Joline Baylis is a Vancouver-based singer-songwriter whose music lives at the intersection of folk, rock, and soul. Intimate enough to stop a room and expansive enough to fill a stage, her voice carries both weight and warmth. She writes with a candor and emotional honesty that is rare and unflinching.
Joline came to music the way most lifers do: early, and without much choice in the matter. She grew up singing harmonies with her mother, her voice finding its shape long before she had language for what she was doing. At sixteen she picked up a guitar and never put it down. She wrote her first songs into a borrowed four-track and understood, somewhere beneath all the doubt that would follow, that this was the work she was meant to do.
"Break Me Down," produced by Kenton Loewen (Dan Mangan + Blacksmith), introduced Baylis as an artist with something real to say and the craft to say it. Described as "fresh, haunting, and profoundly honest," the record established her as a songwriter of depth and conviction. She went on to perform throughout BC and Alberta, and travelled east by rail as part of Via Rail's Artists On Board program, playing venues in Toronto and Montreal.
In the years since, Joline has been quietly doing the harder work of deepening her craft, expanding her sonic palette, and returning to the page with a mature and hard-won creative vision. New music is in progress, and it shows the reach of an artist who has grown beyond her acoustic folk roots into something more layered, incorporating electric guitar and piano into a broader landscape.
In 2016, Joline founded Rain Coast Choir, a non-auditioned pop and rock community choir in Vancouver. Under her direction, the choir has performed sold-out shows at the Rio Theatre, WISE Hall, and the Red Gate Revue Stage on Granville Island, and has collaborated with a range of Vancouver artists. Joline brings to Rain Coast Choir the same sensibility she brings to her own performances. Every show is built as an artistic event, where singers experience the thrill of performing on stage for a full house.
Joline is also a sought-after vocal coach, completing her training in Somatic Voicework™ - The LoVetri Method (Levels I and II) through Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio. Her teaching draws on the same belief that inspires her writing: that the voice is an expression of the whole person, and that real expression comes from getting out of your own way.
She is currently at work on new music and is available for live performances, festivals, workshops, and events.