Entertainment

ROOTS

Where the heart of music is;
Wherever they roam, these rising stars call a cabin near Whitehorse home.

By Greg Quill

Toronto Star
1404 words
2 April 2006
The Toronto Star
Page C12
Copyright (c) 2006 The Toronto Star

WHITEHORSE -- In this overpowering, moonlit wilderness in the middle of winter, about 50 kilometres north of the Yukon capital, a couple of sheepdogs play like children in the fresh snow piled deep in the clearing around a spacious, handmade log cabin set back from the Alaska Highway and concealed in a forest of thick, towering firs.

They gnaw occasionally on the shinbone of a moose, the slowly braised haunch of which is the centrepiece of a massive buffet inside. It's cold out here, but not uncomfortable, nothing like the -50C of winters past, mutters Yukon songwriter and troubadour Indio Saravanja.

His quiet voice trails away like fog over the porch steps and into the night. He laughs at the antics of the dogs. Music is in the air. Silver light floods the valley and glows off snowcapped mountains on the circling horizon.

This is Saravanja's favourite place. He comes here if he's in Whitehorse on the one Sunday every month when the town's musical community gathers inside, under these high cathedral ceilings, to sing and play and eat.

But he won't be there this weekend. Saravanja and Yukon buddy, songwriter Gordie Tentrees, are embarking, after a two-hander concert at Toronto's Tranzac Club Saturday night, on a month-long road trip across the country. Thirty gigs in 30 days, from here all the way back to Whitehorse, back to that cabin in the woods.

The cabin - and various log outhouses, including a woodshed, a workshop, a guest cottage and a bear-proof food store atop 10-metre-long tree trunks - were built by Pete and Mary (just Pete and Mary, no surnames), two Americans who went bush in the 1970s and made a good living as line trappers, raising their daughter in the bush till she required "socializing" at age 12, at which time they bought a small house in nearby Mayo for the summertime off-seasons. She's now 31, lives in Vancouver with her husband and child, and works for a provincial environmental agency.

Despite their years without other human company, Pete and Mary are generous, hospitable, gregarious people; well-educated, wonderful musicians with an exceptionally civilized sense of social intercourse.

Like almost everyone you meet in Whitehorse, they come from somewhere else, and succumbed in a very short time to the peculiar charm of the Yukon - the isolation, the tight communal bonds, the creative, do-it-yourself spirit, the certain knowledge that here you can truly reinvent yourself, exorcise your demons, dump your back story and "grow a better self," as Tentrees likes to say of the town he adopted 8 years ago. He teaches remedial studies for most of the year, raises his young family, writes, records and spends "20 hours a week on the computer planning my next musical move."

Once a month, Pete and Mary host a Sunday afternoon gathering like this one, he says, open to all the musicians in town, and put out a feast. Today, in the dark that settled around 3: 30 p.m. after a short five hours of sunlight, it's moose stew, elk steaks, venison meatballs in tomato sauce, ratatouille, carrots, mashed garlic potatoes, their own bread, cakes and cookies, all made on a huge wood stove at one end of the cabin, as well as cheese, cold cuts and great wine.

There are 40 or 50 people at the other end of the sprawling, wood fire-warmed room - on sofas and benches covered with Navajo rugs and fur throws - playing guitars, mandolins, a dobro or two, a piano, lap steel, harmonica, standup bass, and singing amazing harmonies. Old songs, new songs, their own songs. They're all concert-level pickers and songwriters, who pick up within a couple of bars everything that bubbles up in the musical pot. Gentle folkies.

"This is the way we live up here," Saravanja says on Pete's and Mary's front porch. Based now in B.C.'s Gulf Islands, he sees Whitehorse as his beginning and end, and visits often.

"People here care for one another. They help you, they feed you, they lend what they can ... and there's always music. Compared to New York City, there's more going on in Whitehorse on any night of the week, it seems to me - more places to play, five studios recording music full time, and more people willing to hear your music," he says."I have to keep coming back to this place, these people. It's the only place I feel I belong."

Many of the musicians in Pete's and Mary's cabin were stars the previous night in a concert at the Whitehorse Convention Centre, a converted swimming pool/ice rink in the middle of town, produced by Music Yukon, a government arts agency with a mandate to promote the work of the hundreds of the territory's musicians and songwriters - a disproportionate number in a wilderness inhabited by just 30,000 souls, producing as many as 50 roots music CDs a year and staging almost as many music festivals - and to showcase artists on the roster of the independent Whitehorse-based, multi-award winning roots music label, Caribou Records. The whole town, it seemed, jammed into the arena.

