Meryn Cadell
Encyclopedia
Meryn Cadell 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...

 writer and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

ist. He is an assistant professor of song lyrics and libretto writing in the Creative Writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

 Program at University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...

.

Cadell is a transsexual man
Trans man
A trans man, transman, trans guy, or FTM is a transgender or transsexual man: a person who was assigned female at birth, but who identifies as male....

 who transitioned in 2003. He released most of his recordings between 1988 and 1997.

A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, Cadell re-released an independent cassette titled Mare-In Ka-Dell in 1988 while active as a performance artist in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

's Queen Street West
Queen Street West
Queen Street West describes both the western branch of Queen Street, a major east-west thoroughfare, and a series of neighbourhoods or commercial districts, situated west of Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Queen Street begins in the west at the intersection of King Street, The...

 scene. As a performance artist, Cadell was particularly known for performing with a heating duct to add reverb.

Cadell soon signed to Intrepid Records
Intrepid Records (Canada)
Intrepid Records was a Canadian independent record label in the late 1980s and early 1990s. People associated with the label included founder Stuart Ravenhill and A&R rep Graham Stairs....

, and recorded with Jim Creeggan
Jim Creeggan
James Raymond Creeggan, better known as Jim Creeggan , is the bassist for Canadian band Barenaked Ladies...

 of Barenaked Ladies
Barenaked Ladies
Barenaked Ladies is a Canadian alternative rock band. The band is currently composed of Jim Creeggan, Kevin Hearn, Ed Robertson, and Tyler Stewart. Barenaked Ladies formed in 1988 in Scarborough, Ontario, then a suburban municipality outside the City of Toronto...

, Bob Wiseman
Bob Wiseman
Bob Wiseman is a Juno winning Canadian musician, filmmaker, singer-songwriter, and actor. Wiseman was an original member of Blue Rodeo.-Career:Wiseman was raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He studied piano at York University...

 of Blue Rodeo
Blue Rodeo
Blue Rodeo is a Canadian pop and country rock band, which was formed in 1984 in Toronto, Ontario. They have been signed with Warner Music Group since their debut album Outskirts in March 1987...

 and members of Rheostatics
Rheostatics
Rheostatics was a Genie Award-winning Canadian indie rock band, active from 1980 to 2007.Although they had only one Top 40 hit, "Claire" in 1995, they were simultaneously one of Canada's most influential and unconventional rock bands, a band whose eclectic take on pop and rock music has been...

. Those sessions were released in 1991 as the album Angel Food for Thought, whose first single "The Sweater" became a surprise Top 40 hit in Canada in 1992. "The Sweater" is a spoken word monologue, with a musical backing track—the first 20 seconds of Syd Dale's "Walk & Talk"—revolving around a girl's thoughts about a boy's sweater.

In 1993, Cadell released a follow-up album, Bombazine, on Sire Records
Sire Records
Sire Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:The label was founded in 1966 as Sire Productions by Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer, each investing ten thousand dollars into the new company. Its early releases as a...

. This album featured guest appearances by Rheostatics, Ben Mink
Ben Mink
Ben Mink is a Canadian songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer.Born of Polish parents, Mink was raised in Toronto Ontario. He got his start performing with the rock/country group Mary-Lou Horner, which became the house band at bar and nightclub....

, Tyler Stewart
Tyler Stewart
Tyler Joseph Stewart is the drummer for the Canadian music group Barenaked Ladies. He was the last of the original five Barenaked Ladies to join the band.-Role in Barenaked Ladies:...

, Anne Bourne and John Alcorn. Following the album, Cadell took a hiatus from music to do human rights work with PEN Canada
PEN Canada
PEN Canada is one of the 144 centres of International PEN. Founded in 1926, it has a membership of over 1,000 writers and supporters who campaign on behalf of writers around the world who are persecuted, imprisoned and exiled for exercising their right to freedom of expression.Since its founding,...

. Cadell also wrote an independent film, which was never produced.

In 1997, Cadell returned to music with the album 6 Blocks on the independent label Handsome Boy Records
Handsome Boy Records
Handsome Boy Records was a Canadian independent record label in the 1990s. Handsome Boy was distributed by BMG Music in Canada and did deals with other labels internationally including Atlantic Records....

.
Guest performers on this outing included Anne Bourne, Mary Margaret O'Hara
Mary Margaret O'Hara
Mary Margaret O'Hara is a Canadian singer-songwriter and actress, who has been hailed as one of the greatest cult heroines in rock music despite having released very few of her own recordings. She is best known for the critically acclaimed album Miss America, released in 1988.-Early stages:O'Hara...

, Chris Wardman
Chris Wardman
Chris Wardman is a Canadian music producer, musician and songwriter. Wardman was a founding member of Blue Peter, and was their lead guitarist and main contributing songwriter. Wardman was also a member of Breeding Ground in the late 1980s. Wardman has been actively producing albums for many...

 and Jason Sniderman
Jason Sniderman
Jason Sniderman is a Canadian musician and businessman. He was one of the chief executives of Sam the Record Man, which was established by his father, Sam Sniderman.-Music career:...

 (Blue Peter
Blue Peter (band)
Blue Peter was a Canadian new wave synthpop founded in 1978 in Markham, Ontario by Chris Wardman and Paul Humphrey. In their heyday, Blue Peter opened for major international acts such as The Police and Simple Minds...

), Paul Brennan (Odds
Odds (band)
Odds are a Canadian alternative rock band. The band's power pop style has been frequently compared to that of contemporaries such as Squeeze, Elvis Costello, Weezer, Tom Petty, Sloan, The Clash, XTC, Franz Ferdinand, and The Tubes.-Odds :...

) and Martin Tielli
Martin Tielli
Martin Tielli is a Canadian singer-songwriter. He was a member of the Rheostatics, and has also released material as a solo artist and with the side project Nick Buzz. As well, he has appeared as a guest musician on albums by Barenaked Ladies, Kevin Hearn, The Waltons, Jane Siberry, Ashley...

.

Following that album, Cadell retired from the music business. He publicly came out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....

 as transgender on Bill Richardson
Bill Richardson (radio)
Bill Richardson is a Canadian radio broadcaster and author.Richardson received his B.A. from the University of Winnipeg in 1976...

's CBC Radio One
CBC Radio One
CBC Radio One is the English language news and information radio network of the publicly-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It is commercial free and offers both local and national programming...

 program Bunny Watson
Bunny Watson
Bunny Watson was a Canadian radio program, which aired Saturday evenings on CBC Radio One and Sunday evenings on CBC Radio Two.Named for Katharine Hepburn's librarian character in the movie Desk Set, the show was hosted by Bill Richardson and was produced by Jennifer Van Evra and Tod Elvidge in...

on October 2, 2004, although he had already been out to friends and family for a number of years.

In 2007, Bongo Beat released an expanded edition of Angel Food for Thought, including two tracks that were previously available only on cassette as well as the video for "The Sweater". The CD was remastered by Graemme Brown.

Discography

  • MARE-in ka-DELL (1988)
  • Angel Food for Thought (1991)
  • "Barbie" (1992)
  • Bombazine (1993)
  • 6 Blocks (1997)
  • Angel Food for Thought [bonus tracks] (2007)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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