{"id":12598,"date":"2023-10-27T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/?p=12598"},"modified":"2026-05-09T13:24:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T18:24:19","slug":"artist-spotlight-bush-lotus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2023\/10\/27\/artist-spotlight-bush-lotus\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Spotlight: Bush Lotus\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by: Myles Tiessen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bush Lotus has had one hell of a summer. Between months of tree-planting in the heat and thick smoke of forest fires in Northern BC, Arielle Beaupr\u00e9 played her first headlining show, did a triple on the Manitoba festival circuit, and released her debut EP, Floating Kitestrings<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Her performance at The Harvest Moon Festival in Clearwater proved to be a culmination of all those months spent living in the world of the EP. As the crowd filtered in to watch the performance, she fed off the energy of friends and collaborators who came to witness her pensive tracks brought to life. After the show, she hugged, laughed, and swapped stories with those same people backstage, embracing the community of friends around her. Originally from Quebec, Beaupr\u00e9 may be a transplant in Manitoba, but she has clearly made it her home.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking with Stylus under an oak tree following her Saturday afternoon set, Beaupr\u00e9 sat in the slowly dying fall grass, sipping an ice-cold draft as the autumn wind swept down the leaves from above. Her relaxed joy\u2013no doubt still reeling from the set\u2013was boundless as we settled into the scenery reflective of her fanciful EP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPart of what writing music is to me is touching on something that\u2019s slightly ethereal and resolving feelings that are too hard to talk about or comprehend,\u201d says Beaupr\u00e9. Whether it\u2019s a therapeutic process or just for the joy of putting words to melody, making music isn\u2019t really an option for Beaupr\u00e9; \u201cIt\u2019s a necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sort of instinctive urgency is found all throughout Floating Kitestrings<\/em>. Beaupr\u00e9 prefers candid balladry over the flowery language often found in modern folk songs, editing out and removing the excess until all that remains is the purest, most intimate representation of emotions. It\u2019s a literary approach to songwriting that is, without a doubt, and most obviously, laborious. It\u2019s a practice that sees communication as art itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she sings: \u201cI stretched my arms wide\/ As through my fingers tips would reach the ends of the sky\/ It didn\u2019t matter that my feet were on the edge of the concrete parking lot,\u201d on \u201cOpen,\u201d you immediately feel the sober reflections of the mindfulness practices that inspired the song. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBreathing and being with the body and with the world is very grounding. And music does the same thing for me,\u201d says Beaupr\u00e9. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the lyrical clarity, there\u2019s an imagistic rubric at the heart of the EP, and it all goes back to the way Beaupr\u00e9 approaches music or the way she says music comes to her. \u201cIt\u2019s often like grasping at something beyond my reach, and the image that sticks with me is a kite floating far above me, where it\u2019s just out of my reach, but it\u2019s also quite beautiful that they are a little too far away, so you have to let them fly.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although her music reflects her deeply personal experiences and heavy emotional sentiments, Beaupr\u00e9 is a deeply upbeat individual with unrelenting passion and excitement for the like-minded musicians around her and for performing live. After a season of playing with a full band, her approach and even outlook on songwriting has changed. \u201cI want people to experience those ecstatic personal sentiments that come from music, but there\u2019s another part of me that just wants to get people to dance,\u201d she says with a laugh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it be the groovy Latin upbeat \u201cDans Le Jungle,\u201d\u2013which features playful unaffected laughter\u2013or the grungy \u201cRunning Away,\u201d Floating Kitestrings<\/em> hints at the intentional shift in modalities Beaupr\u00e9 has been experimenting with since playing with a full band. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat [the band] did was absorb the feelings in the songs on the EP, which I feel are pretty different from one another. We\u2019ve reworked some, tightened them up, and something like playing \u201cHazy\u201d live especially is almost more like what I wanted it to be at the start.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beaupr\u00e9 sees Bush Lotus as a creative unit where collaboration is at the heart of the magic that\u2019s reflected in their synergistic live performances. \u201cLooking out over the crowds, I felt like everyone I\u2019ve met from all walks of life has been there.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beaupr\u00e9\u2019s well aware that though the songs come from her essential, spiritual nature, they\u2019ve grown beyond what she could have ever hoped for. \u201cThey\u2019ve become things that can walk on their own, so I had to let go of them and let them be in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by: Myles Tiessen Bush Lotus has had one hell of a summer. Between months of tree-planting in the heat and thick smoke of forest fires in Northern BC, Arielle Beaupr\u00e9 played her first headlining show, did a triple on the Manitoba festival circuit, and released her debut EP, Floating Kitestrings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1595,1530],"class_list":["post-12598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-artist-spotlight","tag-bush-lotus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12600,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12598\/revisions\/12600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}