Back in 2001, Toronto-based singer-songwriter Tamara Williamson put her then-latest album, The Arms Of Ed, on her website in MP3 form as a free download. In the accompanying note, she wrote that music wasn’t where she made her money anyways; that’s what gardening was for. After about a year, the album disappeared again, but between the free download and her work with King Cobb Steelie and Microbunny at about the same time, she probably gained quite a few fans.

Williamson’s career has been, like so many others, a case study of how to fly under the radar. After the British-born Williamson moved to Canada, she joined up with Mrs. Torrance, signed to ViK Records, and put out a couple of releases. What little attentione they got branded them as art-rock, a sufficiently vague label that got them nowhere, and shortly after the release of Porn the band disappeared. Done with record label dealings for the time being, Williamson put together an album of spare, dreamy demoes and passed them around to a couple of producers. Without really intending to, she found herself putting out the album, Nightmare On Queen Street.

Ever since, Williamson has been refining her sound, always retaining its dreamlike qualities even as she plunges occasionally into very downbeat territory musically. Almost criminally underappreciated except for a fan base cultivated through live shows and residency gigs at Toronto bars and clubs, it nevertheless seems that Williamson is perfectly happy to continue making her money from gardening instead of from her music.