Rae Spoon

Rae Spoon is a Canadian musician and writer. Their musical style has varied from country to electronic-influenced indie rock and folk punk.

Personal life
Spoon was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada to evangelical Christian parents, and now lives in Montreal.

After a decade of living as a transman, Spoon noted a preference for the pronoun "they" in 2012 during an interview with cartoonist Elisha Lim, a fellow advocate for the gender-neutral pronoun. They explained to Now Magazine, "after years of fighting to be called ‘he,’ the idea of coming out again made me tired. But now I feel kind of rejuvenated, ready to fight on some more. I think the ‘they’ pronoun is a pretty cool thing. It’s letting a lot of people not have to identify as a man or a woman. Whatever it means to them."

Career
Spoon has performed with such artists as Annabelle Chvostek, Ember Swift, Kinnie Starr, Melissa Ferrick, The Be Good Tanyas, Bitch & Animal, Natalie Merchant and Earl Scruggs. They have performed at festivals including North Country Fair, South Country Fair, Under the Volcano Festival, and the Vancouver, Regina, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Brandon Folk, Music & Art Festival and Winnipeg folk festivals.

Spoon's breakthrough album, 2008's Superioryouareinferior, was recorded in Calgary and introduced some electronic music elements into Spoon's style. Superioryouareinferior was a longlisted nominee for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize.

They have also published First Spring Grass Fire, a book of short stories about growing up in Alberta. Arsenal Pulp Press released the book in the fall of 2012. The book was a nominee for the 2013 Lambda Literary Awards in the Transgender Fiction category, and Spoon was awarded an Honour of Distinction from the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT writers in 2014.

Spoon has stated that First Spring Grass Fire was written to help them prepare for the production of a National Film Board of Canada documentary about their life and music, My Prairie Home, directed by Chelsea McMullan. The film was released in the fall of 2013. My Prairie Home, the album of music that Spoon composed for the film, was a longlisted nominee for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize.

In 2012, Spoon and Ivan Coyote collaborated on Gender Failure, a touring multimedia show in which both artists performed music and spoken word pieces about their failed attempts at fitting into the gender binary. A book based on the show was published by Arsenal Pulp in 2014.

In 2014, Spoon composed music for the feature film The Valley Below.

Discography

 * Honking at Minivans (2001)
 * Throw Some Dirt on Me (2003)
 * Your Trailer Door (2005)
 * White Hearse Comes Rolling (2006)
 * Trucker's Memorial (2006, with Rodney Decroo)
 * Superioryouareinferior (2008)
 * Worauf Wartest Du? (2009, with Alexandre Decoupigny)
 * Love is a Hunter (2010)
 * I Can't Keep All of Our Secrets (2012)
 * My Prairie Home (2013)