A Voice as Sweet as Honey


By Olena Wawryshyn

The first song on Suzie Vinnick’s latest CD is called “Something So Sweet.”  “Sweet” is a good word to describe both the personality and voice of the Toronto-based, award-winning singer and songwriter.
Only a day after Vinnick got back from a semi-working holiday in Ireland, and no doubt still suffering from jet-lag, she drove to the New Pathway office to drop off a copy of her latest CD 33 Stars, so that I’d be able to hear it before our telephone interview the next day.
Few entertainers of her stature would be so considerate. Perhaps it is her small-town upbringing that has kept the Saskatoon-born Vinnick so down-to-earth.  
The 30-something singer has earned numerous prestigious accolades. She won first place in the Blues Category of the International Songwriting Contest place for “The Honey I Want,” a song she co-wrote with friends.  In 2003, Vinnick garnered the 2003 Maple Blues Female Vocalist of the Year Award. Winning the award has “opened doors” says Vinnick, and “helped me sell to more festivals.”
One of the festivals she appeared at this summer was the Bloor West Village Ukrainian Festival, which took place last weekend. Vinnick will also be singing at the Harbourfront Centre’s Ukrainian Zabava Festival, which takes place this Labour Day weekend.
Beyond the festivals, Vinnick’s successful music career has seen her featured nationally on CBC Radio on Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe program and on Sounds Like Canada. She has shared a stage with some of Rock’s biggest names, Bryan Adams among them; opened shows for major singers, including Colin James; and collaborated with some of the best professionals in the industry. Danny Greenspoon, who worked with well-known Canadian band Great Big Sea, produced 33 Stars.
Vinnick has a captivating sound: strong, soulful, sweet, but never saccharine.  Access magazine has said she has “a voice of spun gold and honey.”
The songs she sings on 33 Stars are mellow and bluesy with folk and pop influences. Some have a definite country twang, most noticeable in the tune “I Need A Cowboy,” which Vinnick used to sing with her late father.
“My dad loved to sing but had stage-fright, and so he never pursued his love for it, but he would sing in church and in the house,” says Vinnick. Mom always had music on.”
Vinnick jokes that part of the reason she got into music was because she “couldn’t Ukrainian-dance very well,” and so she and her friends decided to form a band.
At age nine, Vinnick started taking guitar lessons and “took to it like a fish to water.”  At school she played in the Lions band and, in her teens, started performing at afternoon jam sessions at Buds on Broadway, a Saskatoon restaurant by day that doubled as a blues bar at night. There, she got inspired by the many bands she heard.
At age 21, Vinnick moved to Ottawa and started singing with musician Tony D., then moved to Toronto where she focused on her own career and released her debut CD Angel in the Sidelines.
The release of her second CD, 33 Stars in 2002, came after a bleak period in her life. She dedicated the CD to the memories of her “Baba, Sophia Gajdycz,” her parents Paul and Flo Vinnick, as well as a close friend who all sadly passed away around the same time.
Though Vinnick says she didn’t communicate as much as she’d like to with her Baba, who “was always a bit annoyed that we  (Vinnick and her brother and sister) didn’t speak Ukrainian,” she nevertheless talks about her with a great deal of admiration.
“Baba, came from Ukraine in her mid-20s” as a single woman “and met my grandfather George Vinnick, who passed away when dad was two.  She was an amazing, tough woman,” says Vinnick.
On her mother’s side, Vinnick’s grandfather came to Canada from Ukraine as part of the first wave of immigration. They were pioneers who “farmed in Saskatchewan near Yorktown. They are still farming the land today,” she adds.
Growing up in Saskatoon, Vinnick attended a year of Ukrainian culture classes at St. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church, where she learned about Ukrainian traditions and arts and crafts, including pysanky-making.  “There was the language aspect of it and from that class and one short Ukrainian class in university, I can read the alphabet,” she says. Vinnick also sang in the choir as part of the Church’s culture program, though they sang mostly English songs, along with a few Ukrainian Christmas carols.
Years later, in Toronto, Ukrainian carols led to Vinnick’s reacquaintance with her Ukrainian roots.  She was asked to sing a couple of carols on Ukrainian Christmas on Toronto’s CFRB Radio where her cousin Christina Cherneskey is a talk-show host. She and Cherneskey sang together “and that’s how the doors have opened for me for getting a chance to embrace the music and a bit of the language, which was always a quiet passion for me over the years,” says Vinnick.
After their radio appearance, a Bloor West Village Ukrainian Festival organizer contacted her and asked if they’d sing at the annual Toronto summer event. The first year, “the big job was to find material,” says Vinnick. She and Cherneskey chose two songs to learn. "It’s a challenge as it’s not my native tongue but there was one song, “Oy u hayu pryj dunayu,” that I was very familiar with musically.” They mastered that song, and every year since then, they’ve learned a couple more. Cherneskey’s mom helps out with the lyrics. “I’ll ask her what it means and she’ll translate it for us.”
Vinnick, who keeps busy by playing regularly with about a half a dozen music groups, including Betty and the Bobs and the Marigolds, is now so enthusiastic about Ukrainian music that she hopes one day to put out a CD of Ukrainian songs: “Once I get a bit more material together, and doing a blues album is a big priority.”
At the Zabava festival Vinnick will be taking the stage with Cherneskey, again, who will be singing back-up vocals. They’ll be joined by local singer and accordionist Steve Didunyk. “It’s a labour of love for the three of us, because we love the traditional songs.  It’s a newer thing for me – both Chris and Steve grew up singing these songs. It’s sweet for us all to get to sing those songs together and embrace that part of our heritage and culture.”
Vinnick will be appearing at the Ukrainian Zabava festival at Harbourfront Centre on Friday, September 2 at 8:00 p.m. For more information on the festival visit the website at:www.harbourfrontcentre.com