Artist:Julian Taylor Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada Song: “Love Enough” Album:The Ridge Release Date: May 8, 2020 (single); June 19, 2020 (album) Label: Howling Turtle Inc.
In Their Words: “The thing about this song is that melody has lived with me for over a decade, but this one scared me — I never felt like I could get behind it and deliver this song honestly until everything in my world had essentially been taken away from me. The lyrics were first written by my friend Robert Priest, but I mixed and twisted them around to fit what I truly felt I needed to say on a personal level. We had always talked about it being a breakup song, but ironically it’s not; it’s about being a bit off and then on and then off again.
“I’ve always been a big fan of Los Lobos and The Mavericks and that Tex-Mex feel — it’s so evocative, so restless — and I wanted this song to be live in a room, like a kitchen party. I love that sound — the sound of realness, flawless in all its imperfections. ‘Love Enough’ has that feel because that’s how it was recorded: we all sat really close to one another and gave it our all, live off the floor, two acoustic guitars, and upright bass and congas. It’s authentic and real.” — Julian Taylor
We’ve so enjoyed looking back into the BGS archives with you every week for some of our favorite reporting, videos, interviews, and more. If you haven’t yet, follow our #longreadoftheday series on social media [on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram] and as always, we’ll put all of our picks together right here at the end of each week.
Our long reads this week examine entire careers, dive into different versions of new classic songs, revisit a lost hero, and more.
We spend a lot of time at BGS immersing ourselves in the music, sounds, and careers of our favorite artists — what can we say, we love a deep dive! For this aural long read choice (if such a thing exists?) we unpack twelve of Glen Hansard’s essential songs from myriad points in his globe-crossing career, from rock bands and movie soundtracks and confessional songwriting and more. [Read the entire list, and listen, too]
In a strangely prescient interview from late February, Canadian singer/songwriter Rose Cousins offers some insight and wisdom for being alone — the difference between loneliness and solitude, for instance — and for being present in each moment, as well. Their themes she’s explored in-depth in her music-making across the years, but in some newfound ways on her most recent album, Bravado. [Read our interview]
April 22 marked what would have been Glen Campbell’s 84th birthday. The rhinestone cowboy passed away a short couple of months after releasing his final album, Adiós, in 2017. Campbell’s long-time friend, collaborator, and bandmate Carl Jackson produced the project, and helped coax Campbell through the recording process as Alzheimer’s disease made his singing, playing, and performing increasingly difficult. To honor his birthday, we revisited our conversation with Carl Jackson. [Read]
One of Nashville’s good guys, Steve Wariner was inducted into the Musician’s Hall of Fame last year, recognized for his versatility as a lead guitarist, as a sideman, and a singer/songwriter, too. Over more than four decades the Grand Ole Opry member has had numerous charting singles, so we wanted to explore that catalog and ask Wariner himself: “Do you think you have a signature hit?” [Read the interview]
After Americana singer/songwriter Aubrie Sellers gave a flawless, stripped-down performance of this song on our first episode of Whiskey Sour Happy Hour this week we’ve been returning to it over and over! Written by Shawn Camp and Billy Burnette, Del McCoury and Steve Earle have both been involved in recordings of this modern classic over the years. [Check out four different versions]
Artist:Harrow Fair Hometown: Toronto, Ontario Song: “Seat at the Table” Album:Sins We Made Release Date: April 17, 2020 Label: Roaring Girl Records
In Their Words: “Before we started our songwriting process for our new album, we had some really long discussions of what we wanted this record to say. We felt that, as artists, we had a responsibility to comment on the world we live in and the world we want to create. ‘Seat at the Table’ became almost a thesis statement for us. We had no way of knowing that this message would become not only more relevant, but also more imperative today than ever before.” — Miranda Mulholland and Andrew Penner, Harrow Fair
“I’ve always been interested in human struggle,” Rose Cousins says, musing on “The Fraud,” a song off her latest album Bravado. “I think being a living human being is really hard.”
Bravado listens like a series of object lessons on the contradictions inherent to being human, with Cousins using each song to meditate on themes like pretension and vanity, as well as loneliness, solitude, and the crucial distinction between the two. Across the album, her songwriting is as sharp and clear-eyed as it’s ever been, a feat she attributes to pushing herself to dig deeper and share her truth more freely than she’d done on past efforts. Bravado follows her Grammy-nominated 2017 album Natural Conclusion.
BGS caught up with Cousins in late February, just a week after she released Bravado, speaking by phone as she was at home in Halifax putting together packages for Kickstarter supporters. Much has changed for musicians since then, rendering some bits of our conversation irrelevant (like her tour in support of Bravado, which was canceled due to COVID-19), and other portions — as when Cousins shares her desire to spend more of her energy on practices like walking and meditation — strangely prescient.
