The charismatic trio Red Molly will be performing in Athabasca on Remembrance Day.
The group will perform at the Nancy Appleby Theatre on Sunday at 7:30 p.m.
The folk trio started making music together in 2004, and features Molly Venter on vocals and guitar; Laurie MacAllister on vocals, guitar, and banjo; and Abbie Gardner on vocals, guitar, dobro and lap steel guitar.
Even after so many years of playing together, they still get nervous before a show.
“I had a huge problem with stage fright for 20-plus years, but Red Molly got me over it,” MacAllister said.
“I get excited nerves when we perform a new song for the first time,” Gardner said. “Other than that, I only get nervous when playing a song for someone one-on-one.”
Venter admitted, “I am still a nail-biter.”
When writing music, Venter and Gardner draw from many different sources.
“When I write, it can often come from books or something I overhear, but the emotion is always rooted in my own feelings and experience,” Gardner said.
Venter has a different process.
“For me, it starts with a melody and then sounds, and finally words start to get sung until I catch a glimpse of some nugget of truth or observation or a question that wants attention. Everything you take in — books, conversations, poems, an image on the news — gets jumbled up and synthesized until you find a new expression or interpretation for it. At least, that’s the hope.”
Gardner said she is most proud of the song, The Mind of a Soldier.
“It’s had the most impact of any of the songs I’ve written, especially with military folks and their families,” she explained. “It warms my heart to feel like I was able to write a song that they can connect with so intimately.”
Venter said Good Mother was the song she was most proud of.
“When I realized I was writing about my best friend’s mom who’d been very sick for a long time, I started bawling,” she said. “I was in my early 20’s and it was the first song I’d ever written where I fully assumed someone else’s voice.”
The show will begin at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available at Value Drug Mart, Whispering Hills Fuels, or by calling 780-525-2161, 780-424-2915 or 780-916-6871.
