11 Questions With...Sierra Noble

At a tender age of 19, Winnipeg fiddling virtuoso Sierra Noble’s salient accomplishments easily belie her years lived. Including taking home the Manitoba Junior Fiddling Championship in 2004, charming audiences in North America, Europe, and Asia with her warm, smoky singing and uplifting fiddling, and earning humanitarian commendation after commendation, Sierra’s resume is deep and impressive and forever expanding. Her new EP, Possibilities, has been getting play all over, mainly on the strength of the heartstring-tugging single “Possibility”. AND she recently opened for Sir Paul McCartney! A Beatle!

The uber-giving folks at her label MapleMusic Recordings have passed along three copies of Possibilities for me to give away to blog readers. If you’re interested, simply shoot me an email (on the side) with “Sierra Noble: Possibilities Give Away” in the subject line and your full name in the body of the email. Deadline is Thursday @ 4 p.m. when I’ll draw the winner randomly.

And the lovely Miss Noble generously took some time to answer 11 questions for me and gave some thoughtful responses. In doing so, she gives a shout out to The King’s Head (where, coincidentally, I’m about to head off to for a night of debauchery), our city’s veritable folk treasure The Duhks (and the much-loved, defunct Scruj MacDuhk), and admits to having two favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I really should keep an ongoing favourite TMNT tally.

1. Where are you right now?

I’m in my second home right now. My sister Brook’s house in Toronto…I can hear my little niece and nephew fussing around upstairs because they just woke up, and the voice of my goofy modern dancer brother in-law Rob.

2. Who is your favourite Winnipeg-based band?

The Duhks. Even though in reality they’re based out of a van at the moment, they’re an amazing Winnipeg band. Always have been, back to the Scruj MacDuhk days. They’ve really put Winnipeg on the map in the global Folk Music world as a place where really great Folk music is born. Not to mention them being some of the greatest people I’ve ever known in my life.

3. Where’s the best place in the city to catch a bite?

Oh wow, that’s a loaded question…so many to choose from. I’ll give two. Often I find myself craving the fish and curry chips at The Kings Head…best comfort/chill out food ever.
But even more often I have serious cravings for the Combo A and/or Combo B at Masawa in Osborne…it’s my favourite restaurant in the city…it’s…simply…amazing.

4. What are your top three, all-time, desert-island records?

If I were on a desert island…(in no particular order because they’re all equally important to me)

Oliver Schroer – “O2” album …for relaxation, reflection, and having my best friend Oli at my side

Now this second one would require me to have a cassette player on the island, but it’s worth it…I would need to bring my sisters tape of her DJ-ing in like 1999…her name was DJ Terra, one of the hottest DJ’s ever, and this cassette is some killer Drum & Bass. I would miss it greatly while trapped on an island. And she may kill me for writing this, just so you know. She is now a promising, young, fresh out of school, entertainment lawyer in Toronto, Terra Noble…look her up.

And the third I think would have to be Shawn Colvin’s “These Four Walls” album. She’s one of my favourite singer-songwriters ever, and I can listen to this album over and over and always get something new out of it.

I know you said three but there’s some other music that I would fight to have with me too…the Little Village record…Bela Fleck & The Flecktones “Left of Cool” album…and one more song, the song that will never be beat by any other ever for me, “Blackbird”.

5. What's one song you love, but regularly dismiss as a guilty pleasure?

Well, I’m going to have to explain this one or else I’ll be getting a lot of confused and concerned calls from friends. I am a very heart driven person and have always been very romantic and in turn, very sentimental. When I was 15 I fell in love with a guy in Alberta…we were crazy about each other. I went there, he came to Winnipeg, he’s a champion Metis dancer so we toured together sometimes too and he’d dance in my shows. It was beautiful and pure and unstoppable…the kind of love (if you get to experience it at that age) that you’ll search the rest of your life to find again…but probably never will. Anyways, one of his favourite bands was Nickelback. We listened to them a lot because of it. Over time our memories together became woven into this bands songs…and there lies my very guilty pleasure that is my love of Nickelback. It’s a sentimental thing I promise…so please don’t line up in droves to slap the back of my head, haha. This one song in particular was the story of his and my life together, being in love but having the distance between us….”Far Away” by Nickelback…I really do love that song. I’ve been made to feel like I need to apologize for that…but I won’t, I will love it forever despite what others say…just as I did that boy.

6. What was the last great concert you saw?

Paul McCartney. No description needed. Best. Concert. Ever.

7. What is the worst bus route in Winnipeg?

To be completely honest, I don’t take the bus enough to really be able to say…but I do know by experience how annoying it is to get from downtown to Polo Park if you accidentally get on the #11 instead of the #21…

8. Would you rather have invisibility or flight?

Flight! I’ve always wanted to be able to fly.

9. What's the best local record shop in our fair town?

I’m ashamed to say that I really don’t know…I don’t know why but I was never really one to go rummaging through record shops for the next thing that will blow my mind…maybe it’s time to start…anyone wanna come along?

10. What book(s) are you currently reading?

The last really good book I read was called “Ishmael”. There’s a review quote on the front cover that I now fully understand and concur with after reading it, it says, ‘the books I’ve read are broken into two categories…books I read before Ishmael, and books read after.”

11. And finally who’s your favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, or Raphael?

It’s a tie between Raphael and Michelangelo.

Infinite Playlist: Sierra Noble - Possibilites