In the winter of 2010, having moved to Toronto after a year of living and working in a funeral home, Ada Dahli found herself living with an assortment of drifters and artists. It was here, during a thunderstorm that knocked out all the power, that someone asked the mistress of dirges to play her own tunes. So she did. What came out was a 13-ton voice, heady and smooth, that seemed to come from another time entirely.
Hailing from South Western Ontario, land of cornfields and Uncle Tom’s cabin, Ada has spent most of the last five years driving for the recently departed and distilling her days down into a song. It was while living in the funeral parlor that Ada began to write and play music as a way to stave off isolation and the monotony of suburbia, as a way to confront and mingle with solitude.
Supported by a growing community of Toronto artists known as Fedora Upside Down, Ada began to play regularly around the city at such established venues as the Cameron House, The Cadillac Lounge, and the Gladstone Hotel. She quickly acquired a rousing group of musicians she soon christened the Pallbearers and began writing and rehearsing a whole slew of songs that poured out of her like a geyser. With the help of sometimes co-writer Marlon Chaplin (Broken Bricks, Freeman Dre & the Kitchen Party), she continues to explore new musical terrain in her ever-expanding universe of song.
Falling seamlessly into the Americana folk-noir genre, Ada Dahli’s vocals are the crowning feature of her performance – singing with more dynamics, emotion, and intensity than just about anyone you’ve ever heard. Ada Dahlia’s debut album, Tangents, is available no