BGS: When did you begin work on the album, and when did you feel the project was truly starting to come together?
Cousins: Every year I go on a writing retreat with a group of songwriters from Boston; we’ve been doing it now for 10 years. I wrote two of the songs at the retreat: “Love Comes Back” and “The Fraud.” “The Fraud” was the song that really revealed to me the concept of “bravado.” I thought about the word “bravado” and thought it would be an amazing title, and isn’t that an interesting concept?
I went into the studio to work with some different musicians in Canada I hadn’t worked with before. We had such a great time that I booked some more studio time in May [of 2019] and in between that time wrote “The Benefits of Being Alone.” Once I wrote that song, in March of last year, I was like, “It’s on.” I really wanted to write a song that was coming from my perspective of being a single person, and, while society has different stigmas around [being single], it’s not all bad.
I think people experience loneliness whether they’re in a relationship or not. And aloneness is a really rich thing — spending time by yourself and having your own creative time and energy to devote to yourself and what you want to do. So I was really excited when that song came. I knew after our sessions in May that I was chasing a record.
Back to what you were saying about choosing the word Bravado as your album title, that concept comes up in “The Expert,” too. Can you elaborate on why you felt that idea was so representative of this collection of songs? I always find it interesting when an artist chooses a title for an album that isn’t also the title of a track.
It’s definitely the thread that goes through all the songs. When I was writing “The Fraud,” I was singing, almost in an observational way, about my own self, about presenting yourself one way and feeling another way. And if there is a time in the world that that is happening, it’s right now, where people are presenting versions of themselves that aren’t necessarily true. Maybe it isn’t a complete lie, but we never used to be able to filter photographs. Only people who worked at magazines could do that. Now we are putting versions of ourselves through social media that are depicting the best bits. …
Since my last record, I’ve been thinking a lot about what matters to me, what’s really true, what do I love, what are the things I can let go of? And how can I be more in touch with myself and the ground? It’s really hard. I don’t think there is a single human being who escapes any of that. You can have 75 emotions in one day….
The hardest, deepest, most uncomfortable work — and this is where I’m at in my life — is dealing with your own self. And where you are calling upon bravado. That’s the concept of this whole record. It’s the duality of being a living human being. We present the version of ourselves we want but when we’re in a vulnerable situation, can we live up to the person that we presented? That’s the question for me.
To your point about trying to be more real and truthful in your everyday life, there was a quotation in your bio that stuck with me. You said, “I realized I was chasing a theme and a feeling I had been pondering for months. And it turned into a whole record of perhaps my best writing.” Did that personal digging contribute to your feelings about the finished album?
My last record was definitely some of my most truthful writing. I remember having nervousness about some of the stuff being too dark or that kind of thing. Of course it’s hard to have perspective on your own work, but I historically feel like I elude; I don’t always tell the full story at one time. I elude telling the full story and I allude to things. With this record, it feels closer to an admittance and staring really hard at the way I’ve set my own life up. By being more truthful for my own self, I think that always makes the writing better, and makes the connection to the music better.
Elsewhere in reading about the album creation, I came across a passage where you share that you felt a kind of pressure to be productive, as opposed to going for a walk or enjoying silence. Did making this record alleviate that feeling for you in any way, or offer you a differing perspective?
It did not. It’s funny. So this month, February, I tried to protect all of February as best I could from travel so that I could be home and deal with all the Kickstarter things and all of the press that’s coming in, all of the merch, all the things people don’t see and don’t need to know about. Within that, I dedicated myself to two things that I have been talking to myself about for years: I’ve taken a walk outside every single day and I’ve meditated every single day. Those are two things I’ve wanted to incorporate into my world.
I definitely am a workaholic. I definitely have this thought-circle in my mind of, “If you’re not doing something productive, if you’re not moving forward…” I can’t let myself off the hook… I’ve still been trying to put those desires into motion. There are plenty of days when I don’t want to go for a walk, but once I’m outside I feel better. Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard to get back to the gym, or stop eating garbage? It’s because we’re emotional people and we form habits and you have to make different decisions. Sometimes the psychic pain of change is horrible and also exactly what we need.
That’s a good segue to one of the songs I’ve found myself coming back to a lot, which is “The Time Being (Impending Mortality Awareness Society).” First of all, that is such a fantastic title. I’d love to hear how you wrote that one.
