Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.03.2019, Blaðsíða 14

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14 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • March 15 2019
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Icelandic
pride
Lisa Sigurgeirson Maxx is a third
generation Western Icelander,
daughter of the late Bill
(Vilhjalmur Jakob) Sigurgeirson, who
was born in Gimli and raised on Hecla
Island before moving west with the family
to Steveston, British Columbia, in 1943.
She is, more to the point, an incredibly
gifted singer-songwriter who will be
performing in Winnipeg on the evening
of May 16, 2019, at the Icelandic National
League of North America’s 100th annual
convention. Lisa also participated (as
a vendor and photographer) in the 99th
annual INLNA convention in Edmonton,
as well as performing on stage at the 97th
INLNA convention in Richmond, BC.
During August and September, 2016,
she and her then band, The Still Creek
Crows, toured Iceland, performing for
the Icelandic National League of Iceland
in Reykjavík, as well as at Melodica, also
in Reykjavík, and Bláberjadagur (the
Blueberry Days festival) in Súðavík in
the Westfjords. Her second CD, featuring
several new songs in celebration of her
Icelandic roots, will soon be released.
This review is of her original CD, Still
Hold True, something of an undiscovered
gem here in Canada.
Full disclosure: Yes, Lisa Sigurgeirson
Maxx is a cousin of mine – my mother
Elin, by common consent the sanest of
her siblings (though this says less than
it may seem), is elder sister to Lisa’s
late father, Bill – and yet, No, I fear,
there’s no hope of my ever being paid
for writing this review. Lisa Sigurgeirson
Maxx, you see, is an artist, something
you’ll discover when you listen to these
songs and, as with so many artists here
and now (and then and there, as well),
she has had to eke out her living, caught
between the duty to her gift (and boy, can
this girl sing!) and the equally powerful
pull of living in this world, two tasks that
take a lifetime each to properly fulfill.
When asked, then, to review Still
Hold True, my first thought was, “No, no,
no, for this will never pay. Besides, she’s
family, it just won’t do.”
But then I put the album on and,
listening to the songs, knew I had no
choice, for the album, as Lisa writes in
the liner notes, “is a tribute to family /
for those who have come and gone /
for those still here / and for those yet to
come.” And so, who better than one of
the clan to help spread the news? This is
a powerful, beautiful work, worthy to be
heard by all.
Like life itself, Still Hold True arcs
from birth to death, opening with two
love songs to her newborn baby girl, the
first song (“I Ya”) pulsing with a young
mother’s ecstasy and joy, her utter awe-
filled wonder at this sweet new being she
has borne. (“I Ya” was the way her baby
girl first said “I love you”). The second
song, “Shadow Dance,” is a profoundly
moving meditation on growth itself and
the simple gift that this life is, the all of
this life, both its shadows and its light.
The album comes to an end with two
transcendent songs of farewell: the first
to her Scottish nana (the title track, “Still
Hold True”), and the final song, “Farðu
Draumaveginn” (Go the Dream Way),
an enchanting incantation that bids good
night, farewell to her Icelandic amma.
Anyone among us here who boasts
Icelandic blood will be entranced by the
pure and haunting power of this song.
In between these book-ends are songs
that chart the living of a life – songs of
people known and loved and lost; places,
too, and things; events that mark the
journey here that we all take, this life we
live between the being born and our final
sailing from this shore.
“Song for Mikley,” like so many of
these songs, is a song of celebration,
a song of pride and deep connection to
both blood and, yes, to place.
The boat Mikley was the last wooden-
hulled commercial fish boat to be built
here on Canada’s West Coast, a 44-foot
trawler built in Steveston back in 1989-
90 by Lisa’s father, Bill, and his (some
say long-suffering) partner, Doreen. The
two then fished that boat up and down
this coast until finally they put away their
gear and retired from the sea. (The story
of the building of the Mikley, originally
published in West Coast Fisherman, will
be reprinted in the Icelandic Connection
later in 2019).
“Song for Mikley” celebrates not just
the building of this boat, it celebrates the
reasons why the boat was built: because
Bill’s father, Geiri, was a builder of boats
– both back on Lake Winnipeg and later
on in Steveston – and because Geiri’s
father (Jakob Sigurgeirsson) built boats
as well. Both men worked the lake, of
course, so boatbuilding is something
like a gift – much the same as the love
of music is a gift, the love of song, for
all are gifts passed down by blood. And
so “Song for Mikley” is a celebration
of that gift and of that place back there
upon the lake. It is also a celebration of
the old folk who, by the simple (though
never easy) living of their lives, became
the inspiration to the ones who followed
them in time. It is, in this, an ode to
connection and to blood and to the way
the years and seas – the inland sea that is
Lake Winnipeg and the Pacific Ocean as
well as the grave and deep Atlantic from
whose grey depths our Iceland rises solid
as a psalm – flow together into one.
“Old House” will resonate with
anyone who remembers their amma
lovingly. If you are very, very lucky in
this life, you will have had an amma who
made you buttered toast with cinnamon
Lisa Sigurgeirson Maxx – Still Hold True
Reviewed by Ian Ross
Vancouver, BC
Lisa Sigurgeirson Maxx in her ancestral homeland. The cover of Still Hold True.