Laura Power
Northern News Services
Monday, July 2, 2007

IQALUIT - With hundreds of artists in the city last week, a couple of acts grabbed the most attention.

The White Stripes, whose new album Icky Thump is currently number one in the U.K., played to an arena of enthusiastic fans on June 27.

But Lucie Idlout's band, which opened up the show, was also a winner with the crowd. Idlout said it was one of the highlights of her career as a musician.

"For the first time in my life, I was privy to the Elvis or the Beatles scream - I've never heard anything like that in my life and it was pretty fantastic," she said.

She estimated the crowd to be between 400 and 600 strong.

"From where we were standing, it looked like sea of people."

Idlout said she felt wracked by nerves before the show, and she couldn't tell if it was because she was about to open for the White Stripes or because she was about to play at home. She said the hometown audience was great.

"It was such an awesome audience. They were right there with us all the way," she said.

One special audience member was her mother.

At one point in her set she invited her mother, Leah Idlout-Paulson, to come up to the front so she could play a song she wrote for her.

The song, E5-770 - My Mother's Name, was written about the number the Canadian government issued to her mother.

"I got everybody out of the way. I basically asked my ma to show herself and so she raised her hand," she said. "It was really sweet. It was really something because there was a barrier between the audience and the stage... she just leaned right up against that barrier and took it all in."

Idlout said the crowd said the crowd went nuts during that moment.

She said it was a special moment between herself and her mother, who had only seen her play a handful of times as Idlout performs most often in the South.

Following her band's performance, the White Stripes made history by being one of the first international rock groups to play Iqaluit at the peak of their career.

"I think it just speaks to their nature," said Idlout of the duo. "Just them playing in the north, period, wouldn't have been a financial move on their part. It was pretty much a gift for us to be able to have them in town, and then more specifically for my band."