I feel very lucky to have a friend, an older gentleman, who is a fisherman. We were catching up one day and he was talking about coming back from a fishing trip where he had a gentleman with him who was much older than him. He said, in passing, “impending mortality awareness.” I thought it was brilliant and about a month later I found myself sitting at a piano and came up with that first line, “The Impending Mortality Awareness Society meets twice a week / Do or die because time is of the essence.” And I kept running with that…
Of all the stuff we’ve just talked about, isn’t it the hardest to just be present? That’s what going for the walk is. That’s what meditation is. Can you give yourself a moment where you tune in to your own body and your own brain and pause? It is about paying attention to what is important. It’s about telling the people you love that you love them. It’s about checking in with your fears. Because most of them are not real. It’s about acknowledging that time is in motion and you need to get your head out of your ass and be in it.
Host Chris Jacobs first had the chance to speak with Russell at Candide before COVID-19 related travel and gathering restrictions went into place, and decided to reconnect with him recently via phone to see how Russell is facing the challenges of being an independent chef and restaurant owner during a global pandemic.
In the episode, the pair talk about some of the music Russell’s listening to in quarantine and the food he’s making at home, but he also talks about some of the ways he’s been able to give back to the restaurant workers affected by job losses in Canada, as well as a recent opportunity to create menus for the food banks of Montreal.
In Their Words: “‘Grew Apart’ is about the little lies inside the words we use when we’re hurting after a relationship ends. We wanted to tell a story in the video about men trying to help each other — and fucking it up, but trying. Men seem to think that there’s some physical trial we need to put ourselves through when we’re lovesick — drinking, fighting. The wrongheadedness of that idea is on display here. So often it feels like we can’t escape those breakup clichés. The song and the video are about why that might be.” — Donovan Woods
In Their Words: “I wrote ‘New Morning’ right after our second album Coffee Creek came out, and it came to me pretty quick. There’s this funny period after you put out an album — a moment of calm and then the crashing realization that it’s on to the next one. It’s that push to get back to work that got me writing again, and this song came out first. I was listening to Béla Fleck’s Tales from the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 2 endlessly around that time, so maybe you can find some bits of inspiration in there. Big thanks to Trent Freeman (check out his awesome band The Fretless) for the videography.” — Adrian Gross, The Slocan Ramblers
Artist:Garrett Kato Hometown: Born in Port Coquitlam, BC; current home is Byron Bay, Australia Latest Album:s. hemisphere EP Nickname: “Shoji is my middle name, some crew call me that”
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
I think it would have to be Bob Dylan as cliché as that sounds. I feel there’s only a handful of artists that can hit you in the guts with lyrics and melody. He’s probably the master of storytelling and symbolism in song.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
This was probably one of favourite moments in life. I was supporting Damien Rice in Australia and was a big fan of his work. I hadn’t seen him much and figured he’d be too busy to see my set. I played to a beautiful and attentive audience, and once I left the stage, out of the darkness he emerged to say he enjoyed the set. Later that night, we went busking in the streets of Brisbane. It was something I won’t soon forget.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?
I’m a big fan of most A24 films at the moment. They always have such intensity and mystery to them highly recommend. As far as for my music, I’d say I draw more from conversations in real life or stories I hear from people I know, and love that, for some reason, it seems to seep in more often when I’m writing.
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
I think it’s almost every time. Each song comes with its own set of challenges and problems that are particular to the message or music. I find it the hardest to write when I’m spending too much time on social media. It really sucks the life out of being creative, and you end up just worrying about what everyone else is doing.
If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?
Try to give some comfort to someone who may be feeling lost or alone.
Artist:100 mile house Hometown: Edmonton, Canada Song: “Grateful” Album:Love and Leave You Release Date: March 27, 2020 Label: Fallen Tree Records
In Their Words: “‘Grateful’ was probably the hardest song to complete from the new album, from any of our albums in fact. For years I wanted to be able to write about some of the darker corners of life and love — a parent suffering from addiction; not being able to have children — but to find a way to be grateful for them. Hope and courage can’t exist without these moments, so I wanted to shine a light on them.” — Peter Stone, 100 mile house
Artist:Luke Wallace Hometown: Vancouver, Canada – Coast Salish Territory Song: “Pale Kids” Album:What on Earth Release Date: March 6, 2020 Label: Come To Life Music
In Their Words: “It’s hard to write songs about privilege without losing people in criticism or preaching. ‘Pale Kids’ is rooted in the truth that non-white communities have been fighting and dying for their rights, and all human rights, for a long time. This song is about calling in my fellow Pale folks into action, recognizing that our voices carry a lot of power when directed at the governments and institutions that maintain our privilege. I’m seeing more and more people from all backgrounds rising to the occasion and using their voices for justice, and I have a hunch that if thousands of privileged, middle-class white folks started showing up in the same way that our non-white counterparts are, we’d see rapid, sweeping changes to the way our governments treat non-white communities. It’s the old ‘with great privilege comes great responsibility.’ This song goes right to the heart of what that means, calling those who can to use their privilege for the liberation of all people.” — Luke Wallace
Photo credit: Alex Harris
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