April 14, 2005 - The Chronicle Herald, Halifax, NS.

SPOTLIGHT

Rogue songs get debut at Stayner's
NIGHTCLUB NOTEBOOK-STEPHEN COOK

Pictou County singer-songwriter Jakki Rogue likes a good challenge. Her new CD "Take a Look at This", which she launches Saturday night at Stayner's Wharf at 9:30 p.m., contains several songs that arose out of life's struggles, and are given a contemporary folk spin through Rogue's warm, consoling vocals and flowing melodies.

Right off the bat, the record starts with Mama, an ode to her mother Ilona who fled her native Latvia for Canada in the wake of the Second World War. The song helped Rogue put her mother's life, as a musician and teacher, in perspective, and also helped her cope with Ilona's passing. "I just felt like I had to find some kind of positive solution," says Rogue. "That's what I always do, I write to work through stuff and find the good things about them. I don't write about other people's situations, because I don't really know them that well." "Some people can do it very well, but I just write about what happens to me. I like the way Mama turned out, it's not too personal, it's a very universal theme, saying a lot about what our parents have to leave us."

Rogue learned a lot about the ways of her ancestors when she initially moved to Nova Scotia in the '70s to get back to the land with then-partner Jim Wood. They ran a sawmill in Bear River and operated a woodlot, living off the garden with no power or running water. "I have a pretty good picture in my head of what the pioneers went through, I know exactly what it was like", says Rogue. "Well, maybe not exactly, because I could always refer back to the 20th century, but I understood their day to day lives."

"We started making music to pass the time and entertain ourselves, with no agenda, but that grew into the band Little Smoke, and we went out on the road and did some recordings with Karl Falkenham at CBC Radio." For Rogue's current recording, she garnered contributions from an illustrious list including producer Rick Edgett, drummer Don Chapman, bassist Jamie Gatti, Cathy Porter and fellow Pictou County talents Dave Gunning and George Canyon. "I knew George when he was still performing as Fred Lays, and his father used to teach me how to do turns in swimming," she laughs.