Like most of us early on in the pandemic, Ann Vriend (who performs as “AV”) found herself worried, frustrated and on a porch.
After growing up in the Edmonton music scene, the singer-songwriter had worked her way up to being an internationally touring artist until March 2020, when she had to stay home like the rest of us. “I was a bit bored on a Sunday that April, and decided to put my keyboard out on the front porch,” she says. “It was nice enough weather, and I told a few people in the neighbourhood that I was going to do that, and they came to watch, because there was literally nothing else to do.”
The next week, singer Johwanna Alleyne, who had sung backup with AV before, joined her. By that summer, AV performed with a variety of different bands (and eventually, a sound engineer), and soon her porch performances became destination viewings for their socially distanced crowds. “It was like a mini festival!” she recalls.
By summer 2021, AV was playing paid outdoor gigs with some of her other regular porch singers, Debbie Houle, Johwanna Alleyne, Crystal Eyo, Alenka Lundell, and Jenn Dahlen. Things sounded so good, they decided to formally start a band, AV and The Inner City.
Even a band of professionals takes time to take off, but by summer 2022 they got a showcase at the Toronto Blue Summit in Toronto. Last summer, the group received the Emerging Artist Award at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival — without even recording an album.
But the album is coming. In fact, the soul-roots and gospel group’s been working on it in a studio around the corner from the porch where it all started, and you can see them perform their new single, “Low & Lowly,” (along with other AV songs) at New Moon this Friday. “The rest of the repertoire is songs that we’ve been singing on the porch for a while. In soul music there’s a lot of call and response between me and the backup singers, but also, the audience. So we have some audience participation, and we have some really serious songs about the issues that are facing the McCauley neighbourhood here. But we also have some really fun parts with some dance moves. It’s definitely a cross section of emotions.”
Let your emotions (and dance moves) lead you to New Moon Folk Club on March 22.
