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Amelia Curran Coming Home for the Juno Awards

Amelia CurranAmelia Curran's nomination for solo Roots and Traditional Album of the Year makes her the only native Newfoundlander up for an award at the 2010 Juno Awards taking place in her St John's hometown. Learning she'd be returning to take part in the celebrations, Curran felt as though she's been caught up in the plot of a fairytale.

"I didn't expect it at all and it kind of blows my mind. I feel a bit like Cinderella," Curran tells Spinner.

'Hunter, Hunter' is Curran's fifth studio album, but the first recorded in St. John's. Enlisting East Coast producer Don Ellis, she recorded the album at home and held guerrilla-style recording sessions in an abandoned CBC building and an empty farmhouse on the fringes of town. These unlikely venues contributed to the moody and intimate vibe captured on the record.

"Popping into all these alternative spaces added to the experience of making the record. It comes across on the record," she explains, admitting, "but I'm not sure how."

A singer, songwriter, poet and occasional playwright, Curran describes her sound as "folk music that drinks," and the craft of songwriting as an act of "expressing the inexpressible, a means of describing the indescribable." She's also a bit of a perfectionist -- it took her 21 months to write and record 'Hunter, Hunter.'

"I'm a very picky writer, and I kept going back to the first task of writing the songs, and everything else got pushed back many, many times," she said.

But her attention to detail has paid off. Critics at home and as far afield as the Netherlands have lauded the album, and before the Juno nod, she had already received multiple nominations at the East Coast Music Awards. While she can't quite nail down what these industry award nominations mean to her as an artist, she says the recognition is flattering.

"It's a lovely pat on the back. As a musician, you spend most of your time working, writing and traveling, and no one's giving out awards for miles logged on the road," she says. "But the album came out in September and it's nice to have another reason to celebrate it and introduce it to a new bunch of people."

As part of the Juno celebrations, hundreds of Canadian and international recording artists will descend on St. John's, a city already bristling with musical energy. Those in attendance can expect a wild party, but according to Curran, it can't get much wilder than your average Saturday night on the city's infamous George Street.

"St. John's is a small city, but there are always hundreds of shows going on and tons of musicians roaming around. I almost feel as though the Junos are a bit of an incidental thing," she says.

Curran cut her teeth busking on the streets of St. John's but left home and settled in the mainland city of Halifax, Nova Scotia almost a decade ago. She talks about her hometown with reverence, credits at least some the success of 'Hunter, Hunter' to the city in which it was recorded, and admitted that she pines for her home every day.

"Any young Newfoundlander wants to get out of Newfoundland, but you spend the rest of life wanting to go back. And I'm no different."

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