Soul Canoe:
The Great Glass Elevator of Folk Music

By Bill Baldwin
Owner, Gravity Lounge

Soul Canoe (from left to right): Emily Gary, Tom Proutt and Mary Gordon Hall.

Tom Proutt, Emily Gary and Mary Gordon Hall are Soul Canoe, and Soul Canoe is like the Great Glass Elevator of folk music. You never know where the songs will take you: the topics explore the range of human experience from the sweetness of love, to the naughtiness of lust, to the sadness of loss. Female impersonators, cosmetologists, stiletto heels and bourgeois totem-animals are all subjects of Soul Canoe's delightfully skewed worldview. The music is so captivating, the harmonies so magnetic, you'll be drawn into the plots that drive Soul Canoe's songs. Soul Canoe will caution you: computers and pot pies are the devil! But they'll protect you from the computers and pot pies--they will cradle your heart as long as they're performing, and their personalities and humor will warm your heart ever-after, when you remember them and their songs. Soul Canoe is one big joyride for your soul. Why deprive yourself any longer?

What is Soul Canoe?

By Rod Schecter
PagePerfect Media Concepts

Taking their name from the well-known Tom Proutt song, Soul Canoe is an energetic acoustic trio who has created a refreshingly original sound that feels at once fresh and vaguely familiar-like a cherished melody you thought you'd forgotten. Forged from the collaborative efforts of Charlottesville music veterans Tom Proutt, Emily Gary and Mary Gordon Hall, Soul Canoe is a daring blend of styles that has, in the short time since its inception, grown into a unique and fully-realized musical force.

Acoustic Muse co-founder Hall lends her "beautifully pristine" voice; "visually-imaginative" and "melodically-pleasing" songs; and her solid guitar work to Proutt and Gary's distinctive and subtle tenor, which works both in their intimate live show or in the comforts of one's home.

"It's hard to say what exactly Mary Gordon brings to the band," says Proutt. "Obviously there's stage presence, songwriting, harmony, lead singing, and guitar, but there's also an unspecific something, that fifth, or should I say third, element that can only be described in the context of the music itself."

Peppered with soft inflections of standard jazz and folk, this trio has a varied sensibility that constructs vital sonic progressions around strong vocal harmonies and witty phrases, a sensibility that stands as an indivisible aesthetic statement. Full of all the right touches of intensity, gentleness and joy for their craft, Soul Canoe is an appealing taste of instrumental proficiency with all the delightful pleasures that the human voice affords.

From the Proutt song that bears their name to songs like "Stiletto Heels" one can get a glimpse at the tender yet playful side of this band, while songs like "The Computer is the Devil" paint an ironic picture of the world we live in with a vastly insouciant sense of humor. Mix in classic Mary Gordon tunes and the result is both dynamic and pleasing to the human ear. Whether singing about the Virgin Mary giving up her child in the lyrically haunting "My Babe Alone," or about the unspoken bond between mother and daughter in the sweetly sincere "Dirty Dishes," Mary Gordon adds the final ingredient that renders Soul Canoe into a complete musical experience for listeners of all kinds.

Soul Canoe has played at many venues, such as Kokopelli's, Dave's Taverna, Pompeii Lounge, Acoustic Muse, Tell Us A Tale, Thomas Jefferson and UU Church. They have also become a staple at the Streetlight Reading Series at Gravity Lounge, thrilling both lovers of music and letters alike.

Praised both individually and as a collective, Soul Canoe takes the strengths of three of Charlottesville's best and constantly challenges itself to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. True to its name, Soul Canoe interweaves narrative, melody, and humor to transport the listener through the ebbs and flows of daily life and beyond; they are music that stimulates both the mind and soul-that takes the listener to uncharted destinations that they'd be otherwise unlikely to find.