Melissa McClelland

Music in Style

In her music Melissa McClelland seems quite content to wander. It is impossible to fit her sound into one distinct genre. This is clear from the diversity in evidence on her recent album Victoria Day, a collection of twelve tracks released this past spring. Many different musical styles are represented, from the gentle folk of ‘Seasoned Lovers’, a gorgeous duet with Ron Sexsmith, to the slow burn of ‘God Loves Me’, a song that McClelland developed from her travels along Route 66 in the U.S.

Born in Chicago, Melissa moved with her family to Burlington, Ontario, when she was three years old. Asked about the palpable American feel of some of her songs, ‘God Loves Me’ in particular, she recognizes a couple of sources of that sound, but mainly her vocal abilities allowed her to move in that direction. “Obviously I’m drawn to that part of the world, but stylistically I think it was more just finding my voice, just feeling really comfortable singing those traditional-sounding songs, and it happens to be the traditional American blues and country. I just found that singing that way opened my voice up in a totally new way that I never experienced before. That is what inspired me to write that style of song.”

There is no doubt that McClelland has enough sensuality and dexterity in her voice to bring the backroom elements in her writing to a fever pitch. In ‘God Loves Me’, the failsafe of divine redemption underwrites a few decadent moments in the story.

Homesick Josephine/ She’s been flirting with the law
He’s got his hand right up her skirt/ All the way to Arkansas

Her husband, fellow musician Luke Doucet, joins her on this song and on much of the album, playing guitar, banjo, and piano, adding his distinctive vocal touches here and there. He also produced the album and wrote the song ‘A Girl Can Dream’ with McClelland. The collaboration of husband and wife adds a unique dimension to the songs. McClelland allows that there are a few stressful moments when working so closely with her husband, especially when touring together. Ultimately she maintains that the experience is extremely rewarding. “Musically, we just love playing together. It’s such a special thing for us on stage.”



Victoria Day is the first album for McClelland on Six Shooter Records. Her previous two collections, Stranded in Suburbia in 2004 and Thumbelina’s One Night Stand in 2006, were released on the Orange Record Label. For those interested in her earlier work, have a listen to ‘Passenger 24’ or ‘Skyway Bridge’ off Thumbelina. The latter features vocals from Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo, and he appears in the video for the song. Interestingly, McClelland was the only guest vocalist on the Blue Rodeo Live at Massey Hall recording, which was part of the 2008 CD/DVD package Blue Road.



The following interview took place at the Bad Dog Café in Hamilton, Ontario, where McClelland currently makes her home. She is an engaging presence, possessing a terrific laugh and a quick sense of humour. She discusses her major artistic influences, both musical and otherwise, evaluates what has been a very eventful year for her, and also muses on the impact of YouTube when it comes to circulating live music. In November she is playing a string of concerts in western Canada and Ontario with fellow Six Shooter artist Justin Rutledge. In February 2010 she is slated to participate with her husband on the Cayamo Cruise, a musical event on a cruise ship that will also feature Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, and Steve Earle! Following that, McClelland says that she will begin to think about her next record. It is intriguing to imagine what new directions her music will take.

CI: On Victoria Day there are a number of different musical styles represented, and almost every article written about your music that I have read mentions that fact.

MM: I know. And this was my attempt to make a consistent record! I failed miserably [laughs].

CI: When you put together an album with all those different styles, what sort of audience do you end up with?

MM: An eclectic audience! And that’s the honest truth. All ages, all backgrounds, a very eclectic mix of people, and they slowly trickle in, the fans. It’s funny. I definitely approach music that way. I draw from so much. I’m not into one thing. I grew up listening to classical and hip-hop, and not that those things are really represented in my songs, but certain chord changes sort of go back to my violin-playing days, the kind of musical structures that would be in those pieces. It’s little hints of everything. And working with Luke, who produces my music, he definitely comes from the same place. He likes to draw from a lot of things. Our plan is always ‘okay, let’s make it really consistent, let’s find a sound and stick with it!’ But by the end it’s all over the map. We haven’t mastered that yet, for sure!