Major label executives, music publishing and artists' rights reps, and journalists from Toronto and Vancouver were in the audience that night, witness to a five-hour event that included performances by Yukon roots music artists Kim Barlow, Anne Louise Genest, Kim Beggs, Hungry Hill and Saravanja, among others.

As Caribou's latest acquisition, Saravanja was the star of the show, launching his self-titled debut CD. It was the 33-year-old songwriter's first brush with the big time. Born in Argentina, raised in Yellowknife, Saravanja has been an itinerant street busker and guitarist-for-rent in Montreal, Toronto, Madrid and New York City during the past 15 years. He was taken under Caribou's wing by B.C.-born Bob Hamilton, Whitehorse's most prolific musician/producer and, with David Pektovich, the label's co-owner.

Saravanja's music dwells in a familiar subgenre of acoustic-based folk rock, with lyrics that lay out personal narratives about travelling and dreams. But what's special is his impressive sense of place - not just of the north but also the urban landscapes he passes through.

"He's the real thing," Hamilton confides during a break in the Sunday jamboree at Pete's and Mary's. The previous night, Hamilton, the 50-year-old driving wheel in Whitehorse's rustic music machine, leader of the now defunct but much acclaimed "atomic bluegrass" outfit The Undertakin' Daddies, was on stage for the full five hours, sitting in on guitar, mandolin, dobro, lap steel and vocals with every act.

"The poetry, the imagery in his lyrics is overwhelming. There's nothing derivative about him. Like every musician in this room, he has something unique and original to say. Once I heard his songs, I couldn't turn down the chance to record him," Hamilton said of Saravanja.

Tentrees, with the independently released 29 Loads Of Freight under his belt, says he'd have never even picked up a guitar if he hadn't moved from Toronto to Whitehorse.

"There's always someone who'll teach you something a musician needs to know, someone to support you.... I met Indio there. He came to my first show," Tentrees says, calling Saravanja "a big influence and a great friend."

"It's just the way things are in Whitehorse. It suits me. It's a place where you can make something out of nothing, where you can make music all day and all night if you want to, and where you can find people who'll fall over themselves to help make your music better."

WHO: Indio Saravanja and Gordie Tentrees
WHEN: Saturday April 8, 9 p.m.
WHERE: The Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Ave.
TICKETS: $5 or PWYC at the door

TOP PHOTOS: Indio Saravanja is based in B.C. now but says the Yukon will always be home. RIGHT: Gordie Tentrees, centre, and his band. Tentrees says his adopted home is a good place to "grow a better self.";

Times Colonist - Victoria, BC - Daily - April 29, 2006 - FEATURE

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/arts/story.html?id=d6ab1626-ed32-4c30-8b23-31b11c88a5c7&k=57608

Saravanja confident with folk identity

Mike Devlin, Times Colonist
Published: Saturday, April 29, 2006

PREVIEW

Who: Gordie Tentrees

with Indio Saravanja

Where: Spiral Cafe

(418 Craigflower Rd.)

When: Tuesday, 8 p.m.

Tickets: $10 at the door

- - -

Indio Saravanja's current tour has put him back on the Trans-Canada Highway, a stretch of road the native of Argentina knows incredibly well.

Saravanja has performed pretty much everywhere in Canada, and has lived in Toronto, Montreal and Yellowknife, among other cities, after leaving home at 13.

His constant travelling came to an end three years ago when he settled on Galiano Island, where he now lives with his girlfriend. The laid-back locale has seemingly cured the singer-songwriter of his vagabond ways.

"The last three years of my life have been pretty stable," Saravanja said over a cellphone as he travelled to Lethbridge, Alta. "I don't see myself going anywhere. I've run out of imagination. I've been everywhere I wanted to be; now I'm kind of comfortable."

Saravanja, 33, has spent a good deal of time in Victoria over the years as well. His mother, who had muscular dystrophy and died in October, spent her last 12 years in Victoria, many of those with her son by her side. No matter where he was living at the time, Saravanja would move and spend four months each year in Victoria caring for her.

The respite gave him ample time to hone his own songs, and while he quickly became friends with some of the city's most notable musicians -- including Daniel Lapp, Carolyn Mark, Dan Weisenburger and Leeroy Stagger -- he turned down more than a few gigs locally.

