Cleaning up at Aboriginal Peoples Choice Awards

After receiving six Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards (APCMA) for her latest album, Interwooven Roots, Shy-Anne Hovorka is the entertainer of the year.
The Matachewan First Nation member recorded half of the album in Nashville at County Q Studios, and the other half at Dining Room Studios in Thunder Bay.
Hovorka said recording in Nashville was “obviously the dream, the impossible dream.”
The album title, Interwooven Roots, was inspired by a cedar and spruce tree growing in Hovorka’s backyard, which appeared to be growing out of the same stump.
“(They) have not competed with each other for growth, so I wrote a song about that,” she said. “Then I decided to wrap the album around that concept of interwoven-ness of species and linking it towards humanity.”
The album, her third, was released in June.
While proud of the success of the album, Hovorka wavered at the thought recording a fourth. Hovorka is an unsigned musician and independently finances her albums. In total, Interwoven Roots cost $40,000 to record.
“It does take up a couple of years to save up that kind of money,” she said.
And then she was nominated for the six People’s Choice awards: Aboriginal Female Entertainer of the Year, Single of the Year, Best Music Video, Best Country CD, Best Producer/Engineer and Best Album Cover Design.
She went to the awards show in Winnipeg on Nov. 1 and 2 with no expectations of winning.
“We were going with the excitement of playing at the awards and I pretty much resigned myself, after looking at the other nominees, that I wasn’t going to win any awards,” Hovorka said.
So she was “shocked, happy and amazed” when she won her first award.
“When they first announced my name, I thought I better thank everybody while I can still can,” she said.
Hovorka ended up making five more speeches after she won all her categories.
Hovorka already had plans of returning to school to earn her master’s in education and not focus on her music, but the awards might change all that.
“With this, and getting a lot of requests for more performances, I think I have re-think everything,” she said. “You gotta be flexible in life.”
As a songwriter, Hovorka said, the songwriting never stops and she already has written a slew of songs.
“There will probably be another album coming down the line,” she said. “I always say there isn’t, but another one always comes along.”