Ferron - Biography
By J Poet
Ferron is a Canadian folksinger, songwriter, poet, activist and women’s music pioneer who slowly crossed over to the mainstream. She was born in 1952 in Vancouver, British Columbia, oldest girl in a family of seven children. She was playing guitar by the time she was 11, and worked odd jobs - ironing shirts, picking strawberries in the summer, working in a fish cannery/frozen cranberry factory.
Her mother’s French Canadian family filled the house with music. She was writing songs before she played guitar, but stopped after classmates found a book of her lyrics and made fun of her. In 1970, tired of hearing sounds she couldn’t relate to, she bought a proper guitar, learned to play, and made her debut performance at a benefit for a Womens’ press in Vancouver, BC. A residency at a local folk club was soon drawing capacity crowds and she moved to the Soft Rock Café. The first night there she made $860.00 by passing the hat.
Ferron stayed at the Soft Rock for a couple of years, started an indie label and made Ferron (1977 Lucy) and Ferron Backed Up (1978 Lucy). The albums were praised for intimate vocals, powerful womancentric lyrics and fine musicianship. She distributed the albums for her basement and through Ladyslipper Music.
Gayle Scott, an American filmmaker living in Canada, became her manager and helped her produce Testimony (1980 Lucy Canada, Redwood US), a collection of love songs that made her a star on the women’s music circuit and Shadows on a Dime (1984 Lucy Canada, Redwood US). Holly Near’s (1980 Redwood Records brought out the records in the US, which earned Shadows on a Dime a four star review in Rolling Stone. She became a major star on the women’s music circuit.
In 1987 he moved to the US and her experiences as an immigrant are detailed in Phantom Center (1990 Chameleon, 1995 Earthbeat Warner). She toured with the Indigo girls, started an American label and made Not a Still Life (1992 Cherrywood Station), recorded live at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall with Tori Amos on backing vocals and The Indigo Girls guesting on “Light of My Light”, Resting with the Question (1992 Cherrywood Station) and Driver (1994 Cherrywood Station, 1995 Warner).
Her first (and last) major label album Still Riot (1996 Warner). The label produced her as a pop singer, but her unflinching honesty and heart wrenching lyrics made the album a hard sell. She wound up broke and the label owned the rights to Driver, Phantom Center, and Still Riot.
Ferron worked day jobs and made InsideOut (1994 Cherrywood Station) a set of cover tunes that she found inspiring in her youth. She kept touring and teaching songwriting workshops, but except for Impressionistic (2000 Cherrywood Station), a retrospective double album with a few new recordings of older songs, she stayed away from the studio until Turning into Beautiful (2005 Cherrywood Station) hailed by many as a masterpiece of soulful, insightful music making.
Ferron started buy back the right to her older records and reissued Testimony, Driver, Shadows on a Dime, and Turning Into Beautiful on Cherrywood in 2008. Boulder (2008 Short Story), produced by up and coming indie rock star Bitch is a collection of Ferron’s best tune, re-recorded with the help of Ani Difranco, The Indigo Girls, JD Samson (Le Tigre), Sam Parton (Be Good Tanyas), Tina G (God-des) and Julie Wolf. Ferron stays busy today touring, teaching, singing and writing songs. She was featured Radical Harmonies (2002) a documentary o the women’s music scene, and in the biodoc Ferron: Girl on a Road which will be playing film festivals and television in 2009. She was given an Outmusic Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Gay & Lesbian American Music Awards ceremony in 1996.
