Rachael Kilgour
940 Bonisteel Rd
Trenton
ON
Rachael Kilgour is a Canadian-American songwriter and performing artist whose plain-spoken, heart-centered work and intimate performances have endeared her to listeners and fellow artists alike. The 2015 grand prize winner of the international NewSong Music Competition and winner of the 2017 Kerrville New Folk Contest, Kilgour has been featured at NYC’s Lincoln Center, at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and at the Sundance Film Festival.
Following the success of her 2017 album Rabbit in the Road (“…a heartfelt slice of master crafted indie folk brimming with the battle-tested capacity to endure the worst in others” – Billboard) and subsequent 2019 EP, Game Changer (“Kilgour’s unapologetic lyrics are a real treat” – Rolling Stone), Kilgour spent the COVID-19 shut-downs quietly laying the groundwork for her next full-length release.
The exquisite forthcoming collection, My Father Loved Me (due September 2023), is a tribute to her late father and was produced by JUNO Award-winning songwriter Rose Cousins and recorded in the senior Kilgour’s native Canada. In the spare, often gutting language for which she is known, Kilgour gives us a complex portrait of a man as seen through his daughter’s eyes. With unwavering acuity she poses questions about identity, inheritance, and grief, and affirms the value of one ordinary working man’s life to an often indifferent world.
With this album, Kilgour has revealed something about what the living owe each other. “In our mourning rituals, I think we’re really convincing ourselves that our own lives matter, that we will have an impact and be remembered. My father had a very average life for a man of his time, a small life that didn’t involve grandeur, of any kind at all.” Kilgour thinks before speaking again. “I needed to prove to myself—and to the world—that lives lived like that are still worth celebrating, still worth living.”
“Rachael Kilgour is folk music’s Next Big Thing…the finest purveyor of tear-jerkers to emerge from northern Minnesota since Bob Dylan.” (Star Tribune)
“Kilgour’s unapologetic lyrics are a real treat” (Rolling Stone)
“…a heartfelt slice of master crafted indie folk brimming with the battle-tested capacity to endure the worst in others” (Billboard)
