Longtime Carbondale local Olivia Pevec is touring the Valley and beyond with her newest project: “Olivia the Bard, Wayfaring Stranger.” This solo show includes magical elements and messages of self-love with house concert and venue dates all over the Front Range, Paonia and the Roaring Fork Valley, including a stop at Steve’s Guitars on Friday, Feb. 21.
For 25 years, Pevec has lived in the Valley and worn many hats. She has been a blacksmith, a cowgirl, a theater teacher, a waitress, a rock star and held other vocational identities. Despite this, she said she will always be a musician first and foremost. In addition to her original works, she co founded the band Let Them Roar, and it was during this time that she realized this aspect of her character.
“That experience showed me I am a musician first,” Pevec told The Sopris Sun. “Maybe first I’m a singer before all the other things. I came into the world that way and delightfully had the opportunity and the reason to become a songwriter.”
Discussing what she has in store for this upcoming tour, Pevec said her audiences will bear witness to her version of storytelling, which she described as “an incantation.” Pevec developed this method of storytelling during her time as a theatre teacher at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School.
“I came into an acting method I’ve been describing as ‘the physics of human behavior’ and that’s opened my eyes and mind to the potential and power of storytelling, using our bodies to be storytellers. This show I’m developing is an effort to take the singing and songwriting and combine them with more spoken storytelling, turning it into an incantation. It’s the idea that magic happens in our bodies when we give ourselves to the creative process, and let me tell you, it is contagious,” she stated.
Pevec shared that the show is crafted to be repeatable and involved despite its story arc still being actively crafted. She developed the first few concepts by pulling from a tarot deck and breaking the show into three chapters based on the cards she drew.
The first chapter is inspired by the Seven of Wands, which typically represents one standing firm in their decisions, the second by the Nine of Wands, which signifies perseverance, and the third chapter is full of the energy of the Page of Pentacles, which represents new beginnings in the material realm and the acquisition of knowledge. There is also an element of audience participation.
“It’s like an intrepid warrior sets out and discovers they are not properly protected. The journey then transforms them into a beginner,” Pevec said. “Each chapter has three songs, and in the middle, the access point of the story is an unknown song. We won’t know what that song is until one of the audience members is invited to go through a little fortune-telling process to reveal it. I’m interested in employing the practices of magic to bring people into their heart space and to receive these stories and come out the other side more in love with themselves.”
The house concert part of her tour is meant to bring a feeling of locality and closeness to this project. The host of each house will be responsible for sending out invitations. Tying it to the “Wayfaring Stranger” subtitle, Pevec said she hopes her folk music performance will give insight into the temporality of separateness.
“[‘Wayfaring Stranger’] is sung from the perspective of somebody sitting by their grace,” she explained. “It is about what we leave behind when we go home, like the separation we all feel. We all feel separate while we’re here. We came to this planet to experience individuation, but it’s temporary. We never lose that awareness and long to be whole and together. That’s the core of it, the search we’re all on all the time for belonging and connection and the feeling of being separate.”
To learn more or to book a house concert, you can direct message Pevec on Instagram: @scavengerindustries
For tickets to the Feb. 21 Steve’s Guitars performance, visit www.stevesguitars.net