The Awakeneers new single: December in the North
Cortes Currents
English - December 15, 2023 12:10 - 9 minutes - 21.9 MBNews cortes island discovery islands quadra food security energy indigenous nations Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Awakeneers are still living in Willow Point and have just released a new single. Cortes Currents interviewed them over ZOOM and we had our cameras turned off to preserve bandwidth.
Isa McKenty explained how he came to write ‘December in the North’:
“It was the day before one of our concerts in the Acoustic Matinee Series. I was supposed to be practicing for that, but it started snowing and I looked out my window. It was so pretty that I wrote ‘December in the North’ instead of practicing. It was actually a year to the day between when I started writing the song and when we recorded most of the tracks that you'll hear on the recording,”
Cortes Currents: What is the story behind this song?
Isa McKenty: “It was many snowy winters in the interior of BC, in Chilcotin and on Cortes. Things like skating on Jack's Pond and with the campfire to warm up your hands afterward; having a wood cook stove and no electricity; coming in from playing. I am the youngest so I remember the fun parts of the snowy winters, not hauling firewood or trying to fix the frozen water pipes or those kinds of things. I remember jumping off the switchback trail to our house into the snow drifts and basically being taken care of by the other people who were doing the hard stuff.”
Cortes Currents: Are these Cortes memories?
Isa McKenty: “Some of them are from Cortes, although there's not really enough snow on Cortes to jump in and not hit the ground. (Laughter) The snow-jumping was in the Kootenays.”
Cortes Currents: How old were you when you came to Cortes?
Isa McKenty: “I think I was six.”
His father, Robert McKenty, added, “We've heard a lot of original songs for the first time and when this one arrived, just before the Christmas season, it was immediately recognized by all of us that the lyrical line and the whole way that the song came together was really choice. It covers such a range of simplicity as well as experience that all ages remember and can relate to it, at least if they're from the North and they remember the first snow.”