Kaley Bird

KALEY BIRD BIO: Only three years ago, Bird finally emerged from her favorite stage: the basement of her Edmonton home. This was a time when Bird never dreamt that she would release a full-length album, chart nationally on campus radio, tour across Canada, or even perform at such a prestigious event as the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Sometimes you just need to get out of the house. “I was shocked!” Bird responds when asked about what would appear to be beginners luck after her very first o...

KALEY BIRD BIO: Only three years ago, Bird finally emerged from her favorite stage: the basement of her Edmonton home. This was a time when Bird never dreamt that she would release a full-length album, chart nationally on campus radio, tour across Canada, or even perform at such a prestigious event as the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Sometimes you just need to get out of the house. “I was shocked!” Bird responds when asked about what would appear to be beginners luck after her very first open stage. “It was literally the very first time I played anywhere besides my basement. The man running the stage asked if I had enough for two, 45-minute sets. I didn’t, but he didn’t know that. So, I made sure that within two weeks, I had enough material for my first gig.” Four months after that first show, Bird received a $10,000 grant from a local Rawlco radio station allowing her to fund her debut album and by June 2008, another 6 months later, Bird released a self-titled independent folk-rock album. Much of that material Bird “threw together” for her first gig is what you will hear on that album. A collection of material that provoked the University of Western Ontario’s Gazette to coin Bird as, “a new-age folk blend of Stevie Nicks or Joni Mitchell.” For her first album, Kaley was pleased to see her music entertaining a national audience, and particularly the college crowd. After garnering the attention of local commercial, community, university, and CBC radio over the summer, by fall 2008, Bird was charting across Canada on campus radio. She made several appearances on the folk and pop/rock charts, a trend that continued well into the new year of 2009. Bird has acquired quite the mob of fans, despite her jokes about them all being family, “It was amazing to see that people who lived outside of Edmonton, you know, people I wasn’t related to had been listening to my music. When someone from Toronto, Saskatoon, or Kelowna would come to a show, and tell me they love my music… that was the most amazing thing about the tour for me.” In June 2009, Bird was selected as one of “Alberta’s Hidden Gems,” which was part of a series produced by ACCESS television. This local sentiment was not only confirmed by the city of Edmonton with an invitation to perform at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, but also the rest of Canada with an official showcase slot at Canadian Music Week in March 2010. This fall, Bird embarked on her second Canadian tour of the year. Teaming up with two other singer-songwriters, “The Ladies that Like to Folk” tour spanned over 50 dates from Victoria, B.C. to St. John’s Newfoundland. The Ladies saw a little bit of bad luck on the tour, but not even the swine flu in Halifax, a robbery in Montreal and a totaled car in the Kootneys could slow this singer-songwriter down. With confidence and unwavering ambition, 22-year old Kaley Bird is just at the beginning of her career. She returned home from touring on Jan. 31, 2010 to begin recording her second album. As Birds career unfolds under the collective eyes and ears of her national audience they can eagerly anticipate her next release.