Walking the line between genres like an easy path rather than a tightrope, carried by textural and ethereal songs,  Wyatt C. Louis’ gently pours their heart into their effortless vocals. Louis (they/them), a Plains Cree singer-songwriter born and raised in parts of Treaty Six, now lives in Red Deer, AB and lets that amalgamation of place shine through in their music.

 

Signed to Canadian indie label Royal Mountain Records (Mac DeMarco, Orville Peck, Wild Pink),  Louis' music is suffused with a soft comfort that glows with feelings of familiarity and ease. They found levity through collaboration with singer-songwriter and producer Phenix Warren, Colin Carbonera, Kyle Donauer, Jesse Shire, and City and Colour's Matt Kelly. A new experience, the result is upbeat yet thoughtful. Together, they made the kind of songs that show off Louis’ contradictions of paying homage to the country music ingrained in their childhood’s geography, with an indie and roots spin that makes it something all its own.

 

To the rock ‘n’ roll classic inspiration passed down like tradition from their father who played plenty of Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry and Beatles records in the house when Louis was growing up — they mix in softer-voiced influences, like Leif Vollebekk, Feist, and William Prince from Peguis First Nation, Manitoba. Through studying voice at Red Deer College, Louis was able to fine tune this instrument, gaining control and understanding that allows them to deliver their effortlessly light vocals that are nonetheless charged with emotion.

 

On the 2020 single “Dancing with Sue,” Louis taps into femininity of all kinds, crediting friends, family members and mentors as inspiration on this playful and lighthearted track born from a place of love. “It's like an ode to all my teachers growing up, I had a lot of great female teachers and people who really saw what I'd be at a really young age,” says Louis. The song points to how they play with stauncher notions of gender divides, tracing a curve through the straight and narrow of masculinity and femininity. In doing so, Louis plays with binary notions that feel strongly rooted in Calgary’s at-times more traditional, Stampede-influenced ways. “There's a really big world in country music here in Calgary, and I find myself colouring outside those lines,” they say.

 

Though fixed borders are malleable for Louis, surroundings still impact their art, with sensations and textures getting personified through sound. Nature takes its rightful place in storytelling-style pieces even when urban landscapes set the tune. Performing outdoors in B.C., the scorching heat of Albertan folk music festivals, and a short leg of Ontario dates, Wyatt C. Louis is excited to venture beyond their normal routes. They’re seeking to head in directions where the music leads, with the sounds of their home guiding the way, like a Nordic sundog’s permeating light shining through the coldest of days.