Julie Ann Bertram
Special to the Tribune
The multi-talented Chanelle Albert has just released her debut LP, 22nd Century Beautiful People, with her band, Chanelle Albert & the Easy Company. The 27-year-old from Verner has been singing, writing, and performing since the age of six, starting with singing lessons from Denis St. Clair and performing at recitals with his other students at Club Calumet while she attended École élémentaire catholique Sainte-Marguerite-d’Youville. “He would have these shows every year where all his students would get to perform. Those were my first experiences of performance. It was the highlight of my year, getting to sing to an audience,” Chanelle remembers.
In 8th grade, the artistic teen won a Governor General’s award in history for her illustrated short story, Le Grand dérangement d’Élise. In high school at Northern Secondary, she was immersed in musical theatre, performing at all the assemblies and eventually securing a week-long sold-out show with TOROS (Theatre Outreach On Stage) as the lead, Cosette, in Les Misérables at the Capital Centre.
In 2015, Chanelle recorded her first solo album, How Beautiful We Are, recorded in River Valley and produced by local bluegrass musician Mitch Ducharme, which got her nominations for ‘Young Performer of the Year’ from the Canadian Folk Music Awards and the Toronto Independent Music Awards in the category of ‘Best Folk or Roots Music’’. During that time, her heartfelt video for the song Stranger achieved recognition as a Top Ten Northern Ontario entry in CBC’s prestigious Searchlight contest.
Continuing her artistic pursuits, Chanelle found herself among the top five finalists from across Canada in the 2017 Francophone singer/songwriter competition and TV series, Planète BRBR on TFO. In February 2018, she showcased her production skills by independently releasing the single Alright, which was followed by the French version, Bien oui, in March of the same year. ‘Alright’ garnered further acclaim as one of the top songs recognized by FMO and the Song from the Heart jury, leading to its nomination for the esteemed Ontario Arts Council’s 2018 Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award.
While still in high school, during the summers, Chanelle worked at the Lavigne Tavern and mingled with many bands travelling through. “I got to meet a lot of different people who ended up helping me out in my career. I also had my first paid gig at the Lavigne Tavern in 2014.” Some of her early performances as a solo artist took place at Twiggs in Sturgeon Falls from 2014-2016. She then went on to play at the International Plowing Match in Verner in 2019.
In 2022, her band, Chanelle Albert & the Easy Company, released an EP, The Birds, recorded live off the floor at the Coulson lounge in Sudbury. Chanelle mixed and mastered the record herself. She continually works in all aspects of the music business, including graphic design, production, and publicity. “I designed our logo. We’re always working on a budget, so I’ve learned to do a lot of things myself, and at the moment it’s good for me to learn it all, then once I have somebody else on board doing that work, I know it’s being done the right way. We don’t have a publicist, so I’ve been doing that too; sending out press releases, and we did a rollout with the singles.”
The first single was released in February 2024, another at the end of March, a third in April, and the fourth was just ahead of the album’s release on May 31. All four of these singles made it to Exclaim!’s “Eh list”, the magazine’s pick of the best new songs from Canadian artists, and are being played on many college and community radio stations across Canada, including CBC radio.
This year, Chanelle attended Canadian Music Week and boosted her reputation as a unique artist. “I met an Associate Director at Sirius XM and gave him a few copies of the new CD, 22nd Century Beautiful People, and he said he’d pass it along to Patrick Bateman who hosts a few Sirius XM programs. They did a blind test, playing one of our singles to see what he thought about it, and I just got an email from him saying that they’re going to be rotating one of our singles, Don’t Leave Your Baby, on the North Americana station as of Friday, June 14!” she enthused.