"It was my vacation spot," said Saravanja, who for eight years performed six nights a week in a bar band that played mostly cover songs. "It was my spot to hang out and not play, because I was playing the rest of the year non-stop."

He plays his own music now, and the material on his self-titled debut is an assured batch of folk that is reminiscent of early Bob Dylan.

Perhaps that's not surprising: Saravanja has done two stints as a resident of New York, one as a coffee barista in the East Village neighbourhood often associated with Dylan, Joan Baez and beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg. "It was no big deal for a David Byrne to come in for breakfast," he said of the coffee house, where he also served Ginsberg and punk poet Lydia Lunch. "The whole bohemian thing was still very much alive. You could get an apartment for $300."

That changed quickly. "When I moved back there in 1999, those same rooms were more like $1,200 a month."

It was during his first New York tour of duty that he began to find his voice as a songwriter, inspired by his close friend, another fellow transplant New Yorker, the late Jeff Buckley.

Saravanja's memories of New York reflect a shift in his creative focus.

"When I was in New York, I wanted to be a rock star. But I sabotaged any chance I had of doing that. I don't know if that was inner wisdom I didn't even know was there, or fate. I was way too insecure and way too scared of everything, but at the same time I knew I wanted depth to my writing that just wasn't there yet."

Now that he has finally found the confidence to record his own material, he plans on remaining in one place.

"If I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing -- which is touring the hell out of this record -- it almost won't matter where I live."

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2006

WHATSUPYUKON Magazine December 9, 2005
Audio Borealis with David Gilmour

I have encountered a young musician whose lyrics show a depth that shouldn't be there.....considering his youth. Indio Saravanja is a talent to watch.
For the lyrics alone, this self-titled CD is one that might foreshadow the possibilities for this soulful son.
Maybe he's a beat poet that wound up in a later generation. Certainly his songs reflect the 'loner on the road looking for meaning' theme that cropped up in literature, theatre and song during that transition from the golden 50s into the turbulent 60's. One writer who came to mind while listening to these 11 tunes was John Steinbeck.
Actually, a few other writers also came to mind: Bob Dylan for one, and Bruce Springsteen for another....pretty high company for such a young man.
While not every song is a total winner, every song has something to it to catch the ear and mind.
Most of the songs are fairly minimal in the instrumentation. The Long Way has only an acoustic guitar and bass while World Of Frost (I'm Leaving) has all of seven instruments. Even when this many instruments are being used, one finds almost all the instruments are there to let the vocals rise to the fore. The percussion is simple. No great cymbal crashes.
The organ on 'Til the Sun Shines is a great example of understated cohesion. It helps weld together the foundation that once again lets the lyrics soar.
The slide guitar on this track, by the late Aylie Sparkes, is also a good example of this as well. Simple and haunting, it is an excellent arm to hold up the vocals. Never obtrusive, but perfectly counter pointed for the vocals.
Lonnie Powell does the drum work and, with the exception of 2 tracks, Pat Braden supplies the bass.
Other fine folk to help out are Annie Avery on organ, Gene Brown on pedal steel, Moritz Behm on violin and Bob Hamilton on a variety of instruments.
Indio is also a multi instrumentalist himself. He provides acoustic guitar, harmonica, harmonium, piano, mock mellotron and bass.
While the instruments and production seem just what the doctor ordered, it's the lyrics that really put this CD over the top. Indio rarely uses a chorus in these songs. They are just more stories that happen to have a melody.
Conman, in particular, struck me as a very personal song that held great truths. And by this I mean truths that many of us have but, will not bring to the light of day. Painful truths that are not easy to admit. Being human. Being wrong. Being less than we want or hope.
How a young soul as this has found them and can express them so well is beyond me. I've been trying for decades and have never come near to this sage.
When it comes to voice quality, Indio has a voice that also seems to have a depth of experience. It also has an echo of Bob Dylan in its delivery. Right from the first track, I kept hearing echoes of both Dylan and Springsteen in the vocals.
I also heard echoes of these two legends in his lyrics. I must admit to a slight pang of jealousy when i finished listening to this CD. How did this young, green kid get so good so quick. Maybe it was talent combined with hard work.
In closing, I can only say, remember the name Indio Saravanja and watch to see where the journey takes him.

by John Threlfall

If you were one of the many people who were disappointed and disillusioned by Bob Dylan's arena performance last year, take the time to check out Indio Saravanja this week. While it's never a good thing to make comparisons between artists, pre-electric Dylan was the first thing to pop into my head when i heard Saravanja's acoustic guitar and harmonica-driven lyrics. His debut disc straddles the line between folk and roots, and features 11 strong tracks, reflecting the Argentinian-born but Yukon-raised artist's own life, which saw him busking in Montreal at 15 before moving to New York, where he hooked up with mentor Jeff Buckley. But if rough-voiced singer-songwriters with a heart full of songs doesn't do it for you, play it safe and stick with American Idol instead.

