Kim Beggs

see url - Maverick Magazine

...her marvelously anecdotal songwriting (nine originals are here) authentically captures and comments on various elements of the rustic, laid-back charm of the Canadian north - Sing Out!

Kim Beggs
Blue Bones (Black Hen) BY SARAH GREENE
Kim Beggs is the real deal. With an instantly recognizable voice that blends sweetness and grit, the Yukon-based singer/songwriter (and sometimes carpenter) tells stories of love, blues, bones and the North on her third album and first for the Black Hen label.

Beggs’s writing has never been better. She makes subtle adjustments to familiar folk forms, as on the excellent opener, Honey And Crumbs, with its shifting refrain and surprise high notes. Bring Out Your Bones and Firewater Bones delve deep into blues and death, while Can’t Drive Slow Yodel reveals her more buoyant side. Backed throughout by an impressive cast of Canadian and American musicians, Beggs shines in harmony with Gurf Morlix on pretty, slow-rocking love song Maiden Heart.

With original writing this good, covers by Bob Dylan, Patty Griffin and Jack Clement seem unnecessary, though Beggs’s interpretations keep the album seamless.

Top track: Maiden Heart - NOW MAgazine

BLUE BONES
Kim Beggs
Black Hen Music
Blue Bones is the latest release from Kim Beggs, a Yukon based singer-songwriter and Canadiana pioneer. Blue Bones has garnered high ratings and critical acclaim from many publications including 5 stars from Maverick Magazine in the UK and Now Magazine here in Canada. When I first checked out Beggs' website, I was a little skeptical about all of the quoted hype, until I popped the disc in the player and had my first listen.

The songs are honest and clear; familiar themes of love and loss appear frequently throughout. Beggs' vocals seem easy and effortless, and twist like the Yukon River through the musical accompaniment. Beggs collaborated with Steve Dawson, who backs her on every song on the album playing the national steel, electric slide, and weissenborn. Beggs was also backed by John Raham (drums), Keith Lowe (bass) and Chris Gestrin (keyboards), each musician adding a deep resonance to the themes of each song and creating an organic sound that suits the album well. - NOW Magazine

BLUE BONES
Kim Beggs
Black Hen Music
Blue Bones is the latest release from Kim Beggs, a Yukon based singer-songwriter and Canadiana pioneer. Blue Bones has garnered high ratings and critical acclaim from many publications including 5 stars from Maverick Magazine in the UK and Now Magazine here in Canada. When I first checked out Beggs' website, I was a little skeptical about all of the quoted hype, until I popped the disc in the player and had my first listen.

The songs are honest and clear; familiar themes of love and loss appear frequently throughout. Beggs' vocals seem easy and effortless, and twist like the Yukon River through the musical accompaniment. Beggs collaborated with Steve Dawson, who backs her on every song on the album playing the national steel, electric slide, and weissenborn. Beggs was also backed by John Raham (drums), Keith Lowe (bass) and Chris Gestrin (keyboards), each musician adding a deep resonance to the themes of each song and creating an organic sound that suits the album well. - NOW Magazine

BLUE BONES
Kim Beggs
Black Hen Music
Blue Bones is the latest release from Kim Beggs, a Yukon based singer-songwriter and Canadiana pioneer. Blue Bones has garnered high ratings and critical acclaim from many publications including 5 stars from Maverick Magazine in the UK and Now Magazine here in Canada. When I first checked out Beggs' website, I was a little skeptical about all of the quoted hype, until I popped the disc in the player and had my first listen.

