Dolores songs are a blend of insightful, poetic lyrics and sweetly crafted Blues/Folk/Rock fusion. They cover every topic, often straying into the realms of her childhood, exploring relationships, spirituality, politics and even delving into the lives of her friends and family, she takes her inspiration where she finds it and it finds her often. She has collected a catalogue of over 180 finished songs and always has a new idea brewing on the back burner. Dolores has connected with audiences at countless venues in Nova Scotia, Toronto, Barrie and Northern Ontario including Northern Lights Festival Boreal, SummerFest and Parry Sound Poetry Bash. Her fans span all ages and social stratas and live as close as Sudbury and as far away as China.
Where there is music to be heard, played or created Dolores Dagenais is never further than earshot away. The Barrie born minstrel began singing at three, playing guitar at 12, and wrote her first song at 13 and she hasn't stopped writing or singing since.
She was born into a large musical family where evening jam sessions around the kitchen table were a common occurrence and what needed saying was more than often expressed in lyrics and melody than straight talk. She attributes much of her writing talent to her mother a songwriter herself, who often wrote about the frustrations of raising ten children (Dolores is the baby of the family) on little more than a shoestring and hope.
The first place that Dolores ever remembers living is in a yellow school bus as the family travelled to western Canada in search of a new home, the long journey left a deep and indelible impression on her. The traveling theme is one that crops up recurrently in her writing, romanticized as only a four year old future songwriter could. Dolores does not remember her childhood as poor, what the family lacked in material goods they more than made up for in creativity, talent and a sense of adventure.
yup!
folk / music festivals and events
jamming out on the workshop stages with other great artists.
Duncan Wells (also here on sound click...check him out!)
James Keelaghan, Lennie Gallant, Dar Williams,
Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, Richard Shindell, Dave Francey, Nanci Grithiff.
Yamaha acoustic electric cutaway
My husband Ross has two children from his first marriage, they've lived with us fulltime for the last 5 years, but life is such that the only thing constant is change and so the boys will be going to live with their mother in the US at the end of June. I'm happy and sad, I've been their fulltime 'mom' for the last five years of my life and this is a big shift for us/me/them. I'm happy they will be happy, they've missed their biological mother and half sister alot and it's a positive change for them. As much as they have driven me crazy and given me grey hair I love them and will miss them.
Ross and I are putting our way too big for us house on the market, selling everything, putting the bare minimum of what we want to keep in the bus along with a futon to sleep on and heading east.
Ross wants to live in the bus and just drive around Nova Scotia until we find were we belong. Neither one of us has ever had a strong sense of 'home' or connection to a place really, we think it may be because of how we grew up, the first place I remember living is in a school bus traveling across the Canadian west and Ross remembers spending much of his childhood living on a sail boat.
It's entirely possible that we both equate 'home' with movement rather than the stillness and solidness of a house... we hope we find a place where we can settle finally and feel content to put down roots, if such a place exists for two road struck gypsies like us. That's what we're looking for.
We are discussing picking up a digital movie camera and immortalizing our journey as sort of a documentary type film....Ross already titled it "Finding Home"...I know I'm going to write LOADS of music for it...it's all already there pounding away at the back of my head...I'll be writing instead of sleeping soon......we know this adventure sounds like a crazy thing to do but I think the experience of it will be
It feels fantastic to ridding ourselves of all this clutter of objects, stuff is just stuff and honestly this feels like were removing cement blocks from our feet, I feel lighter, younger, better, unencumbered.
ahhhhh yes....now I feel at home........things are shifting and moving and the scenery is changing every five minutes.
if you see us on the road in our little blue bus don't be shy! Say Hi!