Songwriter comes home
Daron Letts
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Dec 02/05) - In the 1990s, the capital's live music scene offered fertile ground from which young Northern talent could blossom.

That's where singer/songwriter Indio Saravanja began his music career. He launches his first full length CD at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre on the night of his 33rd birthday next week.

His mature talent will remind the community how a vigorous music scene can nurture creative potential.

Born in Argentina and raised in the North, Saravanja explored the world as a wandering musician.

When he returns home, again, to perform songs from his self-titled CD, he'll be joined by a couple of members of his band and Yellowknife bassist Pat Braden, who also played on the album.

"I'm really looking forward to playing with Pat Braden again," Saravanja said. "He's probably the best bass player I've ever met in my life, and I've played all over."

When Saravanja left Yellowknife as a teenager, he refined his musical skills as a street musician. He played for pedestrians on sidewalks and for commuters in subways across Montreal, Toronto and in the U.S. and Europe.

"I went back to Yellowknife from New York City when I was 20 years old and I walked into a very, very vibrant musical community where I could pay my dues and learn," he said. "I didn't know much about playing with bands in bars. Yellowknife kicked my ass and taught me everything."

For those few years in the 1990s, Saravanja played constantly in clubs like the Cave and the Gallery.

"There used to be 10 bands playing every night of the week," he said. "If I stayed in New York or Toronto I never would have been able to play as much as I did in Yellowknife."

He fronted a string of bands and backed up big names who flew up from the south, like Winnipeg blues legend Big Dave McLean.

"It was amazing," he recalled.

The new album features 11 original songs. Saravanja's voice sounds like a mellow blend of Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. His poetic lyrics to songs such as Northern Town roll together much like Tom Waits' early recordings.

Today, Saravanja lives in the Gulf Islands region of B.C. He recorded his CD last January with Whitehorse's independent Caribou Records label.

The Dec. 8 concert marks the first time Saravanja will perform original songs in Yellowknife since he played the once-lively Yellowknife music scene with 25 Kingsize.

The roots music community in Whitehorse is surprisingly large and diverse, thanks primarily to the efforts of David Petkovich and Bob Hamilton, co-owners of the Yukon-centric independent label Caribou Records, which is home to well-known northern Canadian folk artists Kim Barlow, Kim Beggs, Anne Louise Genest and the now defunct Undertakin' Daddies.

Caribou's latest find, 20something songwriter Indio Saravanja, is Argentine by birth and a wanderer by nature. His meandering trail has led him across the country, from Montreal to Yellowknife, via Toronto, New York and the American southwest, and while his delivery is perhaps burdened by too many Dylanesque and Reedish vocal inflections, he proves on his eponymous debut - assembled in Whitehorse by prodigious producer/multi-instrumentalist Hamilton and a crack crew of local musicians - that he is a poet of the finest water, a keen observer with finely attuned literary sensibilities and a thinker of considerable substance.

His songs capture the sensations of a life in flux, the kind of excitement only surefooted forward movement offers, and while his vivid reflections on the beautiful and brutal realities of existence in the far north suggest contentment with such magnificent isolation, Saravanja is clearly connected to the larger contemporary global zeitgeist. Big things are coming his way.

By Rachel Sanders
June 25, 2006

Argentinian-born, Yellowknife-raised Indio Saravanja is a consummate lyricist with a powerful conscience and a keen eye for the world’s follies. Ten years on the road after a stint in New York under the mentorship of the late Jeff Buckley gave Saravanja time and opportunity to hone his songwriting along with a sense of self-assuredness rarely found on a debut recording. The culmination of his travels is this collection of compelling and perfectly crafted folk rock songs. The timelessness of his sound — unpretentious guitar lines with garnishes of fiddle, harmonium and wheedling Wurlitzer — is offset by contemporary subject matter peppered with numerous references to whiskey and epic Canadian snowstorms. An archetypal folk rockster, Saravanja takes a long, unflinching look at modern issues — from addiction, to our immoral wars, to the enduring effects of residential schools on the Native population — with a sensibility that is biting without ever slipping into bitterness.

Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg, MB - Weekly - 03.23.2006 - REVIEW

http://www.uptownmag.com/current/cds/cds.htm

Indio Saravanja
Indio Saravanja
(Caribou Records)
B+
Website: www.caribourecords.com
Born in Argentina and raised in the Canadian North, Indio Saravanja cut his musical teeth on the road in places as diverse as Montreal, Spain and New York City - all by the time he was 20. Now he's relocated to B.C.'s Gulf Islands, where he's no doubt right at home as a world-travelled singer/songwriter specializing an interesting sort of international Americana. This album is very good, with strong writing and wonderfully spare arrangements. A fair bit of melancholy world-weariness is in these tunes, as well as the occasional sign of thoughtful social criticism. Saravanja is anything but a great singer. In fact, he half-speaks,his way through most of the songs. Then again, some fairly big-league players have, by virtue of their larger gifts, more than compensated for this particular shortcoming.

Jamie Howison

The Leader Post - Regina, SK - Daily - 04.18.2006 - FEATURE

http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/arts_life/story.html?id=d29c16d4-1432-4edb-aad9-de3ac0220d8f

Saravanja discovers himself and his music

Andrew Matte, The Leader-Post
Published: Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Indio Saravanja
(with Gordie Tentrees Band)
Today, 8 p.m.
The Exchange

- - -
Singer-songwriter Indio Saravanja is appropriately perplexed when people he meets seem most interested in his birthplace.

Yes, he was born in Argentina. He moved to Canada as a youngster, but he wonders why, of all the unique things about his life, that his place of birth seems more interesting than it is.

"I have no idea why people keep harping on it. I mean, aren't a lot of people in Canada from other places? I keep getting the same questions from people. It's weird."

This 33-year-old displaced South American has a point.

His move to Canada was just the beginning of his globe-trotting. He lived in the Yukon as a youngster before he left home, striking out on his own at the age of 13.

He quit school and yearned to travel, spending time in places like Spain, Montreal, New York City, Victoria and places in between, while slowly learning how to pluck the strings of an acoustic guitar so that he could busk on big-city street corners to earn his keep. It didn't take him long to learn "hundreds of songs," an accomplishment that made him a successful busker, which also facilitated the lifestyle of a vagabond minstrel.

"When I was 13, I got my first guitar. And then I became obsessed with learning other peoples' songs," he says. "By the time I was 15 or so, I was quite an entertainer. I knew hundreds of songs, so that's when I started busking.

"When I was a kid, I wanted to be in the Beatles. I wanted to be Elvis. I wanted to be a movie star.

"But, for instance, when I was living on the East Coast, I'd just go to Toronto for a week and busk and bum around. It was great."

Through much of his 20s, he worked as a musician in bar bands, performing pop, country, blues and just about everything else, while writing his own music to offset his growing disdain for playing music written by others.

"I lived in bars for eight years. I had this double life. I was writing songs like crazy during the day and at night I was playing other people's music. I was doing it well, but I was hating it," he says.

That led to a difficult but educational trek to New York where he learned living his dream was harder to realize than planning it.

"I told myself that I was going to move to New York just like Bob Dylan did and I'm going to be the next Bob Dylan," he says.

"That was a long time ago, and a lot of shit happened. I got my ass kicked, I'll tell you that."

Over time, he found the confidence he never had before. A record label in Whitehorse offered to help him record and release his first CD, and he now finds himself touring the country performing his own songs, something he never thought he'd manage a decade ago.

"I never believed in myself, and I never believed in popular music," he says.

"I wanted to be a poet. I wanted to get deeper. But I didn't have the goods. I could write cute songs and I was a cute performer and all that. But I knew it would take 10 years to get where I wanted to be.

"Even today, I have no idea how to get up on stage and play my own music, but I suppose that it's all coming together now.

"Confidence just comes with getting older and not giving a shit. I think it's about love and finding out how to love yourself and stop doing mean things to yourself."

With all of this maturity, he also finds that he's less eager to traipse the globe.

"I am slowing down a little bit. I use to move every three months. Now I'm moving every two years," he says.

"After 20 years, you keep thinking that someday you want a home. But every time you think you're getting near to that, you feel like maybe you don't know how to do it."

