{"id":24416,"date":"2019-08-08T09:06:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T13:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24416"},"modified":"2019-08-08T09:06:23","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T13:06:23","slug":"blondin-set-to-take-a-little-piece-of-your-heart-at-concerts-in-the-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/blondin-set-to-take-a-little-piece-of-your-heart-at-concerts-in-the-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Blondin set to take a little piece of your heart at Concerts in the Park"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in the 80s, Krista Blondin didn\u2019t have much\ntime for contemporary music. Instead, she gravitated towards the tunes of the\nswinging sixties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She might have been in the musical minority when she was\nin high school, but it served her well; these early interests proved\ninfluential and next Wednesday this influence will come to life as she takes\nover the Town Park Band Shell to pay tribute to the legendary Janis Joplin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joined on stage by Wild T. in a tribute to Jimi Hendrix,\nthe sounds of Woodstock will be in the air on the 50th<\/sup> anniversary\nof the iconic music festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI always liked Janis when I was a teen,\u201d says Ms.\nBlondin. \u201cWhen I started singing myself, I kept hearing, \u2018You look like Janis\u2019\nand \u2018You sound like Janis,\u2019 but in those early days I wanted to establish\nmyself as Krista. I was doing dance party music, but the time came that I was\nready to do it. Janis Joplin is not music that you can just sing; I wanted to\ndo it right and I invested a lot of time into learning her style and her\ncharacter on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, this was easier said than done. Internet was\nstill in its comparative infancy. There was no YouTube to watch Joplin in\nconcert to learn her style, or live interviews to gain insight into her\ncharacter. So, she did her best with the information she had, going as far as\nto order VHS tapes, which were studied intently, books that were read\nvoraciously, and music that was absorbed with passion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t singing anything else and I just researched\nevery day, practicing four hours a day, not just the music but the moves,\u201d she\nsays. \u201cWatching the videos, you could see how she was hitting the notes, and it\nwas a really physical thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more she studied Janis Joplin, the more she\nunderstood why an up and comer such as herself gravitated towards the style of\na woman who paved the way for so many female rock artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a singer, one of the best parts is that release of\nanxiety, stress, the whole thing, just getting it out there and being true,\u201d\nshe says. \u201cKnowing Janis did that and it was part of her singing is something I\ncould really relate to: the freedom of being able to sing and not care what you\nlook like while you sang. It didn\u2019t have the same feeling as when, say, I was\ndoing a jazz show all dressed up and more poised. I loved the feeling of\nletting it all out, getting sweaty and messy. Who cares what happens to your\nhair or your clothes? I could really relate to that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is something she finds the audience relates to as\nwell. When she performs as Janis Joplin, Ms. Blondin says she can see how her\nmusic affects people deeply. This is something that sticks with her as she\nforms her set list. You\u2019ll hear classics like Me & Bobby McGee and Piece of\nMy Heart, but you\u2019ll also hear some of the lesser known hits, ones that had\npersonal resonance for Joplin \u2013 and continue to do so for Ms. Blondin and the\naudience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be going through a journey of Janis\u2019 life,\nincorporating the music and I will stay in character for the whole show,\u201d she\nsays. \u201cThe show opens with one of the biggest hits, and even if they\u2019re not a Janis\nfan or didn\u2019t know much about Janis, they are going to learn more about her as\na person and performer. It\u2019s always, \u2018Wow, I didn\u2019t know much about Janis, I\nwasn\u2019t a fan before \u2013 and now I am.\u2019 In that 45 minutes I can give audiences as\nmuch information as possible about her. You\u2019ll hear the hits, but it threads\ntogether \u2013 and that comes with time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Tribute to Janis Joplin & Jimi Hendrix will take\nplace Wednesday, August 14, at Town Park as part of Aurora\u2019s Concerts in the\nPark Summer Series. Concerts run each Wednesday through August from 7 \u2013 9 p.m.\nAdmission is free, but donations to the Aurora Food Pantry are encouraged. For\nmore information on this and future shows, visit aurora.ca\/summerconcerts. <\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in the 80s, Krista Blondin didn\u2019t have much time for contemporary music. Instead, she gravitated towards the tunes of the swinging sixties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6lO","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 11:13:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}