The songs are honest and clear; familiar themes of love and loss appear frequently throughout. Beggs' vocals seem easy and effortless, and twist like the Yukon River through the musical accompaniment. Beggs collaborated with Steve Dawson, who backs her on every song on the album playing the national steel, electric slide, and weissenborn. Beggs was also backed by John Raham (drums), Keith Lowe (bass) and Chris Gestrin (keyboards), each musician adding a deep resonance to the themes of each song and creating an organic sound that suits the album well. - NOW Magazine

"Any fan of Buffy St Marie, Joni Mitchell, or even Neil Young, will not be disappointed by Blue Bones, I highly recommend checking out all of Kim Beggs' music." - Yorkton This Week

“Featuring a mix of her distinctive original songs as well as a few well-chosen covers, Blue Bones has rarely left my CD player since I first heard the album in the spring.” - No Depression

“Featuring a mix of her distinctive original songs as well as a few well-chosen covers, Blue Bones has rarely left my CD player since I first heard the album in the spring.” - No Depression

“Kim Beggs has the soft gentle voice of a dreamy-eyed teenage girl, the heart and soul of a young woman who is discovering the world is not as romantic as novels portray it, and the experience of a world-weary adult who understands the pains and crushing disappointments of life’s dramas all too well.” - Fame Review (US)

“The sweetly meandering melody, combined with countrified guitar and the gritty harmonies of American musician and producer Gurf Morlix, is the very definition of rootsy charm. …Kim Beggs is Blue right down to her bones.” - Exclaim! Magazine

“The sweetly meandering melody, combined with countrified guitar and the gritty harmonies of American musician and producer Gurf Morlix, is the very definition of rootsy charm. …Kim Beggs is Blue right down to her bones.” - Exclaim! Magazine

“The sweetly meandering melody, combined with countrified guitar and the gritty harmonies of American musician and producer Gurf Morlix, is the very definition of rootsy charm. …Kim Beggs is Blue right down to her bones.” - Exclaim! Magazine

“Kim Beggs’ girl-woman voice is perfect for this song [‘Maiden Heart’] about a kind of innocence than never dies” - Globe and Mail

“Kim Beggs’ girl-woman voice is perfect for this song [‘Maiden Heart’] about a kind of innocence than never dies” - Globe and Mail

“If Kim Beggs was making music when Joni Mitchell and Neil Young were getting their starts, this Yukon-based singer would be huge. Hopefully that will change with her third record, which is loaded with touching country folk tunes. Lyrics about loss, the north and searching for oil are backed by smooth slide guitars, delicate acoustics and rich harmonies.” - Metro

"The (Kim's) lyrics, just by themselves are high poetry. " - Micheal Enright on CBC Radio One Sunday Edition Mar 13, 2005

"streetcar Heart" is masterful collection of self penned tunes"

"Each (song) is graced with Beggs' voice which is sweet, vulnerable and hypnotic." - Al Beeber, Lethbridge Herald

Yukon resident Beggs is masterful writer of engaging personal narratives that evoke place and time in the manner of the finest folk tradiotnalists. Blessed with a fascinating, sweet voice, Beggs conjures up a rugged Northwest peopled by battlers whose quirky resilience makes these story songs a compelling listen. Standouts are "Old Pal," "I Carry My Guitar," "Her Big Yellow Backhoe," " the title track, and a live version of Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane"
--GQ - The Toronto Star Feb 24th, 2005

“Kim Beggs is another wonderful singer/songwriter from the Yukon’s emerging music scene. Streetcar Heart (Caribou Records), features Beggs’ wistful, iconoclastic lyrics and ragged, sweet whisper of a voice backed by a crack northern studio crew.
Such songs as Carry My Guitar capture Beggs’ blue-collar background and love of the local jam-session scene where the sun never sets.
Bus Driver conjures up the darker side of the calendar year and hints at a California/Neil Young fixation that seems so real it hurts, but reaches fruition on her album-capping reading of Young’s Like a Hurricane.
Much of Streetcar Heart has an old-time, woodsmoke country feel, folk art that cuts to the core...

Neil Young, Iris Dement, Gillian Welch, the McGarrigles…add Kim Beggs to that exhalted list of unpretentious charmers. Streetcar Heart’s hook-laden, homey songs get stuck in your heart, and that’s a good thing.”

