Willie Thrasher & Linda Saddleback | Jenina MacGillivray | Reader: Eva Crocker

**Meg McLaughlin  will sadly not be able to attend this year. Jenina MacGillivray has joined the bill in their place.

LV14 presents Willie Thrasher & Linda Saddleback (BC), Jenina MacGillivray (NL), and reader Eva Crocker (NL) at The Ship.

Doors 7:30pm / Show 8pm / $25 / 19+

Willie Thrasher is a gifted Inuk singer and songwriter living in Nanaimo, BC with his partner Linda Saddleback. Three of Thrasher’s songs appeared on the 2014 Grammy-nominated compilation, Native North America (Vol. 1), renewing interest in his and other Indigenous artists’ work. Thrasher’s powerful 1981 debut album, Spirit Child, which the 3 songs came from, was then reissued in 2015. Thrasher was born in Aklavik, Northwest Territories, in 1948 and at five years of age, Thrasher was taken from his family and sent to a residential school where he was forbidden to practice his Inuvialuit culture. Music was a way for Thrasher to escape the pain and longing. He has recorded both as a solo artist, and as a member of several bands, including The Cordells, and Red Cedar, with Morley Loon. Thrasher has advocated for Inuit and First Nations issues for much of his career. Today, Thrasher performs at home and around the world with his partner Linda Saddleback due to the global attention garnered by Native North America (Vol. 1). Wherever he may be, Willie Thrasher is a trailblazing troubadour with an Indigenous heartbeat sound. Below Willie and Linda perform one of his songs, “Wolves Don’t Live by the Rules”.

Born in Cape Breton, raised on Prince Edward Island, and based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Jenina MacGillivray’s songs and stories are wry and nostalgic - lost loves in Portugal, the Isle of Wight, and the American Southwest - but also intimate and familiar and deeply located in Atlantic Canada  - friendship in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Basin Head, PEI, and St. John’s.  She will release her sophomore album in September 2024.

Eva Crocker is a freelance editor and author who grew up in Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). Her debut novel All I Ask was long-listed for the 2020 Giller Prize and won the 2020 BMO Winterset Award. Her short story collection Barreling Forward was shortlisted for Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQS2 Writers and the NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers. It won the Alistair MacLeod Award for Short Fiction and the CAA Emerging Author’s Award, and was a National Post Best Book. Her new novel Back in the Land of the Living was published by House of Anansi Press in August 2023.

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