The Be Good Tanyas play an old-timey blend of folk, country, and blues bolstered by sweet harmonies and traditional fingerpicking. The Vancouver trio has garnered comparisons to like-minded predecessors such as Gillian Welch and Iris DeMent. The group came together when Samantha Parton, who had spent her post-high school years traveling with her guitar (drawing strong musical influence from visits to the Southern U.S.), returned to Vancouver. She and Jolie Holland initially formed the group, then added Frazey Ford and Trish Klein, who Parton had met while planting trees in Nelson, British Columbia. (Ford and Winnipeg native Klein had met at Selkirk Music School in Nelson.) The musicians played together for the first time in 1999, busking outside the Lilith Fair venue in Vancouver. They soon moved on to local thrift store and coffee shop gigs. Holland left the group, and the remaining trio was soon touring Canada and released their debut album, Blue Horse, in 2001. Two years later, the ladies returned with the lighthearted sophomore effort Chinatown, while Hello Love, which included covers of Neil Young, Mississippi John Hurt, and even Prince, came out in 2006. ~ Erik Hage, All Music Guide
The Be Good Tanyas are a Canadian traditional music group, whose influences include folk, country, and bluegrass. The style of music they perform can be referred to as alt-country or Americana.
Formed in Vancouver, British Columbia, The Be Good Tanyas first played together at tree planting camps in the Kootenays region of British Columbia. They eventually played their first concerts in Vancouver in the late 1990s.
In 2000 they embarked on a North American tour that ran from Vancouver to New Orleans, before returning to British Columbia to record their first album Blue Horse with producer Garth Futcher. The record, which combines old-time music standards such as "Oh! Susanna", "The Cuckoo" and "The Lakes of Pontchartrain" with self-penned songs like "The Littlest Birds", was well received in the folk-roots movement and highly praised[citation needed] for the quality of the harmony vocals and the mixture of the new and the traditional in the instrumentation. Helped by the popularity of Americana at the time of its release, it achieved a modest amount of crossover success in college radio,[citation needed] and was featured in a television commercial for Zellers department stores.
The second album, Chinatown, followed in 2003. Their third album, Hello Love, was released on October 10, 2006.
The Tanyas gained some U.S. exposure when the Showtime series The L Word selected one of their songs, "In Spite of All the Damage", for inclusion in the series' soundtrack. A live version of "In My Time of Dying" was also included in the third episode of the third season, in which Frazey Ford featured as a nun and played the song in the opening sequence. The band's music has also been included in the Showtime series Weeds and the CTV series The Eleventh Hour in a similar role, and in the feature film Because of Winn-Dixie. Their cover of Townes Van Zandt's "Waiting Around To Die" was also used in an episode of AMC's Breaking Bad.
After the release of the first two Be Good Tanyas albums, Trish Klein collaborated with Alison Russell under the band name Po' Girl, a project that as of April 2007 has resulted in three albums: Po'girl, Vagabond Lullabies, and Home to You.
2007 saw all members of the band pursuing their own projects.[1]
As of 2008, the band was on hiatus - to unwind from the stresses of touring, and to allow the members to refocus their lives.[2]
