Ten Years Since Chicago

Yesterday, in the car, listening yet again to “Hungry Love” (my soon-to-be-released first single from my upcoming album Heirloom), I was reminded of a song on my very first full-length album - a song called “Lonely For Me”.

I remembered being in Chicago, recording this tune, shaking sleigh bells with with producer/engineer Tim Iseler, lifting and dropping them, a vertical shake that he taught me, trying to give the tune a “Motown” feel - it was the first time that word had ever been used around my recordings. That word would disappear for a few years, but it foreshadowed something very fundamental.

Maybe it was the memory of this song, or maybe it was just the cold seeping in, or the man asleep beside me, but, last night, it struck me that it’s been ten years since I was in Chicago, recording Darling, Darling. Back then, I’d slept alone in the bed of a frigid rental apartment in the Ukrainian Village, but I almost might not have. I’d called Mike in the months before, though he was little more than an acquaintance then, to consult with him and get his advice on the production. He thought about making the trip down with me, but a very prudent little voice told me that he might be a distraction. I would need to focus and work very hard if I was going to successfully record and mix nine songs in nine days. (Just two months later, I’d fly to Windsor and do all that falling in love that I didn’t have time for in Chicago.)

And so, on the morning of December 8, 2009, I found myself (and my good friend and Gamma Gamma Rays bandmate Scott Grundy) aboard a plane bound for Chicago, Illinois, drinking a gin and tonic and, at age 20, thrilled with the novelty of being able to drink alcohol on an airplane, never mind that the sun was only just coming up. I remember I was holding a little teddy bear on my lap - such a strange precipice at the edge of girlhood. Each morning, for the week that followed, my nose hairs freezing in the startling cold, I walked the six blocks from my rented apartment to Soma Studios, a hallowed ground where some of my most beloved heroes had themselves recorded - Bright Eyes, Broken Social Scene, Kaki King - and laid down the parts for my debut studio album. Ten or twelve hours later, I’d curl up beside the sputtering radiator in my frigid bedroom, and wait to do it all again the next morning.

Without the luxury of a day off, I saw almost nothing of the city outside the walls of the studio, but I didn’t mind in the slightest, because the real point of interest in the room with me, in the form of Chicago-based singer-songwriter Mike Kinsella (of Owen, American Football, and other acts, each with a burgeoning cult following). His involvement was my entire reason for recording in Chicago - he agreed to play drums, of all things (he’s best known as a guitarist and vocalist), and added extra touches on guitar. Kinsella’s music formed the soundtrack of my teenage years, and my early Myspace efforts had somehow placed me on his radar. He was so kind and laid-back, easy to work with. I think he showed up the first night with a six-pack of beer. I remember him being impressed by my scratch vocals, and telling me how he would comp together his vocals, one word at a time (which is a thing I actually do now, too). He, bassist Tobin Summerfield, and mandolinist Jim Becker would sit with me in the studio room and run through each of my nine songs a few times, Tobin scratching out a basic chart for the tune (which, at that age, I could not yet do), and then we’d move into the live room and get it down.

This formative adventure was funded partly by my first (and only) ever manager, Jeremy Macneil, and my first ever grant. It was the grant I had to write as a final “exam” at the end of the Music Business program at NSCC. Our professor arranged a mock jury to assess our submissions in front of us, and then I submitted my application for real. I had planned to record the album at a friend’s studio in Dartmouth, and call it “Apples, Farms, and Rain” - a little homage to my hometown in the Annapolis Valley - but with Macneil opening doors and making calls for me, the album turned into something much greater.

It’s appropriate that this milestone should roll around, because I’ve been thinking lately about first recordings. Not the ones you share with just your friends and family (although I have been revisiting those too), but the first ones you distribute, the ones that say, “here I am, on the same platform as Michael Jackson and Beyonce.” In my mind, there are two competing schools of thought: if you wait until something is perfect, you will have missed your chance, but, on the other hand, we’re all born with 200 bad poems in us (to quote the poet Billy Collins).

I got my haircut in Chicago, one night after we finished recording. In her kitchen, the stylist cut off a foot of my hair, while I faced a poster of the saddest ever photo of Billie Holiday, before I knew who that was.

It stuns me that, ten years ago, I was already recording in a world-class studio on someone else’s dollar, having my songs tenderly produced by someone brilliant who was willing to spend seven 12-hour days in a row in the studio with 20-year-old me, and working with one of my musical heroes. That’s a lot more glamorous and cutting-edge than the things I’m doing today. But, back then, I had yet to pass my “200 poem” threshold, so to speak.

And so, I find it difficult to listen to this album in its entirety, even though it is graced with beautiful performances by a cast of musicians from Chicago and Toronto. To my ears, my voice is too shockingly youthful, my lyrics are a bit disjointed and sometimes contradictory, and the overall style is far from the genre of my heart. Years ago, I issued a takedown order for Darling, Darling, removing it from all the digital platforms where I had previously distributed it. Objectively, it really is a good album, and, as a first recording, served me and my career very well, but once I moved to Windsor and my music changed, it felt like Darling, Darling was the work of a completely separate artist. I think it’s entirely common for one’s first recordings to exist only temporarily (and so, if there’s a new artist you love, you should probably buy their music in some tangible format before it does disappear). Maybe, one day, I’ll be able to enjoy this for what it is - an awkwardly nascent piece of me, placed in a very tender, flattering frame. I can’t anticipate how the years will change my feelings - I’ll just have to hold on to these things, and wait until I’ve gone far enough to not feel slighted by them anymore.

I apologize for the low quality of the photos I took in Chicago - cell phone cameras were really basic ten years ago..!