A Canadian Singer Looks To America

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Joanna Chapman-Smith's latest album is called Contraries. courtesy of the artist hide caption

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courtesy of the artist

Joanna Chapman-Smith's latest album is called Contraries.

courtesy of the artist

Many in the U.S. are looking toward Canada right now as the Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver. But one Canadian there is looking longingly toward America. Like many artists, singer-songwriter Joanna Chapman-Smith has discovered that if you want to make it in music, you need to tour the U.S. And if you're Canadian, that can be a problem.

Chapman-Smith seems like she's on her way from one stage of her life to another. At 26, she lives in a group house that makes it look like she's still in college. There's a jumble of secondhand furniture and dirty dishes in the sink.

Her room doesn't show it, but her career is starting to take off. It's just that she's not taking off yet in the U.S. The morning I stopped by, she was getting ready for a concert tour in Europe. A Canadian critic called her latest album "an exceptional collection of songs, by a creative and skilled vocalist."

Chapman-Smith first got on stage in high school. One of her teachers persuaded her to sing at an open mic night.

"I just remember that charged feeling," Chapman-Smith says. "There's this energy that's just alive, and there's all these bodies in the room."

The song she sang was "Hit the Drums," which she wrote when she was 16, and which eventually ended up on her 2006 album Eyre Corvidae.

Hard To Pin Down

It's hard to define Chapman-Smith's music, which could make it harder to market. But she says she loves being difficult to pigeonhole. This extends to the way she looks: Her mother is of Italian descent, while her father is from New Zealand. She says she has always refused to tailor her identity — her looks, her music, anything — just to please somebody.

But recently, she gave in. She reluctantly changed who she is.

A lot of Americans don't realize this, but since Sept. 11, 2001, even friendly Canadians next door have sometimes had problems trying to enter the U.S. Say you're Chapman-Smith and you have a gig in Seattle. You're going to need a special visa. And if you can't wait months to get it, you have to pay $1,000 for a rush order.

The singer says some people she knows have been blocked at the border. Two of her friends — one's a well-known juggler, while the other teaches arts to kids — were supposed to work at a summer festival in Oregon. But they say that when they drove to the border, U.S. Immigration agents pulled them out of line, questioned them for an hour and then turned them away. They apparently didn't have the right visas.

This past year, Chapman-Smith became a U.S. citizen. So now she can cross the line between the two countries and make music whenever she wants. She says suddenly, everything is different. At least at the border.