On Sunday May the 15th, The Venue in downtown Vancouver hosted Kina Grannis (@kinagrannis), an acoustic singer/songwriter/guitarist. She blew my mind. Lets start there.
She is a very talented, beautiful, and friendly lady, who has made her way through the interwebs, which has enabled her to tour North America. From her website, it says that she’ll be touring worldwide in the upcoming months! For a girl that’s only been touring since early 2010, she sure looked comfortable up on stage, and was able to captivate the audience with her charisma.
Remember Gangsters Paradise from the 90’s? Yeh, she pulled that out of her hat and killed it! It actually blew my mind Kina’s emotion she poured into her songs. A lot of them were introspective songs, or first person views on life, and of course love.
She told us a story of how her grandfathers ukulele had been stolen from her at the start of her last tour, which is a horrible thing. I can remember I had my first acoustic guitar stolen from my car when I was younger, and it devastated me, let alone having a family heirloom being nicked, while on tour! Poor thing. But there was a happy ending, for her street team gathered forces to get her a new one engraved with her name!
Kina’s sisters, Misa and Emi, came on for a bunch of songs and helped her out, who also provided some comedic relief and dancing (almost convinced)! They were a great singers and no doubt made Kina much more comfortable on the stage with them there.
To open the night was Imaginary Friend (@imaginarytweets ), a very soft singer with a guitar. He was a really great way to open up to Kina, to swing the night into rhythm, and another class act as well.
This tour was in support of Kina’s new album Stairwells.
Photos courtesy of Ned Tobin.