Little Miss Higgins' THE FIRE WALTZ Album + Podcast Finale Out Today!
Download High-Res Photos | Photo Credit: Eric Lemoine
“The stories are riveting, expertly performed, and the songs—achingly beautiful. I love The Fire Waltz and will highly recommend!” - Bif Naked (Singer-Songwriter/Activist)
Today's the day! Manitoba-based award-winning musician and songwriter Little Miss Higgins' new, multifaceted project, The Fire Waltz, a five-part miniseries podcast and a full-length album, is available as a complete package today. The Fire Waltz podcast launched on February 14th, releasing weekly episodes until the final chapter today, coinciding with The Fire Waltz album release day.
Inspired by stories of her great-grandmother, Eva Bersay, Higgins has created a one of a kind audio experience—a riveting tale of an extraordinary woman. The Fire Waltz follows Eva on her journey to Canada from Jersey Island, off the northern coast of France, during the early 1900s, depicting the power and perils of love, the realities of a world at war and the uncertainties of the aftershocks. Using old photos, postcards, letters, a travel journal and stories gathered from family, the music-driven project took shape in October 2019. Higgins and her two main collaborators, Kris Demeanor and Eric Rose, began by telling the story through song titles. After that, eighteen songs were written in 12 days.
Initially, it was intended for theatre, but when live entertainment changed due to the global pandemic, Higgins switched the approach to be completely auditive. She wanted to link the songs with narrative, drawing on ideas of old radio plays. Script was written, more artists were gathered and even more songs were created. Working both in studio and remotely, Higgins and her extremely talented team from across Western Canada recorded the music and the script. Then she sound-designed the entire piece while recording engineer, Jamie Sitar, put everything together. Thus, Season 1 of The Fire Waltz has come to fruition.
The podcast may only be 5-episodes but The Fire Waltz album makes up for it with 21 tracks. When asked to pick a song for a feature single, Little Miss Higgins chose Track 9 - 'Flock In My Head'.
"'Flock In My Head' is different from anything else on the album," says Little Miss Higgins. "There is a huge variety of style and instrumentation throughout the songs. I feel very fortunate to have had the extremely talented, high-caliber musicians that jumped onboard. However, 'Flock In My Head' is me and a single bass drum beat from drummer Joanna Miller. Working with Kris has helped me venture out of my wheelhouse. We used a loop to create a flock-of-geese-like chorus, the drum beat and a sandalwood fan for more percussive nuance. I really love the exploration of this one. I don't even know if people would recognize it as one of my songs if they heard it without introduction."
The Fire Waltz album is available now on all digital streaming platforms (except Spotify) and The Fire Waltz podcast is streaming now on all podcast platforms. For more information, please visit www.littlemisshiggins.com.