Katrina Kadoski
After the Shipwreck

Sad yet uplifting, melancholy but transcendent, Katrina Kadoski's After the Shipwreck maps the jagged course of shock, grief and slowly dawning acceptance that followed the sudden death of her beloved partner. "Writing this album was the deepest medicine for me," she says of 10 songs birthed, slowly, painfully and tenderly, after a heart attack took the life of Neil Weizel in 2018. "I think of these songs as Buckley's syrup for the soul. I hope they can be of service to anyone picking up their own shattered pieces."

After sparks flew at a Steve Earle concert in Victoria, Katrina and Neil embarked on a nearly 30-year voyage that she describes as "amazingly rich and packed with so many gifts. He taught me so much in every stage of our relationship. I'm sure he got an A in the life test. My fondest intention is to release something into the world that is worthy of this person and our time together."

Each successive song was a landmark in the Sooke, BC singer-songwriter's own healing as she took a mournful pause in her multi-faceted creative life -- teaching music, playing solo and with her band The Edgedwellers, and crafting a new stage musical (The Waterman's Daughter) while continuing to perform her acclaimed, one-woman music-theatre production Cougar Annie Tales.

Katrina's guitar-and-voice demos were intended as private meditations until musician friends urged her to record them professionally as the follow-up to her debut album Whirlpools and the 2016 EP Dreamtime. One introduced her to Jude Pelley, the award-winning Nova Scotia-based producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist known for his work with Amelia Curran and the folk duo Pennybrook. During one of Jude's periodic trips to Vancouver Island, he met Katrina and immediately heard the raw authenticity of her new songs and their potential as fully arranged recordings.

The two worked in person and at a bicoastal distance in developing a largely acoustic tapestry flavoured with contributions from nearly two dozen friends and guest musicians. Front and centre is Katrina's voice, acoustic guitar, banjo and harmonium, all nestled within Jude's textured arrangements for strings and horns. Jen and Scott Smith, her Dreamtime collaborators from Baltimore, MD., contribute harmony vocals. Edgedwellers guitarist Peter Wahl and Lunenburg, NS drummer Jordi Comstock are featured on multiple tracks. The producer himself adds his own guitars, mandolin, bass, low D whistle and percussion.

"I'm overwhelmed by the care and artistry Jude and everyone involved dedicated to this project," says Katrina. "He sent me roughed out versions of his ideas first, then all the parts -- oboe, cello, violin, viola -- had to be notated and recorded, really beautifully so. It almost goes without saying, but I'm so grateful and thrilled with how it came together."

After the Shipwreck's songs are laden with maritime metaphors, suitable for a writer who leaves within steps of the tempestuous Strait of Juan de Fuca. The title track was one of the first to emerge after Neil's death. "I was just sad, really sad, with a sense almost like I was drowning. One day I needed to clear space on my phone and came across 30 of his messages. That broke me open a little more. Writing that song allowed me to begin processing his loss and hold out the hope that one day, when it's my turn, he'll be there to take me home."

Linking lunar phases with her own stages of heartbreak, album opener "Moonbeams" finds her walking a beach in Neil's favourite green jacket and, with wonder at the mystery of it all, reading signs from him in the cloudy night sky. "Under Irises" sprung to life in a coffeeshop where Katrina had the sudden teary realization that she was sitting beneath an artist's interpretation of one of Neil's favourite van Gogh paintings. Closing tracks "My Time" and "Invisible" bring a measure of gentle, soothing acceptance to a loss she acknowledges she'll always feel.

"I'm usually an abstract storyteller," explains Katrina, who developed Cougar Annie Tales after spending three wilderness years with Neil as caretakers of the British Columbia folk hero's homestead on Vancouver Island's rugged coast north of Tofino. "But these songs are entirely inside my own experience. I was a real mess, aching and inconsolable, and there are times when I still am. But it was so good to have music as a way to channel my grief into a new expression."

Born in Fort McMurray, Katrina has lived on southern Vancouver Island most of her life. A singer-songwriter since the late 1990s, she turned to multi-media music theatre in 2010 to chronicle historically accurate stories about remarkable women. She has plans to record Cougar Annie Tales, an award-winner at the Victoria Fringe Festival that she has now performed dozens of times to sold-out audiences. She's also presented her latest work, The Waterman's Daughter, on tour in Canada and the U.S. It tells of Lilyan Stratton Corbin, an impoverished girl from an east coast fishing town who beat the odds to become an author, banker, actress and philanthropist in late 19th century America.