Press

"Squint so the world goes a little blurry and you’d be forgiven for mistaking Belle Plaine’s vocal performance for something out of the ‘60s jazz scene."  The Coast, Halifax

Awarded Emerging Artist distinction at Mayor's Arts & Business Awards in Regina: Leader Post, City of Regina.

Preview in prairie dog magazine - Don’t expect an evening filled with saccharine candy hearts, kissing booths and cupids, says Hankewich.

"I am quite cynical about Valentine’s Day," says the singer. "I want to provide a place where the dejected, the sad and the lonely can go to have fun."

 
Preview in Leader-Post - On Feb. 14, Belle Plaine & The Unrequited Love will be playing the Artesian. She has been “rehearsing the bejeezus out of the band,” and promises songs about being forlorn and rejected and lonely and broken-hearted, but a fun night regardless.

“It will be a classy affair about heartache."

Preview on Sound Salvation Army blog - Regardless of your marital status Hankewich and her band are a dynamic and delightful group of performers. Her predilection for telling stories during her sets showcases a great sense of humour and self-deprecation and I can only imagine this particular event will provide bountiful opportunities for chuckle-inducing tales. Oh, and then there’s the part where Hankewich is an incredibly-talented singer and songwriter and one of Regina’s strongest musical products at present. Add to that the fact that she’s recording the show for a live album and you’ve got a chance to literally be a part of recorded history and it all adds up to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Preview in Prairie Post - Besides the tour and guest appearances at festivals, Hankewich travelled to Los Angeles as part of a SaskMusic tour. According to the SaskMusic website, the organization was going to  “present entertainment at the Canadian Consulate on Dec. 12 for a private reception for 80 guests that (included) individuals from the entertainment Industry.”

December 2013 - Newstory about Buy the Book on Global Regina - ...Buy The Book on 13th Ave. in Regina’s Cathedral district has something for everyone.

“We’ve seen generations come through this door,” said Chris Prpich, who, along with his father Greg (or Coach, as he’s known) has run the store for 18 years."

There won’t be another generation, however. Buy The Book is set to close at the end of January, to the disappointment of longtime customers.

“This is where I come to bring my new material,” she said, affectionately calling her practice space since 2010 a “bunker.”

November 2013 - Preview in Prince Albert Daily Herald - In Prince Albert, not only will Plaine have her regular band playing with her -- her bass player Elizabeth Curry and “musical Swiss Army knife” Jeremy Sauer -- she will also be collaborating with Anna Rose.

Voted Best Solo Act by prairie dog readers.

"A steady fixture in the Regina Folk Festival lineup and a bud to many of the city’s jazziest acts (e.g. The Lazy MKs), Ms. Plaine makes it, ahem, plain that she’s a musical force to be reckoned with. Her musical versatility, talent, stage charisma and chutzpah (girl tours and plays a lot!) makes her one hard-working artist — and one who deserves all the Best of Regina love our readers have shown her.

November 2012 - Preview in Planet S - ...Notes From A Waitress (her debut full-length effort), has been given a resounding thumbs-up from fans across the country as well. Featuring songs that range in style from jazz to country, Hankewich has managed to capture a sound that has its heart firmly rooted in the prairie fields and small towns where she grew up."

October 2012 - Voted Best Singer and Best Local Album Released in the Last 12 Months by prairie dog readers.  Jeremy Sauer voted Best Keyboardist.   "I know you, Regina. You’ve been trying to play it cool, but I can tell you have a full-on crush on this album. Who could blame you? Since Notes From A Waitress came out in January, it has been a favourite on both CBC Saskatchewan and CJTR. And the rest of us have had it on high rotation in our homes and cars for months now. One listen is all you’ll need to know why: lyrically, it’s smart and funny, sad and soulful. Musically, it’s swingy, good humoured, a little salty, with just enough sultry to keep you riveted to your speakers."

Aug. 29, 2012 - Banff Crag and Canyon - "Though raised with music and classically trained, it was a journey full of wrong-turns, lost love and new beginnings that brought Belle Plaine - real name Melanie Hankewich - to her musical career as one of Regina's most popular jazz singers and a rising Canadian star."