CI: It does make one wonder what you listened to growing up. What music was being played a lot in your home?

MM: My parents are music lovers, but they are not hardcore music lovers, you know? I look at Luke and his daughter – he has a thirteen-year-old daughter, my stepdaughter – and she plays Nada Surf songs on her guitar, and she knows the entire Beatles catalogue. By the time I was her age, I was definitely not that cool!

My parents played Gordon Lightfoot and Dire Straits; stuff like that, stuff that I loved. I loved all that. My mom listened to a lot of classical music. On the way to and from school everyday, she would be playing classical on the radio, CBC all the time, or jazz. And then when I discovered radio when I was maybe ten, which was like - top forty radio - the worst shit I was listening to! But it was exciting. I had discovered something that I didn’t know was out there. I think most kids go through that. Obviously in high school I started digging around a bit more and listening to those Beatles records or Bowie albums, or going to all-ages punk shows in Burlington, where I grew up. I really did truly draw from a lot of different sources. Like I said, hip-hop, my older sister listened to hip-hop. We would cruise around town and pretend - the white gangsters from the suburbs [laughs].

CI: Not only with musical styles, but the album as a whole seems to be really a study in contrasts. You often jam comedy and tragedy together in songs, and even the photography in the album jacket – some of those songs you don’t imagine coming from that person in the photo! Was this perhaps an attempt to suggest that all these different elements can be tied up together in one artist, and that no one has to be bound to a specific genre or image?

MM: It definitely wasn’t a deliberate attempt to get that across. I think that is maybe just the reality of music these days. You can’t really put it in a category. There are so many influences. Like I said, I was influenced by so much, and I think that can be said of many artists. But in the lyrics, the tragic and the comedic, I’ve always been drawn to that. I think that’s the only way to get a story across. If it’s just tragic, it takes itself too seriously, and if it’s just comedic, you’re just kind of making a joke of it. When you put those two things together, I don’t know, I feel like that’s when the emotions come out. That’s been the way that I’ve written always. I’ve always been drawn to that. I think that’s just been my natural approach to songwriting.

CI: You write, record, and perform at times with your husband. How would you characterize that working relationship? It is sort of unique to have two careers so intertwined.

MM: We always have our fingers crossed. We’re just waiting for the day when we’re like, ‘oh man, this isn’t working.’ It’s intense! Let me tell you, the stress of being on the road, being in a band and trying to get to the next gig, and driving on the icy highway in northern Ontario and trying to get to Manitoba. Then you show up at this crappy bar and ten people show up! There are always days like that on the road. It’s a lot of up and down, but Luke and I handle it very well together. We are so different on the road. He’s like a little stress-ball, and I’m totally laid back – ‘ah, it’ll all work out, it’s going to be great!’ At first, that was difficult for us, but I think now we have really learned to balance each other in that way. Musically, we just love playing together. It’s such a special thing for us on stage. We have so many moments on stage where we just look at each other and we can’t believe we’re doing this together. … And relationships, you know, if a musician dates someone who isn’t a musician - that can be hard for the other person to understand what they do. They’re gone all the time, and they’re on stage all the time. It’s a very unique life. The fact that Luke and I can share that passion and enjoy it together is a real blessing.

That being said, we’ve been touring separately lately and it’s awesome! I’ve been calling him, and missing him, and that’s nice too! I’ll take a bit of that [laughs].

CI: Since the album came out you’ve been touring around a lot, including stops in Europe and South Africa.

MM: Yeah, and in Uganda too, actually.

CI: And in North America, obviously - what stands out as the highlight, if you can think back for a moment?

