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Making Pacific Spirit-inspired kids album no walk in the park

Ginalina’s Juno-nominated Forest Friends’ Nature Club Album was a family affair
Gina Lam, a.k.a. Ginalina,
Gina Lam, a.k.a. Ginalina, earned a Juno nomination for Children’s Album of the Year. The collection of “family folk music” was inspired by her weekly walks and nature lessons with her four children in Pacific Spirit Regional Park. Photo Dan Toulgoet

Gina Lam was grocery shopping with her eldest daughter when the text came in. “Dude! Congrats on the Jun’ Nom!” In her shock and excitement, she upset a crate of oranges, startling her seven-year-old daughter.

“It was just in the middle of my daily life. And my daughter, she’s never seen me so surprised,” said Lam, laughing at the memory. “[She] probably had no clue what was going on.”

It was a fitting way for Lam to learn of her first ever Juno nomination for Children’s Album of the Year. After all, everyday life with her kids is the reason the album exists.

Forest Friends’ Nature Club Album, Lam’s second collection of “family folk music” under her stage name Ginalina, was self-released in June 2015 and inspired by her weekly walks and nature lessons with her four children in Pacific Spirit Regional Park.

For example, one day the group came across a robin limping through the brush. As the kids discussed what may have happened to the bird and brainstormed creative ways to help it, a song was born and nine months later “Hey Robin” began streaming online on CBC Kids Radio.

Like her previous work, Lam said Forest Friends’ documents a period in her family’s life.

“Some people take photos, some people write stories, but I like to write songs,” she said. “Whatever children I have at the time make it onto the album and that’s very important to me.”

Lam describes the album as a family project with a “very mom-and-pop-shop feel.” Her husband and children perform on it, as does her co-producer Adam Thomas (who is also nominated for a Juno this year as part of the Dan Brubeck Quartet), her childhood friend Mike

LeGrice (who voiced the Douglas Fir on “Parts of a Tree”) and her “musical hero” Noah Zacharin (“There is Time”). Her best friend Lucy-Anne Ho did all the art work for the project, and the album’s title comes from the name her kids chose for their Wednesday outings to the forest.

Despite the help, Forest Friends’ took nearly a year to complete as she juggled recording, her job as an adult educator with Vancouver Coast Health and her family responsibilities. The only time to work on the album, she said, was after putting her kids to bed, so most nights Lam would drive across town to Thomas’s house and log a couple of hours before turning in herself.

The duo kept up that schedule for nine months (excluding a six-week interlude to welcome Thomas’s third child) and their effort is paying off. On top of the Juno nod and play on CBC Kids Radio, the album earned her a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for Children’s Album of the Year and she has five music videos debuting in June on the Knowledge Network’s children’s website and television programing.

However, she said the Juno nomination has been an “extremely reflective” experience that’s prompted her to re-examine her life, her career and the best ways to balance both.

“The heightened levels of attention, of recognition, are new to me so it’s kind of propelling me from my quiet little life,” said Lam. “It’s been a really helpful exercise to reground myself and revisit my values and this idyllic vision I had before of having my grandkids hold my albums in their hands and say ‘Wow, momma was cool!’”

The bright side of all that attention, she says, is the opportunity to give back and support causes she’s passionate about. In keeping with the project’s theme, she donates 10 per cent of all her sales to A Rocha Canada, a Christian environmental stewardship organization, so they can plant trees for other families to one day enjoy.

For Lam, the most important thing is being happy with the music she creates and sharing it with others.

“Juno win or not, [the] fact that I’ve been able to create this memory and share our memory to hopefully be heard by other kids is more valuable than the trophy itself,” she said.

The 2016 Juno Awards take place April 3 in Calgary. Lam will be attending the ceremony with her family as well as playing the sold-out Junior Junos concert on April 2 at the Calgary Public Library’s John Dutton Theatre.

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