Quest for flyer

Jay Sparrow’s wailing single, The Ballad of Mary White, is now available on iTunes. The local tunesmith was one of 13 acts to pen a song about a specific Canadian location for CBC Radio 2. Both the artists and the spots were selected by listeners as part of the Great Canadian Song Quest.

Sparrow was tasked with writing about the Hoodoos/Badlands of Alberta. “It was a little daunting so I wrote a few different ideas and did some rough demos,” he says. “Then I sat back and listened to them to try and decide what was the most fitting sentiment. I wanted the song to represent some of the Badlands’s history. The song is a fictional story about the first child born of a first nations mother and a European father.”

Sparrow and his fellow Questers only had four weeks to write their tunes. The results, including Kim Barlow’s Dawson City and Chantal Kreviazuk’s In Waskada Somewhere, were aired earlier this week. All the songs are on iTunes — either separately or as an album. Listen to snippets on CBC Radio 2's website.

“I listened to the whole record (Tuesday) while driving and I was really impressed,” says Sparrow. “It feels like there is some cohesion among all of the songs which is surprising considering the diversity of the songwriters. I really enjoy the contributions from Joel Plaskett and also The Deep Dark Woods.”

Plaskett’s tune, On the Rail, is about the Cabot Trail in Nova Scota. The Deep Dark Woods wrote Charlie’s (is coming down), inspired by a bar in The Plains Hotel in Regina, Sask. The hotel, compared to the Strath on Whyte Avenue, will be torn down in the new year. A new hotel/condo development will reportedly take its place.

Sparrow is also in the redevelopment phase of his career. After fronting Edmonton’s Murder City Sparrows, he is now releasing his own raggedy folk-punk discs, including Good Days Gone. (One of his tracks, Lay Yr Mountain Down, is posted below.) His next, produced by Jimmy Gnecco of Ours, is slated for 2010.

Sparrow will perform Wednesday, Jan. 27 at Myer Horowitz Theatre.