Amelia Curran

when the sun goes away

One of the true pleasures in life is finding the work of artists just as they hit their stride. This is an experience open to people who listen to War Brides, the breakthrough album by east coast musician Amelia Curran. Originally from St. John’s and based now in Halifax, Curran released War Brides independently in 2006. Gradually the album found an audience. Six Shooter Records, a Toronto-based record label, took notice. Curran signed on with Six Shooter and the album was re-released nationwide in 2008. It is still gaining momentum. She toured across Canada to showcase it early in 2009 with label-mates Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland.

All the songs on War Brides are strong but there are a few in particular that stand out. The worn down but beautifully resilient voice with which Curran sings the bluesy track, ‘Just a Tuesday’, is a definite highlight. The quality of her lyrics suggests a love of literature, a curiosity about relationships of various descriptions, and, well, a soft spot for a drink or two! It is impossible to resist how Curran formulates and delivers her lyrics at the high point of ‘You Won’t Find Me’:

That sun comes up every day
Just to show me how it’s done I think
But I get things in my own way
When that sun goes away I drink
Drinking to the moon and the stars
All those names on the boulevard …
Where you won’t find me

There is also the lead track, ‘Scattered and Small’, which sets the tone for the album, and for which a compelling, almost meditative video was made. The video is included below.

Recently in a wide-ranging conversation with Canadian Interviews at the Ship Pub in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Amelia Curran discussed her approach to songwriting, the gradual recognition of her album War Brides, as well as the making of Hunter, Hunter, a new collection of songs set to be released across Canada on the first of September 2009. She is playing a number of shows across the country this summer, including major festivals in Winnipeg, Quebec City, and Ottawa. A tour to highlight her new album is expected this fall.

CI: After putting out a few albums independently, you signed on with Six Shooter Records. They are based in Toronto. How does life change for you as an artist when you sign on with a record label like Six Shooter Records?

AC: I’ll tell you what I told my parents. My parents are great. They are really supportive. They are delighted with the Six Shooter signing. It is justified now, you know, which is great. What I told them is not to get too excited because it is not like a glass slipper. It is just a promotion. It is like a promotion. I have a lot more work to do, more often, as a result of which I will make some more money and sell some more records. But it is the same job that I have been doing for ten years. What is good about Six Shooter is that they realize that and they realize that I have been at it for over a decade. While a lot of things are new to me, I’m not a rookie. They don’t need to train me. It’s a hell of a promotion, but that’s what it is.

CI: When I found your album War Brides in the record store, it was in the ‘folk’ section, and you play some folk festivals obviously. Online your music is categorized in a number of different ways. I saw folk, folk-rock, roots, alternative, and even jazz in one instance. When you make music and put it out, and it starts to get plugged into these categories, is it frustrating for you? Are you happy with any of those categories?

AC: It is only frustrating when somebody asks outright because I don’t know what to say. If I’m feeling comical I’ll say it is folk music that drinks. Some of it has a country sway, and some of it definitely goes back to folk. Canadian folk music now is a lot of different things, and I don’t think anyone knows what to say. I was touring with Luke Doucet. He has no idea what kind of music he plays. He knows his guitar playing is rock n’ roll, but he doesn’t know what his songs are. Really I don’t know either. It’s hard. You’ve got to pick one, or you can let people pick them for you. None of it bothers me. I just wish I knew what to say. I usually say folk.

What is frustrating is that ‘singer-songwriter’ has become a genre. That is pretty irritating because singer-songwriter as a task or a trade should be able to sound like anything, but in the market it is ‘girl or guy with guitar, or piano’, mostly ballads and a couple funky numbers, and that is ‘singer-songwriter’. I fit in there too and that’s fine, but it’s frustrating that the trade has become a genre.

CI: You are putting the finishing touches on an album that is coming out in September. Will this be moving in the same territory as War Brides, or is this a departure at all?

AC: It is definitely similar to War Brides. It is the same minimalist stuff. Each song is me with my guitar, which is how the song goes. There is nothing you can do about it, that’s how it goes. You add one, maybe two other instruments or singers for texture, whatever the song needs. It is minimal. It’s a lot of that folky-sway stuff. But I think it is better just because I think I’ve become a better writer. Since Six Shooter released War Brides, but it had been done for so long, nobody wanted to change anything, which was great. Now this is the first album that I have ever had to deliver to somebody. There is a lot of pressure. I’ve been an outrageous editor this whole time. We started recording a year and a half ago. I recorded seventeen songs, cut six of them, recorded two more, and then I cut six more, and then writing, writing, writing. I was writing up until last week. Now I have twelve songs that are going to be released on the album out of - when I add it all up, I don’t know how many there were - there were over twenty, for sure. I just got so nervous. It has to be good. I have to think it’s good, anyway. People will disagree. Some people won’t like it. There is no accounting for taste. So I think it’s better. The songs are stronger on this album.