© The Leader-Post (Regina) 2006

The Star Phoenix - Saskatoon, SK - Daily - 04.20.2006 - FEATURE

Saravanja feels the ups and downs on latest tour
Folksinger rewarded in unexpected places

By Cam Fuller of The Star Phoenix

Having driven through a spring blizzard in a hiccuping van, Indio Saravanja was a little tired and testy. But, like the honest music he writes, he's not one to gild the lily.

We had a bad week, he says, trying to coax more than 50 km/h out of the Volkswagen.

Saravanja and Gordie Tentrees are 10 days into their 30.30 Tour. 30 towns in 30 days over 10,000 kilometers from Toronto to Whitehorse. They play Lydia's tonight.

The trip has not been without highlights. One was Saravanja's brother showing him a picture of Kris Kristofferson holding Saravanja's new album. But it's a little discouraging when the crowds are small. A couple of gigs organized by folk festivals didn't exactly have festive feelings.

In both cases the only people who showed up were board members, he says.

Saravanja is asked if the 30-30 idea was a little over-ambitious, but he doesn't take the bait. If there's anything he's used to, it's travel. His parents moved to Montreal from Argentina when he was three, then to Yellowknife where he lived until he hit his teens. Then it was Montreal, Spain and New York.

He lived out of a knapsack, busked to keep hunger at bay and didn't have a care in the world. An early contact and influence, highlighted in his official bio, was Jeff Buckley, the influential musician who drowned in 1997. The record label insisted on mentioning that link, despite Saravanja's misgivings. Sure enough, every interviewer wants to hear about it. Saravanja doesn't want to comment now, reluctant, it seems, to trade his loyalty to a friend for quotes and sound bites. His feelings are set down in the song Other Side: Sometimes I feel sorry for you/I know you'd only just begun/You got the Glory and I got the view/Of the things we left undone.

Saravanja writes classic folk and sings like a perfect amalgam of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Tom Petty. If there's anything he's bad at it's timing. He arrived in Greenwich Village in 1990 expecting to find the same folk scene of the '60s.

I've felt totally out of time and out of touch my whole life, he says.

He was in his 20s and ended up playing in cover bands for a decade and hating it. Now 33, he loves playing his own music. But he wishes he started doing it years ago. And it's a struggle.

I made more money 10 years ago doing covers than I do today, he says.

Rewards come in unexpected places. After a well-attended theatre show, a couple of teenage boys came backstage to meet him. He couldn't believe these shy kids in their Eminem T-shirts were digging his stuff.

They were just amazed. How do you do that, man? How do you write like that? How do you play like that? they wanted to know. I was blown away.

Saravanja often writes songs about seeking refuge, trying to find home, something to hold on to. After his many travels, he's relatively settled on Galiano Island in B.C. But will the woman there be enough to keep him grounded? He can't say for sure.

I've tried many times. I guess. I don't know. It's not up to me. I don't know.

By Rachel Sanders
June 25, 2006

Argentinian-born, Yellowknife-raised Indio Saravanja is a consummate lyricist with a powerful conscience and a keen eye for the world’s follies. Ten years on the road after a stint in New York under the mentorship of the late Jeff Buckley gave Saravanja time and opportunity to hone his songwriting along with a sense of self-assuredness rarely found on a debut recording. The culmination of his travels is this collection of compelling and perfectly crafted folk rock songs. The timelessness of his sound — unpretentious guitar lines with garnishes of fiddle, harmonium and wheedling Wurlitzer — is offset by contemporary subject matter peppered with numerous references to whiskey and epic Canadian snowstorms. An archetypal folk rockster, Saravanja takes a long, unflinching look at modern issues — from addiction, to our immoral wars, to the enduring effects of residential schools on the Native population — with a sensibility that is biting without ever slipping into bitterness.

