Escarpment Blues is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 concert and documentary film starring singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer

Sarah Harmer

Sarah Harmer is a Canadian singer-songwriter and activist.-Biography:Born and raised in Burlington, Ontario, Harmer gained her first exposure to the musician's lifestyle as a teenager, when her older sister Mary started taking her to concerts by the well-known Tragically Hip. At the age of 17, she...

. Directed by Andy Keen

Andy Keen

Andrew "Andy" John David Keen is a Canadian documentary filmmaker. In addition to making the Juno Award-winning Escarpment Blues, Keen made the Gemini Award-nominated documentary Seven Painters Seven Places and Know Your Mushrooms , directed by Ron Mann, on which he was director of photography...

 and produced by Keen, Harmer and Patrick Sambrook, it was released theatrically in 2005 and on DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 in 2006.

In June 2005, Harmer launched a tour, called I Love the Escarpment, across southern Ontario to promote Protecting Escarpment Rural Land (PERL), a conservation group she cofounded to battle a proposed quarry

Quarry

A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. Quarries are generally used for extracting building materials, such as dimension stone, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, and gravel. They are often collocated with concrete and asphalt plants due to the requirement...

 development on the Niagara Escarpment

Niagara Escarpment

The Niagara Escarpment is a long escarpment, or cuesta, in the United States and Canada that runs westward from New York State, through Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois...

 near her hometown of Burlington

Burlington, Ontario

Burlington , is a city located in Halton Region at the western end of Lake Ontario. Burlington is part of the Greater Toronto Area, and is also included in the Hamilton Census Metropolitan Area. Physically, Burlington lies between the north shore of Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment...

. Harmer toured communities near the escarpment, both performing and speaking about the PERL campaign. The film documents both her live performances and her activist work from the tour, and takes its name from "Escarpment Blues", a song from her 2005 album I'm a Mountain

I'm a Mountain

Music critic Marisa Brown, writing for Allmusic noted the traditional tone of I'm a Mountain and wrote: "The musicianship on the entire album is fantastic, especially the guitar, which ranges in style from Lynyrd Skynyrd-type riffs to bluegrass fingerpicking with a classical bent...

.

Poet Tanis Rideout

Tanis Rideout

Tanis Rideout is a Toronto based writer and photographer.Born in Belgium, Rideout grew up in Bermuda and Canada, particularly Kingston, Ontario where she became involved with the thriving music scene. Rideout has often been referred to as the "Poet Laureate of CanRock."She has performed on CBC...

 also participated in the PERL tour and appears in the film.

Escarpment Blues won the award for Best Music DVD at the 2007 Juno Awards.