CI: The lyrics that you put together are not much like lyrics you hear on top-forty radio. They are more thoughtful. They are more intellectually curious, I would say. What are the conditions that you need, where do you need to be really in order to sit down and write those lyrics?

AC: Alone, for sure, I can’t write when someone else is in the house. It is really kind of terrible. Usually nighttime is best. I’m a moody artist, right? So I drink, you know? I’ve got to have a glass of wine or a pint of beer or something, and a couple cigarettes and all that foolish romantic artist stuff. But it really, really helps!

Sometimes I can write in the morning as soon as I get up. If I get onto something and it gets exciting, I’ll think ‘shit, I need a beer.’ It can be frustrating. There are times when I really work at it. I sit down every day and try to write something, and I’ll write something but it won’t be very important. It won’t be a song, but getting into the habit of it and just keeping the doors open for something to happen. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t make a habit out of chasing a song down. Usually it is a mood, an atmosphere that you can create yourself, turning the lights down, having a drink, having a cigarette and trying not to be embarrassed about being a romantic bohemian. You know? All said and done, it really does help to cater to that moody, mentally unstable kind of character in you because that is where all the questions and answers are and all this analytical stuff that I like to write about. It is a mood. … I don’t think I made any points. I’m just rambling.

CI: No, no, no, I think you did. For what it’s worth, probably my favourite song on War Brides is ‘Just a Tuesday’.

AC: Yeah, I like that song too. …

CI: The starting line ‘I am just a Tuesday in a world of Friday nights’, well, I’m sure you have whatever thoughts you have about that line, but I thought that, you know, your music is moving against the spirit of the times in a lot of ways. We’re in a technological, fast-paced, digitized, get-in-get-out kind of culture, and that line just struck me as one that slows things down for a moment. It strikes that mood and gives everyone time to listen to the lyrics. Maybe I’m thinking about this too much, but do you think of your music as a nice anti-environment to the bigger picture?

AC: I don’t know. As a person I’m a little bit weird, I guess. That’s unfair to me, and to people who believe in me – I shouldn’t say that. I have trouble in the world, you know? I don’t like crowds of people. It is incredible how much of it really has to do with you being habitually who you are, with all your disappointments and all your faults and everything hanging out. Just knowing, ‘well, can’t really write about love, don’t really know what it is’. … What I can write about is how disappointed I am in myself, and how disappointed I am in the world around me. I spend too much time on that. But being ‘a Tuesday in a world of Friday nights’ is kind of a joke. It’s funny, you know, said with a wink and a nod. But I mean it too.

CI: Most of the time, at least in what I’ve found, your musical influences are listed as Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Tom Waits, Randy Newman…

AC: Love Randy Newman …

CI: Recently I also heard you mention Lou Reed and the song ‘Pale Blue Eyes’, which is one of my favourite songs.

AC: I love that song so much - that is just one of the most perfect songs.

CI: With the others, looking at the list of names, is there a song or two that you heard when you were growing up that made you think ‘yes, that is the sort of music that I want to make.’

AC: It’s funny. I’ve never actually thought anything like that. In the same sense I’ve never said ‘I am going to write a song about this particular thing.’ It simply can’t be done, and when it is done, I think those are the mediocre songs in the world. Listing influences, when we were on tour with Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland, the three of us sort of made a drunken agreement that we have to start telling people and realizing ourselves that who we list as our influences are not in fact our influences. They are the musicians that we really like and wish that we could be as good as sometimes, or be as recognized as, or something like that. My music doesn’t sound anything like the people that I’ve listed as my influences. They are my influences as a person and as a music listener but not as a musician. It would be easier for someone else to say what has influenced my music than it would be for me. Writing is such a navel-gazing process. You are inside yourself and you are not thinking about anybody else’s song or anything else at all. I don’t know. But I could talk for ages about songs that I love!

CI: Let me try a slightly different angle.

AC: Am I being difficult?