by Genesee Keevil

Indio Saravanja had been struggling under his hefty heap of songs for far too long. And now he is digging himself out.
"I felt burdened by my songs all these years, like there is this heavy weight on my back or in my brain," he said. "You are walking around the street and there are all these songs in your head and you have finished writing them, but what i didn't know is that they're not done until they're actually gone and you let them go into the world."
With the release of his self-titled debut CD this fall, Saravanja is beginning to lighten his musical burden. 'I feel like i just purged 11 of my songs and I don't have to worry about them anymore. They are like little kids, they walk on their own feet and that feels so good."
"I just want to have more babies. I can't wait to make another record."
This is a new desire for the Argentinean singer/songwriter from Yellowknife. For many years, Saravanja kept his original songs tucked away, buffered by countless cover tunes.
"You could write great songs and know they are great and put sweat, blood and tears into them, but not be ready to share them," he said. "That was certainly the case for me, I was just too scared."
Music is Saravanja's life blood. "It's scary, when you want to share your secret self, the secret part of you that always kind of saved your life, the part that you are actually living for- it's that one safe place you got all your life."
He left home at 12 to attend high school in Edmonton and then Montreal and the guitar became his only family. "I missed my mom; I was so lonely I fell in love with my acoustic guitar," he said.
He played at least eight hours a day. Saravanja soon left school and began playing on the streets. "I discovered Bob Dylan at 14 and Leonard Cohen at 16 and then that was it. "I wanted to be Jack Kerouac and Dylan."
Lured by the romance of the bohemian lifestyle, Saravanja took off to Spain at 18. Busking abroad, he was making $200 a night, but he still sought greater adventures and New York beckoned.
"I loved it there; it was probably the best year of my life," he said.
But alongside the romance of bohemia came many perils, some in the form of a needle and spoon. And Saravanja realized he had to get out of New York.
"I was there at the right time and it was really exciting and I hung around a lot of people who were later to be really famous, but i felt young and confused and I didn't think I was ready and I wasn't sure I really liked the big business of music," he said.
"Some inner voice was telling me just to get the hell out of there, before it was too late."
One close friend, who got Saravanja his first New York gig, saw he was in trouble and gave him $600 to go back to Yellowknife.
"It took a whole week of shakin' on an old Greyhound / But I made it on back to my Northern Town," sings Saravanja in one of his songs.
He planned to return to New York within the year. But Yellowknife was a musicians' paradise in the early '90s, with 14 bars featuring live music every night.
"I hated playing every night," said Saravanja. "I knew I could do better; I knew I had all these songs and I was a really prolific songwriter and I was just stuck in these bars and I had to be an entertainer and people wanted to come see me, because they knew I could do Van Morrison and Neil Young like nobody else. I always felt like I was wearing a mask." And after hanging out with Jeff Buckley, Ron Sexsmith and Rufus Wainright, Saravanja wanted to return to the city. But he still found problems with the New York music scene.
"Everything was under the guise of being 'alternative', or 'underground', or punk, but it was really just about fashion, he said. "I saw all these people around me getting record deals, and this was just around Nirvana time, and I just saw a bunch of fashion and cloning. And here I am listening to Leonard Cohen and Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Dylan every night on my walkman in my little room in New York, it just didn't add up. I was 19 and I kind of wanted to be 50."
The chances of singer/songwriters getting heard in this day and age are slim--it's not the '60s anymore, he admitted.
"But if you just keep at it you can kind of start a grassroots fan base, you can still be a poet, you don't have to be pushed around by outer forces."
Admitting he is terrified by the notion of success, Saravanja remains mystified by the music business. "It is so subjective and fashion-based and geared for 13 year old kids," he said. "It's really hard to make a living. I remember Jeff Buckley years ago, when he told me he was just starting to play stadiums, and it was so ironic because every night he had to look out onto a sea of faces and all he saw was a bunch of ball-cap wearing assholes who used to beat him up in high school, because he was the sensitive, artsy guy who was writing songs--this is success."
Now, after years of playing covers every night from Yellowknife to Mexico, Saravanja is seeking his own version of success.
With an earthy, driving album paying homage to its bohemian roots, Saravanja's sound is haunted by his mentors. But his lyrics speak of life, love and loss, from a personal, poetic perspective.
"When something bothers you for a long time, you finally realize you have to say something about it," said Saravanja.
And residential schools have been a thorn in his side for years.
"I met up with all these sad people who are crying in bar bathrooms, or thrown out of bars and they kept telling me their life stories, and I decided they had to be written."
His song First Communion is the result. It begins, "I haven't seen Mama since my first communion / That's the only memory that i really have / It'd been a long time since i heard my language / It smelled like whiskey and it sounded sad."
It took Saravanja five years to write this song.
"It was important; I wanted to get it right. And i wanted it to be positive, not just negative- that's my duty," he said.
"My songs aren't finished until they're finished by the person listening to them, then they're a bird, they're free, they can fly."
Saravanja will be playing at Caribou Records' Decade Ball at the Yukon Convention Centre on Saturday night. Caribou Records put out Saravanja's album and is celebrating it's tenth anniversary in conjunction with the CD's release.
"Caribou has a good vibe," said Saravanja. "I admire their sensibilities and the way they do stuff. It was a safe environment for my first album, with down home, salt-of-the-earth people."
The celebration starts at 8 p.m. and features performances by Anne Louise Genest, Hungry Hill, Kim Barlow, and Kim Beggs. Saravanja is the headliner.