MM: I have to say that this past summer was probably the most amazing summer that I have ever had. I took a trip with my mom across the Route 66, and we spent a month on the road together, her and I. It was amazing. We have family history all along Route 66. My mom has been doing ancestry research for the last year, and I got really into it with her. I love that kind of stuff. She was really digging around, and pinpointed our family line all through the States along Route 66. We decided to hit the road together, go to these little towns and research it, actually go to the libraries and cemeteries and county clerk offices. And I played some shows along the way. She was my roadie. It was great! I did that in June.

The highlight in July was going to the Yukon to play the Dawson City Music Festival. It’s such an interesting place to visit. First of all, it was light twenty-four hours a day, and then with the forest fires there was this smoke all along the horizon. It’s just a really unique place.

Then of course Luke and I went to Africa. It was just mind-blowing to be there. We spent three weeks in South Africa touring, and then went to Uganda with World Vision and spent a week there in the most remote villages, National Geographic-type stuff in the middle of nowhere. But meeting these people on the other side of the world, this totally different life, and connecting with these people - we played music for them, spent the day with them. We met our sponsor child! We’ve been sponsoring a little boy for the last few years, and we met him and his family and hung out with them for two days. It was wild. So yeah, I had some good experiences this past summer.

CI: Does that traveling help bear fruit in songwriting, or do you ignore songwriting a bit when you’re traveling?

MM: I always kind of ignore songwriting. It just sneaks up on me. Usually it takes a long time for an experience to come to light in a song. I imagine that I probably won’t be writing about those experiences for a while, but we’ll see.

CI: What are the best conditions for songwriting? Have you noticed any pattern in what you do?

MM: Riding my bike at night! That’s when the lyrics flow. Being somewhere new, definitely, but that’s just when little ideas come together. Actually finishing songs and putting the work in is time at home for me.

CI: You have some dates coming up with Justin Rutledge in western Canada, and a couple in Ontario. Have you got any favourite cities or venues to play in Canada that you’ve found in the past little while?

MM: I always like playing, and this may sound weird, but I love playing Saskatoon. … I can’t really tell you why. I always enjoy myself there. I just think it’s a really beautiful place in an understated kind of way. Nobody ever thinks of Saskatoon! And I have my favourite places, restaurants and bars that I like to go to there, and I find the people really warm and friendly. So I like Saskatoon. And St. John’s! I’m going there in December, playing there in December. I’m really excited for that. I’ve been out there once, but I was in and out – I didn’t get screeched in or anything!

CI: There are a number of your videos up on YouTube, and a few live ones as well, when someone in the audience recorded a song and put it online. I’m just curious to ask performers about this. Is this something that you think about much when you’re on the road, the idea that any song at any show could end up online without your knowledge? Does it bother you?

MM: It’s definitely a new thing. I played this show in L.A., this last minute show, and it wasn’t advertised at all. There were literally four people there. I was just playing alone. This was just a few weeks ago. Four people in the audience! You’d think you would know what’s going on. I talked to them after, and I could see them the whole time. But then the next day, posted online, was this beautiful, black-and-white, really nicely filmed – my entire show! It was edited, and the sound was great. And I was like, ‘who did that? There were four people there!’ That really made me think: is this going to be a frequent occurrence? At every show, is someone going to tape something? I don’t know. It doesn’t really bother me. Some of them are unflattering, and some of them are fine.

CI: And sometimes you get an especially interesting one. There is a video of you and Matthew Good doing ‘Hurt’ [the Nine Inch Nails song] on YouTube. Having grown up with that song, and after hearing the Johnny Cash version, it was interesting to watch the two of you play it.

MM: I’ve got to check that out! I toured with him and we did that song together every night.

CI: Mostly musicians get asked about their musical influences, but I am always interested in that relationship between music and the other arts, as far as novels, poems, and other forms of art. Do you find that you have certain artists in other areas that you revisit and draw from, and perhaps they impact your songwriting?

