SuppliedDanielle Deighton
Amanda Franklin
Saturday March 12 (show starts at 9 p.m.)
Arcadia (10988 124st)
Optional $10 cover charge
Danielle Deighton’s rich acoustics cut through the hum of Cha Island on a Sunday evening. Though her folksy, melancholic music does not harmonize particularly well with the café’s tropical vibe, her voice, like it does every performance, commands the attention of everyone in the room.
Deighton and her guitar are frequent patrons to Old Strathcona’s array of open-mic bars, even during midterm season. Though she has been singing for only about five years (and song-writing for even less than that), the second year education student has already released an EP, performed at the Southern Alberta Music Festival and won several song-writing contests across the province.
Filled with angst and with nowhere to put it, Deighton began her music career when she received a guitar for her 14th birthday. She estimates she wrote about five songs a week for the rest of her high school career.
“I like how freely I wrote back then, and how I didn’t take it too seriously,” Deighton says. “I would write down whatever flowed, I would just let it happen.”
Now, Deighton writes more with other people in mind. To her, song-writing can be more than a channel for personal development — it can be a way to help others, and make them feel less alone.
“I want my music to do something for other people,” Deighton says. “I want people to take life and be aggressive with how they live it. Be a force to be reckoned with.”
Her songs have proven to serve their purpose of resonating with others. Shortly after recording her EP, Maps, Deighton won second place in a song-writing contest hosted by the Calgary Folk Festival.
“It was so exciting, just winning money for something I did in my bedroom when I was in high school,” she says with a laugh.
Among Deighton’s biggest challenges was moving to Edmonton in Sept. 2014 and trying to introduce herself to the city’s close-knit song-writing circuit while juggling a full course load. In her first year of university, she questioned whether it was even worth trying, but this year, she attributes her success in booking countless shows in Edmonton to changing her frame of mind regarding her art.
“Why shouldn’t people accept my music, and why wouldn’t people be welcoming?” Deighton asks herself. “Once you change your perception of a new group of people, the doors open for you. When you put yourself out there, people see it and appreciate it.”
It has taken five years and a move up north for her style to evolve into what it is today. Having started out writing country, Deighton now describes herself as a “folk blues” artist, and she is hoping to release a three-track EP sometime next autumn to showcase her new sound.
“It’s quite different than what I’ve done before,” she says. “I think people are going to be surprised in a good way about what they hear.”
