Iskwē & Tom Wilson Re-Release Blue Moon Drive

Two of Canada’s most interesting Juno winners have teamed up on a re-release of Lee Harvey Osmand’s Blue Moon Drive. iskwē and Tom Wilson are re-releasing Wilson’s track Blue Moon Drive – published twice before, once under his name and once under Wilson’s moniker Lee Harvey Osmand. Now the song is being released by the two artists as a duet-style collaboration. The new version of the track includes horns by Chuck Copenace and is available on all major streaming platforms right now.

Waseskwan Iskwē, musically known as iskwē, is an Indigenous singer-songwriter and activist of Cree, Dené, and Irish heritage. The artist has received multiple Juno nominations and a win in 2020 for her video Little Star. The same video received a nomination for the best Canadian Independent Music Video in the 2019 Canadian Independent Music Video Awards. iskwē was also longlisted for the Polaris Music Prize for her second album The Fight Within. Now, iskwē has teamed up with fellow Juno winner and Canadian music staple Tom Wilson for a re-release of Wilson’s track Blue Moon Drive.

Originally from Winnipeg Manitoba, iskwē has lived all over the place, in cities like Los Angelis, New York, and Toronto, eventually settling in Hamelton, Ontario. Her debut single “Nobody Knows,” produced by Juno Award nominees The Darcys and featured in the Netflix series Between, turned a spotlight on the more than 1200 missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.

Willson is a veteran of the Canadian music scene in his own right. From Hamilton, Ontario, he has been a writer and Canadian music staple performer for several years and has one of the most incredible personal stories I’ve ever heard. While in his 50s, Wilson learned that his parents, the parents who raised him were not his birth parents; that he was adopted and that his biological mother and father were Mohawk from the Kahnawake Reserve, just outside of Montreal. Grappling with this newfound sense of himself plunged Wilson into a quest for his heritage and his truth, and led to the writing of his bestselling autobiography, Beautiful Scars and presumably, the album by the same name.

Wilson had this to say about the book in a statement “It is a story of finding your way home,” he says. “It’s a story of adoption, of growing up thinking you’re a big, sweaty, Irish guy, and finding out at the age of 53 that you’re a Mohawk.”

That’s got to be one hell of a head-f**k.

The song Blue Moon Drive is one of those songs that you expect to see in an independent movie as you watch a hard-drinking, emotionally-unsettled (maybe-French?) private eye walking down a rainy street, trying to piece together the last clues of a long-cold case. It’s a great song to listen to in the rain or if you’re feeling down and not particularly interested in feeling better, which is sometimes, just how all of us want to feel.

Blue Moon Drive has been released by Wilson twice before, once under his name in 2018 and before that under his moniker Lee Harvey Osmond back in 2015. 

This version of the track is by far the most interesting version of the song if only because of the layers this version includes. Wilson’s mysterious and gritty vocal style pairs up perfectly with the horn on the track, provided by Chuck Copenace as well as iskwē’s vocals. Not that the track wasn’t great before, both the previous versions have their flavour. If nothing else it’s interesting to see how one artist treats a song three different ways. 

The newest version of Blue Moon Drive song is out now on Red Music Rising, an Indigenous-owned and operated music company based in Toronto. 

Blue Moon Drive is available in all the places you get your music. 

For more information on iskwē visit: https://iskwe.com

For more information on Tom Wison visit: https://tomwilsononline.com