some distance for Levasseur with enough airplay on a station with the right format. She’s all over this stuff like a dog on a bone and with a voice that has power, range and no small amount of grit to it.
You can usually find some very solid players behind Levasseur when she plays live, but she’s got the goods to go it alone if she has to playing piano, guitar, accordion, and mandolin. Her musical talents are such that they have endeared her to a number of other artists who’ve called on her to sit in with them, including The Undesirables, Evelyn Parry, Justin Rutledge, and Madison Violet.
Levasseur says one of her biggest thrills this year was getting the opportunity to play accordion on a session with The Band’s illustrious keyboard player/accordionist Garth Hudson – I dare say the ride is going to get even more interesting for her in the months ahead.