B.J. Snowden with Fred Schneider from The B-52s

On July 1, 1867, the British North America Act united three colonies under the name Canada. For all of our northern neighbors, I’d like to extend a warm “Happy Canada Day” with this posting of B.J. Snowden’s mighty “In Canada” music video, taken from her Life in the USA and Canada CD.

BJ Snowden is a very interesting talent. A graduate of Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music, her songs are catchy, they are original and they are fully formed. They are also malformed, but I don’t mean that in an insulting way, I’m just trying to describe her music accurately: B.J. could have been another Andrew Lloyd Webber, except that her music is missing a few chromosomes.

The story of BJ’s musical career, such that it is, is that she sent a copy of her demo cassette around and one of the places it ended up was in a NYC record store where the employees became obsessed with it, leading eventually to an independent release. Irwin Chusid wrote about her in his classic book Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music and she’s become something of the “queen” of “Outsider music.” You can get a copy of BJ’s album here. I have it. It’s honestly “good” in a very unconventional way.

Suffice to say, once you have heard this song even one time, you are never, ever going to forget it.

BJ Snowden on the “Humans WOW!” cable access show:
 

 
Bonus video… because this couldn’t wait for Valentine’s Day!