Canadian Music ~ Heather Dale

 

Heather Dale. a Canadian Celtic folk musician, author, entrepreneur, and filker, is the daughter of Peter and Nancy Dale. Her mother's family comes from Cornwall though Dale describes herself as a "Celtic Mongrel" with Scottish, Irish and Welsh ancestry as well as Cornish. 

As of 2004, Dale was a member of the Toronto/Cornish Association. She was raised in Scarborough, and graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in environmental studies in the early-mid 1990s. Dale's musical passion began with taking piano lessons and writing poetry as a child. This early exposure led to a familiarity with a wide variety of classical and folk instruments.

At the age of eighteen, while a student at the University of Waterloo, she discovered Medievalism through the Society for Creative Anachronism, and began composing songs inspired by Arthurian legend and other fantasy books she had grown up enjoying. She also incorporates influences and instruments from other genres, including world music. 

Soon after, she began going to science fiction conventions in Toronto, and there found a welcoming community. She made her very first recordings in 1992, and released her first album The Trial of Lancelot in 2000. Trial included her most popular song, "Mordred's Lullaby", which went viral after release and counted over twenty million views on YouTube as of August 2020.

As a teenager, Dale developed aspirations of living an independent, entrepreneurial life. She founded Amphis Music (officially Amphisbaena Music) in 1998, and it has been her primary record label throughout her career.

As of 2004, she was touring with a four-piece backing band and giving solo shows.

Since around 2005, Dale has worked closely with multi-instrumentalist Ben Deschamps, who has co-written and co-produced with her for much of her career, as well as performing and touring with her as duo and as part of the "Heather Dale Band" (occasionally the "Heather Dale Trio") and providing instrumentation on her recordings. Dale and Deschamps spent a decade on the road together before moving back to Toronto in 2019, the year which marked 20 years as a professional musician, according to an interview Dale did to promote the release of her 20th album, Sphere (2019).

In 2006, Dale produced a songbook, The Legends of Arthur, which re-tells some Arthurian legends and provides sheet music for her songs from The Trial of Lancelot and May Queen albums. The songbook is illustrated by Martin Springett.

Deschamps made concert live-streaming platform Online Concert Thing in October 2019, as an option for musician friends who couldn't tour and who were left with no recourse after the earlier streaming service ConcertWindow shut down. As of August 2021, Dale is in charge of Artist & Customer Relations for the platform.

On April 3, 2014, the Globe and Mail listed her as number six on a list of "the top 10 Canadian entrepreneurial crowdfunding campaigns of the moment" for her Indiegogo campaign to fund "CELTIC AVALON", a self-described "big King-Arthur-themed touring show & concert DVD, and youth educational program."[12] This campaign raised over US$56,000 and produced Dale and S. J. Tucker's original musical Queens of Avalon (2016), about the relationship between Guinevere (played by Tucker) and Morgan le Fay (played by Dale).

On August 25, 2020, Dale was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association's Hall of Fame during that year's virtual Aurora Awards ceremony. Dale was the first musician to be inducted into the Hall of Fame since its establishment in 2014.