CI: No, no, not at all, you’re being great. ‘Where is your memory when you’ve made up your mind’ – those kinds of lines in the song ‘Just a Tuesday’ make War Brides an album that is shot up with a bit of poetry, I think. Most musicians get asked for that stock list of musical influences or people you have enjoyed listening to, but beyond that, novelists, poets, artists – is there anyone that you have read that has driven you to work? I always find the relationship between music and the other arts interesting.

AC: I try to write as well but I haven’t come out with anything – cause that’s scary. But I’m kind of a Steinbeck lunatic. I think John Steinbeck writes the world’s perfect books. They are absolutely brilliant. The scene is so important. The weather is so important to how a character is going to completely fall apart and come back together, all this sort of thing. It is just so precise. This is maybe a really weird thing to say, but do you know how Seinfeld is perfect? All those coincidences, it’s all hilarious, it’s all great – I mean, that is great writing. It’s a sitcom so maybe no one cares about it, but that is incredible writing and incredible attention to detail. And at the end of the story, you didn’t really notice the details, or the plot is a tiny detail. In Steinbeck that tiny detail is life and death, or north and south. He is just incredible.

I have just been reading poems by Des Walsh, who is a local poet here in St. John’s. Many of those poems are so sad, so desperate, and about having ‘whiskey eyes’ and being on the street waiting for the end of the world. Des is a friend of mine and I’m reading these poems thinking, ‘Poor Des! I wonder how he’s doing.’ Then I get to a poem – I’m paraphrasing – but I get to a poem that basically says ‘if you think I’m sad, you’re an idiot … ’ I thought, well, I totally fell for it, I should re-read. Then you realize there is much more in the lines. There is a lot to sadness. And with Steinbeck, there is a lot to desperation. It can do incredible things to you. It is this human condition stuff. I love a good writer, and in the same breath there is nothing I hate more than bad writing. There is no excuse for bad writing. You know? But I can also say that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the word ‘baby’ in a song. That’s fine, if there are more words than just that. I get a little obsessed.

CI: Yesterday I was talking to a university professor and her specialty is studying the influence of modern technology on politics. One of the tricky things is talking about something like Facebook or Twitter, which you need to do to give an accurate reflection of life these days because in a way they are dominant. At the same time, if you write about it, in five years it might be completely irrelevant. Now it might be a funny question, but do you just try to steer away from those kinds of things entirely and keep with the more enduring and eternal themes?

AC: I don’t want to say that Facebook and that stuff are not important. I think it is, and it is hugely influential. I’m not on Facebook because I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it, not because I’m a Facebook-hater or anything like that. But Facebook doesn’t ask any human questions. Actually, that’s not true. It sort of does, doesn’t it? It does ask questions about communication and social environments. What is a social environment now? Facebook is a social environment without really even being an environment. Wow, that is fascinating … but I couldn’t write about it. As long as we have been people, communities, artists, writers, performers, and painters, someone can write or paint or create about the twinkle in the eye of the Mona Lisa, which is completely unanswered. Why does it even come up? Why is it even historical? Is she smiling, is she not smiling, that sort of thing. It is because he created something that is absolutely perfect and so human that we don’t understand it. Those are the things worth writing about. I guess I could start a Facebook group about these questions …

Again, it is a little navel-gazing, philosophy stuff, but I don’t think I’m asking any bigger or more important questions through my writing. It is important to me to write it down. It is important to me to criticize my own self in writing. I know I’m not alone in my thoughts. I think that is why War Brides has done so well. There is a lot of desperation in those lines and a lot of disappointment. People have really communicated with it. I’m not writing it for them, but it makes me feel an awful lot better. That is why I think it is important to write those things rather than to start a Facebook page philosophizing about those things. They have to be written. It is the only way to express them.

CI: Earlier in 2009 you did a Vancouver to Halifax tour. As really the first coast-to-coast tour that you have done, what was the best part of that experience for you?

AC: Hard to say. It is hard because I’ve never been further west than Ontario. For spending ten years on the road I’m incredibly ill traveled! I’ve spent a lot of time on the road in a very small space. It was the first time that I had been to Vancouver and we were only there for twelve hours. That’s kind of a drag. However, traveling with all those people was great. You know, rock n’ roll is not crazy anymore, I don’t think. People are not doing drugs anymore. They’re just not. They’re not getting hammered and throwing up on the plane. It just doesn’t happen. People are smarter. They’re healthier. They have children and they’re trying to live longer, and that is great. For me, the first time on a big tour like that where we were flying instead of driving, what a relief to meet reasonable people who were just taking care of themselves. It’s not like we didn’t have fun and we didn’t go out for drinks a few times. Of course we did that, but Luke and Melissa were great, everyone was great, taking care of each other, and it is was just a fantastic experience.

