One Hour, One Take, One Community: The Making of "East Van Crossing"
For over three decades, Norine Braun has breathed and existed in East Vancouver's Commercial Drive. Now, on her new single "East Van Crossing", she converts that love into song—a warm, rootsy embrace of the 'hood's colors, people, and mini-revolutions. Caught on camera in the hallowed halls of The Warehouse Studio as part of Steve Dawson's Henhouse Popup Sessions, the song has the immediacy of a moment: one hour, one band, one take. It is not just music—it's a snapshot in time and place, pulsating with the lifeblood of the Drive.
Braun's lived-experience-buoyant voice threads through twang-kissed guitar motifs and purposeful, soulful rhythms. With Dawson on pedal steel and guitars, Darryl Havers creating chordal portraits at the keyboards, Liam MacDonald delivering heartbeat time on drums, Jeremy Holmes anchoring on bass, and Alice Fraser's harmonies carrying the chorus up to heaven, the song is a gentle but insistent anthem to tenacity. Produced by Juno-winner Sheldon Zaharko and mastered by Adam Popowitz, "East Van Crossing" is simultaneously meticulously built and totally in the raw—it's all about its unpretentious, humanly flawed nature.
Braun's lyrics draw upon the shared poetry of her community—the coffee shops where hopes are spread out, the murals that hold hidden histories, the faces you pass on the sidewalk and nod to as if they were familiar friends. Her voice is scented with rain-pavement and late-night conversation pouring out of corner bars. There is happiness in this, but it comes with silent determination; a knowledge that neighbourhoods are made not of buildings, but of the art, dirt, and shared humanity that flow between them.
The complementary music video turns this festival into a walking tour, taking spectators by the colorfulness of murals along Commercial Drive. In each scene, the hope, change, and community message of the song comes alive—painted brick and beaming faces moving in sync with the rhythm. In "East Van Crossing", Norine Braun offers tribute to her hometown beyond mere tribute; she offers an invitation to all who have ever loved something so much that it becomes part of their own story. It is not a song—it's crossing into the heart of East Van itself.
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