Joseph Blake
Times Colonist, Victoria, BC
Sunday March 13/05
- Times Colonist

Kim Beggs,
Wanderer's Paean
(independent, 2006)

Wanderer's Paean is the full-bodied, fully realized statement of a major artist. One might compare Beggs broadly -- only broadly -- to Iris DeMent or Gillian Welch, but a more accurate comparison might be to a young Sara Carter, if Sara Carter had lived and sung in a much colder climate. I am certain, at the very least, that Carter would be more than pleased with what Beggs has made of her 1928 recording of "Ain't Gonna Work."

Jerome Clark
Country/bluegrass editor

- Rambles.net: Jerome Clark

Dirty Linen, The Magazine of Folk and World Music
Baltimore, MD.

The Whitehorse, Yukon music scene has produced a surprising number of quality artists in recent years, and quite a few of them have been lucky enough to have been produced by Bob Hamilton and to have had their albums released by the Caribou label. Unfortunately, Caribou is currently phasing out its operations, but the labels productions will remain available for the foreseeable future. Wanderer's Paean is Kim Beggs' second CD for the label, and ostensibly one of the labels last releases. It's another one that bears the stamp of Hamilton’s impeccable taste. There's a stark quality to the sound that's partly reminiscent of old-time country, and Beggs' endearing voice brings out the best in her songs. Musicians providing support include Hamilton himself, and singer/songwriters and label-mates Anne Louise Genest and Kim Barlow on vocals and banjo, respectively. It's not surprising that Wanderer's Paean has been nominated for several awards in Canada. Everything about the album, from the songs, singing and production, to the album graphics is tastefully rendered.

- Dirty Linen Magazine

NNNN + Bullet for reccomended Disc

Kim Beggs grew up in small-town Quebec and Ontario before ending up in Whitehorse, and her second disc is full of intimate numbers about love, rivers, trains and family – tunes only a folkie living in a town of 22, 000 could write.

There's no shortage of hook-laden tunes that are perfect to play around a cottage campfire or during a late night alone at home, but it's the record's intimacy that makes this a great piece of Americana... er, Canadiana?

Beggs avoids muddying these delicate tracks, forgoing drums and complex instrumentation. Instead, she keeps things simple with just a guitar, one harmony and the occasional pedal steel or banjo.

Kim Beggs plays Mitzi's Sister Monday (August 6). - Now Magazine

Kim Beggs’ latest album, Wanderer’s Paean, is a reflection of the solace and success the Toronto-born roots musician has found in her present Yukon home. Undoubtedly, it’s odd to hear about an artist picking up and moving away from Canada’s musical epicentre but Beggs has done it for the sake of sincerity. Wanderer’s Paean contrasts the lost, lonely feelings associated with Canada’s unending stretches of land with those tight communal bonds that form between small-town dwellers. “Walking Down To The Station” opens the record, introducing listeners to Beggs’s innocent, honey drizzled vocals while capturing the wandering traveller’s carefree spirit. The same sauntering acoustics can be found elsewhere but “Lay It All Down” and “Ain’t Gonna Work” put a bit of spice in their step, making for a couple of enjoyable hand-clapping tunes. If anything, Wanderer’s Paean is one of the few roots records that has honestly, and so beautifully, captured Canada’s rustic back roads. (Caribou) - Exclaim!

NNNN + Bullet for reccomended Disc

Kim Beggs grew up in small-town Quebec and Ontario before ending up in Whitehorse, and her second disc is full of intimate numbers about love, rivers, trains and family – tunes only a folkie living in a town of 22, 000 could write.

There's no shortage of hook-laden tunes that are perfect to play around a cottage campfire or during a late night alone at home, but it's the record's intimacy that makes this a great piece of Americana... er, Canadiana?

Beggs avoids muddying these delicate tracks, forgoing drums and complex instrumentation. Instead, she keeps things simple with just a guitar, one harmony and the occasional pedal steel or banjo.

Kim Beggs plays Mitzi's Sister Monday (August 6). - Now Magazine