Sarah Harmer - Escarpment Blues
In 2005, Harmer co-founded PERL (Protecting Escarpment Rural Land), an organization which campaigned to protect the Niagara Escarpment from a proposed gravel development which would see parts of the wilderness on the Escarpment destroyed. To support the organization, she and her acoustic band embarked on a tour of the Escarpment, hiking the Bruce Trail along the Escarpment and performing at theatres and community halls in towns along the way. A documentary DVD of this tour was released in 2006 as Escarpment Blues.
Her fourth album, I'm a Mountain, was released in Canada on November 8, 2005 and in the United States in February 2006. It was nominated for the inaugural Polaris Music Prize, a critic's selected $20,000 cash prize for the Canadian album of the year. Harmer has performed and canvassed in support of the NDP and Marilyn Churley, her friend in the fight for the protection of the Niagara Escarpment.
In February of 2007, Harmer received three Juno Award nominations. I'm a Mountain was up for Best Adult Alternative Album and her DVD Escarpment Blues was up for Best Music DVD. Sarah herself was also up for Songwriter of the Year for her work on "I Am Aglow", "Oleander" and "Escarpment Blues". Also in 2007, she reunited with Weeping Tile to record a song, "Public Square", for the Rheostatics tribute album The Secret Sessions.
Source: Wikipedia (extracted Sept. 9th, 2007)
