Alternate Root Magazine

hough the subjects are familiar; love, loss, more love, more loss and the freedom found in and from both, occupy the spaces in Kim Beggs tunes, her voice separates the tracks. Kim’s vocals showcase an ability to infuse each work with a vulnerable sincerity. That is what makes ‘Blue Bones’ authentic, offering originals and reinventions of songs by Nanci Griffith, the traditional “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes”, Patty Griffin, “Trapeze” and Bob Dylan, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” the stamp of the real, the honest and the personal. When Kim’s voice comes in, she makes the words intimate, a shared experience, a look into life. Her reading of previously sung songs changes them enough to be of her own making. The Kim penned are glimpses into the life of a road musician (“Honey and Crumbs”), the past creeping into the present (“Terrible Valentine”), the memory of a little brother born with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder(“Firewaterbones”) and big love and a traveling heart (“Summertime Lonesome Blues”).
There is a lot of travel in Kim’s songs. No surprise as she now calls the Yukon home, when she isn’t on tour. Born in Val d’Or, Quebec and raised in Northern Ontario mining towns, Kim began working as a non-musician at the age of twelve. She left Toronto and came to the Yukon in the winter of 1991, swinging a hammer to augment the $50 in her pocket. The pawnshop guitar she brought with her was hardened around the campfires at night. ‘Blue Bones’ is her third full length. She works with collaborator Steve Dawson on the album.