Canadian musicians are doing really well in Europe. I can see why. Everyone is taking care of each other, no matter where you come from. I think Luke has been on Six Shooter longer than anyone else, and I’m the rookie. No bones about it, it was great. He didn’t treat me like a kid or anything like that. But I look forward to the summer when I’ll have a few extra days in places. Being in places for the first time, sometimes you get very familiar with the airport and that’s about it.

CI: The new album comes out the first of September. Will you be doing another tour across the country?

AC: Nothing is really set in stone. I think I am going to do an east coast tour, then a European tour, then a west coast tour, or some combination of that. We’ll go everywhere if we can get there. … This album is actually going to be the fifth album that I’ve made. I’ve been saying it’s the second good one. Technically the second one for Six Shooter, but the first one I’ve made and delivered for them.

CI: Your earlier albums – you can find some of the songs online – but are there any plans to release any of those again, or put a compilation of songs together?

AC: Certainly not going to happen. It’s like publishing your high school poems. I was twenty or twenty-one when I put out my first album. I don’t know what kind of writing other people can do when they are nineteen or twenty, but I know what kind of writing I could do. I feel bad disliking those records, particularly here in St. John’s where people bought those records and they are really close to a lot of people. I don’t want to insult the records and denote them, but I feel that for someone who likes an album it’s just an album they like. For me it’s a representation of where I’m coming from, it’s the start of my career. It’s a much bigger thing. I would rather not go into business, get into bed again, with something that simply isn’t me anymore. It is not the same artist anymore. And I can’t remember how to play the songs! So it would just be unfair.

CI: Last question or two, with a bit of a Newfoundland angle: recently when I interviewed Alan Doyle – and for most people in the rest of the country their connection to Newfoundland as far as music is concerned is Great Big Sea – at one point he said ‘if you are a traditional folk band from Newfoundland, you would be crazy not to sing Newfoundland folk songs’. Obviously in their career they have steeped themselves in the Newfoundland tradition. For you, what is your relationship to the musical heritage of this place? How do you see yourself fitting in? Any thoughts?

AC: Only really shameful thoughts. Jeepers, I mean, I don’t know the lyrics to Sonny’s Dream! I didn’t really learn to play any Newfoundland folk songs, but my God I love them when they are played though. That is something that you can’t help. Newfoundlanders brag about it all over the world. There is some mysterious thing. I don’t think anyone wants to figure it out. It’s great that it is mysterious. It is just an unabashed love and pull for anything having to do with Newfoundland. And I have it too, but musically I never learned any songs. I loved them. I never learned them. And I hear some Newfoundland folk songs done in Ontario and Nova Scotia, and they play them too fast, you know? But my God, what great songs! And those guys do them well, the guys from Great Big Sea. You can tell they love it.

CI: This new album is being engineered by Don Ellis. Now, I’m a bit of a Newfoundland rookie, but I’ve noticed that he has had his hand in an awful lot of music out here. How helpful is it to have someone like that as the guiding hand for what you are doing?

AC: Don Ellis is a funny, funny man, very tough to get a hold of. He does an awful lot of projects. In a sense he has not been helpful at all [laughs]. He knows that, we all know it. I will say to someone, ‘I’m just here to finish my record’, and I’ll have this look of panic on my face, and they’ll say, ‘oh, yeah, I haven’t see Don for a couple days.’ We are all always chasing him around. We all love him for it, but it can be very frustrating. He is very good, and very caring about what you’re doing. He wants it to be perfect for you, and for the experience to be good. While I can panic if I can’t find him for a couple days, once we get there he is just so caring. He’s fantastic. He has the skills, but you hire him less for the skills and more for his love of it. He is a real townie, too. It was important for me to make an album in St. John’s because of Don Ellis and because of people like him, the musicians here who I grew up listening to who are now willing to play on my album, like Sandy Morris. … When I think of that, there is no one else in the world I could work for except for Don Ellis. He’s the man.

Date of Interview: 05/03/2009
Location: The Ship Pub, St. John’s, Newfoundland
Link: www.sixshooterrecords.com