Aug. 29, 2012 - Red Deer Express - "Her original tunes are striking, as are her interpretations of jazz standards such as Fever and Bye Bye Blackbird. She’s also proven herself a master with folk and country classics like Dylan’s I Shall Be Released and Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys." Aug. 24, 2012 - Calgary Herald - "She knows what she's doing, with an effortless, versatile style that can sound both girlish and husky in the same song. 'People tell me I sing jazz with a country flavour and country with jazz phrasing.'"

August 22, 2012 - Prairie Post - "Whether it’s the haunting story told in the exquisitely dark Vegas to the snappy, uptempo and coy Sweet Tart, Hankewich has her sound down pat. It’s effortless and has a range in which she can do both types of songs effectively. Dusky for the low key songs to jazzy numbers like To the Best of Our Memories or Old Love which are reminiscent of days gone by. An intimate setting is definitely to her advantage so as to play where true music lovers can appreciate her songwriting and her voice. She knows it and is very aware of what the audience is feeling. “We try to listen to the audience’s reaction,” said the singer. “If they listened and got a little joke in the song and they smile or laugh, you think, ‘ahh, they’re very sharp tonight’ when a song is over.”"

Aug. 16, 2012 - Preview in Edmonton Journal - "Waikiki and Las Vegas also show up in her collection of musical travel memoirs, most with an effective backing band of friends and MacEwan University alumni caught last year at Doug Organ’s Edmontone Studio. (…) The jazzier tunes on Notes From A Waitress – some co-written with pianist Jeremy Sauer – reflect a greater musical maturity with an organic, slice-of-life quality."

Aug. 15, 2012 - Preview in Edmonton's VueWeekly. - "Rising from the Saskatchewan prairies is a jazz-fueled, soulful voice able to silence the noisiest of crowds."

May 24, 2012 - Preview in the Leader-Post - "Performing at one of the keynote events for this week's Cathedral Village Arts Festival, Regina singer/songwriter Belle Plaine will be a familiar face by the end of the evening for those attending The Brawlers' Ball on Saturday night at The Artesian."

Note: This article, written by Jon Thompson of the Kenora Daily Miner and News on May 31, 2012, is by far the most perceptive and well-written story to date about Belle Plaine. Enjoy reading the care he put into this piece. We reproduce it below in its entirety. "Waiting on tables and her next cigarette break, Belle Plaine surveys her frozen dreams through the diner window. Her blue collar jazz has been on its feet all day. Notes From A Waitress, the sophomore album from Regina's best singer in 2010 and 2011, Melanie Hankewich, scats and swoons through the reflective moments of a stalled and fleeting life. In the mirror, she can see what the neon lights are doing to her. She's smarter than her job demands and it's taking up all her time. From Los Angeles to Las Vegas, as it goes in every small town, Hankewich's stage name, Belle Plaine captures the frustrated displacement when life falls short. The theme peppered through the album is authentic. For three years after finishing a post-secondary jazz program, Hankewich was living in musician's purgatory, waiting tables and going back to school in substitute for living the dream. "A lot of those songs are a reflection of feeling like I wasn't in my place and fueled a lot of my writing," she said. "You're aging and your dreams are drifting. It's true. I wasn't doing what I wanted, which was to be performing these songs. I don't know if I was particularly unhappy when I was writing these songs but I wasn't feeling like I had roots. I was searching for something." When she took the leap of faith onto the stage, she found it. Financially, her first album was hotwired but the strength of her poetry and songwriting set up the confidence that exudes from Notes From A Waitress. Hankewich wrote the skeleton chord structures with the vocal meter of a trained professional. She approached pianist, Jeremy Sauer to help her arrange her sound's 1920s throwback backdrop. Over a game of cribbage, the pair agreed to call in their old friends from college and they sweated out vivid scenery in the jam. The snapshot the album delivers is the life she left behind when she dove into the dream so while writing is taking a new flavour, she's still looking to the prairie horizon, uncertain where the road goes. "My life has changed a lot in the past couple of years in that I've started doing music full time so that fulfillment is there. I went through a huge change when both my parents died and that changes your perspective on life but it changed what I wanted to be saying to people. I don't know what I've arrived at." Belle Plaine will play the Lake of the Woods Hotel on Monday, June 4.

May 2012 - Pink Magazine - "Sitting in a coffee house in Downtown Regina, looking at a crossword puzzle, Melanie Hankewich asks in a quiet voice, 'What's a five letter word for a German law official?' It's hard to imagine it as the same voice behind the music: better known by her stage name, Belle Plaine, she's just released her second album, Notes From A Waitress. As the interview begins, the two personalities, performing artist and quiet intellectual, come together. Before the first cup of coffee is poured, Hankewich begins to share the story of her career's evolution."