.

Home page Text size E-mail this page

Indio Saravanja asks for help
To learn more about Indio's funding drive and hear recent music clips, check out his website at www.indiosaravanja.com
By Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, January 8, 2009

Indio Saravanja showed Yellowknife what's possible when a songwriter works hard, performs lots and never gives up.

The young roots musician built his career by playing night after night in clubs like The Cave and The Gallery alongside visiting talent, such as Winnipeg blues legend Big Dave McLean, and with a who's-who of established local musicians.

Indio Saravanja is preparing to record and release his much-anticipated second album before summer this year. This time around, he's appealing to fans and friends to help finance the effort. - photo courtesy of Caribou Records
He busked in Montreal subways and sang without pay in New York coffee houses, befriending the likes of Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright and other contemporary recording stars during his various travels around the continent.

"Indio is a prolific songwriter. He has to write otherwise he'll lose his mind," said friend and fellow musician Pat Braden, who backed Saravanja on his first album. "I regard him as a master craftsman when it comes to songwriting in that he's gone through the whole mentorship of studying people like Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson - really iconic songwriters. In that respect the quality of his songs is right up there with a Ron Sexsmith or a Daniel Lanois."

Saravanja achieved national acclaim in 2005 with the release of his self-titled debut album, which he followed by booking 75 gigs a year during a marathon tour that travelled through many of Canada's biggest festivals. Songs off his first disc, such as Northern Town, Burn the Ships and New Kid in Town, still air regularly across the country on CBC and campus radio.

"I always thought Indio was really talented, but when he released his first CD I was blown away," said songwriter Laurie Sarkadi. "He has a lot to say and the songs are really meaningful. I think it's really important that he gets another CD out."

Saravanja has two albums started enough material for 10 more. However, with competition for federal grant money and flagging CD sales worldwide, cutting a new disc in today's economic climate isn't easy – even for a talented musician with momentum.

"It's becoming more challenging for everyone," Braden said. "It's tough trying to get grants. The pie is only so big and there's a lot of people who want a piece of it. You make your money by playing your gig and selling your CDs from the stage to pay for gas and put food on the table."

Having been turned down for Canada Council grants two years in a row, and without support from his old label, Caribou Records, Saravanja is producing his next album on his own, but with some help from fans.

The appeal

Saravanja is appealing to hometown friends and fans for support and is asking businesses for sponsorship. His website features a PayPal link that allows visitors to prepay for the second album, which he vows to complete by summer. Anyone who helps out will be recognized with a nod in the album's liner notes, he said, and commercial sponsors will be listed on his website.

He raised $3,000 so far, but his budget requires another $9,500 before he enters the studio this spring. His last album cost $25,000 to produce, which a federal grant helped fund.

The next album will be a parred-down expression of Saravanja's craft, with less rock influence and more folk and country flavours, he said. Saravanja's distinctive voice, a lyrical blend of the styles of Tom Petty and Bob Dylan, will be accompanied by intimate arrangements of steel guitar, fiddle and piano.

"It's about loss – the loss of my mother, friends, relationships," he said. "It's an album about moving on and getting through a dark time in my life. It's about getting through a two-year period of life-changing experiences and being on the road as a musician."

Saravanja is now based in Armstrong, B.C., where he works for Caravan Farm Theatre, a professional outdoor theatre company that stages original work and plays by Shakespeare, Brecht and other classic playwrights. He composed music and played pump organ for an adaptation of Anatole France's The Seven Wives of Bluebeard at the farm last year.

He rides shotgun on a horseteam and cares for the farm's Clydesdales. In his time off he works as a house painter and truck driver.

"I'm doing the best I can doing what I do," he said. "I'm doing everything I've done for years – some theatre, composing and performing and a little bit of everything to get by. Whatever I need to do to survive."

On Feb. 28, Saravanja is scheduled to perform for the Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver as part of the preamble to next year's Olympic Games. He said he plans to return to Yellowknife in March to crash the stage at the Snow Castle.