Daron Letts
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Aug 08/05) - In between performances at NWT festivals, Vancouver coffee houses and Edmonton bars, Fort Simpson musician Randy Sibbeston will head into the studio to record an album this fall.

"I've done very little to cultivate a music career so this year is pivotal for me," he said.

He'll select 20 songs from his repertoire of nearly 100 original tunes and record them at CBC studios, thanks to an NWT Arts Council grant.

The best dozen of those tracks will make it onto his album, which he plans to complete by winter.

"It's pretty tough to choose," he said. "But if there's material that's not so strong, I just leave it for the wolves."

Sibbeston has been writing music and poetry since he was 16 years old.

Songs like Special Friend, Where You Stand and Rockin' Through the Rockies represent early material written in Fort Simpson that still makes his set list.

"Music for me was an emotional tool to survive adolescence," he said. "It helped me deal with all the things I thought were wrong with society."

Sibbeston trained in visual arts at the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver and studied voice for a year at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood.

He learned carpentry from his uncle.

He built his house in Fort Simpson and this summer he's working on a log house for his brother-in-law.

He also designs and constructs pontoon boats and molds snowmobile toboggans out of polyethylene.

He designed a 16' jet boat that he plans to make next year.

Carpenter, painter, sculptor, author

This summer he was contracted to erect a 20' high sound stage on the Yellowknife River for the Assembly of First Nations conference in the capital. The self-described "hobby engineer" completed a covered stage, tapered to project sound, in five days.

He also paints in water colour and oil. He has been commissioned to paint portraits of speakers of the legislative assembly.

He carves marble, chlorite and granite, as well, and produced a 7' tall sculpture titled "Freedom of Family" now on display in Iqaluit.

This summer he's preparing a proposal for monumental sculptures for the legislative grounds.

In addition to writing and performing music, building houses, designing boats and sculpting stone, Sibbeston is chipping away at his first novel. It will be a post-apocalyptic, science-fiction story set in the Deh Cho.

It describes an era of peace following the collapse of western civilization, when Northerners reconnect with their spiritual roots.

"I want to hunker down with a big pile of firewood and finish it this winter," he said.

"I want to make it into a movie, but one thing at a time, eh?"