REVIEW! Feb. 23, 2012 - Gray Owl Point - "The title track is definitely one of the most interesting, detailing an all-too-true account of what it’s like working as a waitress. Most telling is the line 'Son of a bitch, he called in sick for the second time this week.' Most interesting is Plaine’s use of scat singing, something that immediately reminded me of Ella Fitzgerald."

REVIEW! Feb. 3, 2012 - Sound Salvation Army - "You know you’ve found a singer that’s truly special when they’re capable of absolutely murdering a standard but they don’t need them to get your attention. (Belle Plaine) is one of those singers. "Her voice sounds timeless, somehow equally sultry, seductive, fragile, and dusky while still capable of room-filling bombast when the moment calls for it. One gets the sense that she could sing anything and she proved it last Friday by effortlessly switching from the jazz-pop numbers on Waitress to the folk-based songs on her preceding EP. It’s not so much that her voice changes in any way to suit those styles, more that she has the strength, control, and natural tone to make it almost universal in its application. To borrow an old cliche: she could sing the phone book and The Artesian would still be standing-room only."

Feb. 2, 2012 - Saskatoon StarPhoenix - "Belle Plaine never stops to cool her heels - she's too busy bounding forward. (...) Notes From a Waitress is a poppy yet strikingly intimate collection of songs, delivered in a sultry fashion and backed by ace musicians performing in a jazzy style she's dubbed 'bubble gum swing'."

Feb. 1, 2012 - Interview and live performance at CKUA in Edmonton.

Jan. 26, 2012 - prairie dog - "Notes From A Waitress features a kind of dinner-jazz-infused songwriting for contemporary life - lovely melodies that often give way to well-observed criticisms beneath the surface. The playful title track looks at the indignities of the service industry, while an ode to Waikiki quickly cuts through the pretty scenery to skewer the mess that mass tourism has made of the place. 'It's probably the only activist song I've ever written,' she laughs. 'Which is just because I had a crummy vacation'."

Jan. 26, 2012 - The Carillon - "(Plaine’s) newest release in her self-proclaimed 'bubble-gum swing' style is based around a series of travels that led the singer to Australia and back."

Jan. 25, 2012 - Regina Leader-Post - "Belle Plaine does not limit herself to one specific style of music but instead allows each genre to represent different pieces of her personality and style. Hankewich giggled, 'I like to manipulate my voice, its like dress up for me'.”

October 2011 - Voted Best Singer and Best Solo Act by prairie dog readers.

Oct. 19, 2011 - CBC Radio 3 Interview with Grant Lawrence

Oct. 6, 2011 - Saskatoon StarPheonix - "Belle Plaine has a stick-to-it, hard working attitude that matches her prairie moniker. Last year, she quit her job and decided to make music her full-time pursuit."

Summer 2011 - Prairies North - "The result (of her writing process) is a diverse yet cohesive mash up of everything from jazz standards to Tom Waits covers and (Plaine's) original songs, which use a captivating vocabulary to explore everything from her time working as a waitress to her parents' separation."

May 2011 - prairie dog - "As for the original songs, (Plaine's) songwriting and distinctively grounded yet sultry vocals are well showcased on tracks like 'Already Gone', a smoky lament for the end of a relationship that leaves you wondering what kind of dink would just let this girl walk away and 'Advice From a Vicar', which she says was inspired by Peter Carey's novel Oscar and Lucinda."

May 2011 - CJTR interview with Indie Insider

 

October 2010 - Voted Best Singer by prairie dog readers - "The voice of (Belle Plaine) is supple, sultry and hypnotizing.  The showcase of her performance, it carries listeners through the prairie landscape, stopping for a beer or whiskey at a small-town bar or two along the way.  The stunning cadence of her voice paired with her poetic lyrics gives new meaning to the phrase 'Lullabies to Paralyze'.  Fresh from an exciting summer performing at the Regina Folk Festival and elsewhere in the province, Belle Plaine is hitting her stride.  Keep your eyes peeled for a performance soon."

August 8, 2010 - Grant Lawrence of CBC Radio 3 tweets -"My Regina Folk Fest musical discovery of the weekend: lovely and talented singer named Belle Plaine from Fosston, SK!"