MM: I really jump around quite a bit. I would have to say that Neil Young is one definitely that I go back to. There’s a real emotional connection there. I’m always eventually reaching for his CDs again. And authors – let me think. I love a lot of the old American novels, Steinbeck and Salinger, and To Kill a Mockingbird and those great, epic American novels. Those are the closest to my heart. …

CI: One of the standout songs on Victoria Day, from my perspective at least, is ‘Seasoned Lovers’ with Ron Sexsmith. Did you write that with the idea in mind that it would be a duet, or did that come later?

MM: No, no, but the song is actually reminiscent of a Ron Sexsmith song, I think. When we were recording it, it was actually my bass player who said ‘Ron needs to sing on this song’. But it wasn’t written as a duet. So we called him up, and he’s such a sweet guy: ‘oh yeah, okay, no problem, when do you want me there?’

CI: You were born in Chicago and grew up in Burlington, Ontario.

MM: Yeah, I moved here when I was three.

CI: The American feel to some of your songs – is that something that you came to just knowing that you had this connection to the central United States? A song like ‘God Loves Me’ has a real after midnight, slow-cooking vibe.

MM: Lyrically, the stories come from trips that I’ve taken down there. That one in particular was written about the Route 66, which I have driven before – before I went with my mom! Obviously I’m drawn to that part of the world, but stylistically I think it was more just finding my voice, just feeling really comfortable singing those traditional-sounding songs, and it happens to be the traditional American blues and country. I just found that singing that way opened my voice up in a totally new way that I never experienced before. That is what inspired me to write that style of song. Really that just meant kind of paring down the arrangements so it’s just three chords, four chords, or two chords. It doesn’t have to be complicated. And then just focusing on the stories, really trying to build on imagery and create a picture, and that can kind of take over. It doesn’t have to be about this part of the song and that part of the song. Pop music is very structured: there’s the bridge, and everything kind of fits together very nicely. I wanted to move away from that and strip that away, and just make it very simple. Let the instruments and the vocal and the story come to life. I might move away from that at some point, but right now it feels right.

CI: There is one question that I have been trying to ask most of the musicians that I talk to, just because I think it’s an interesting question. It involves the relationship between musicians and radio in this country. When I talked to Joel Plaskett, he expressed his frustration that there was this trend that Canadian radio stations often only play Canadian artists after they have been confirmed as ‘good’ elsewhere. What has your experience been with radio?

MM: My first record was more of a pop record. We actually had songs on there that sounded like singles, and I had one song that was played on top-forty radio quite a bit. There was momentum, but then it just kind of fizzled. Nothing happened. That was my first experience with radio and trying to get a single played. After that, I just kind of thought, you know what? I don’t care. I don’t listen to the radio. And maybe that is a totally bad business move because that is still the way to get known these days. There are a million other ways, but if you want to reach a larger audience, radio is still the way to do it. But I just don’t care. I don’t even think about it. The last two records that I’ve made – there’s nothing on there that you could even attempt to get on the radio. I might want to go down that path again at some point, but right now I just have no interest. I want to build a solid fan base, a real fan base. I find that playing those games can be really exhausting, and it can really take away from the passion of the music. I’m not trying to be all noble or anything, but it’s true! I don’t like playing those games in the industry. They make me feel icky [laughs].

CI: Is it fair to say then that your focus is on trying to make an album that works very much as a whole, even though it may not be particularly consistent in terms of style?

MM: I’m still attached to the idea of an album. I know that’s all changing, but I still can’t really think of another way that I would like to do it. Just doing song by song, that doesn’t feel right – I like the idea of a collection of songs, and the time that you put in to put those together in a certain way. And there’s a flow to it, and the packaging, you know? I’m still very attached to that idea. I know that’s going down the drain, but for now I’ll stay true to that.

CI: After the string of concerts with Justin Rutledge, what’s next on the schedule?

MM: Usually it’s a quiet winter, but Luke and I are going on a cruise. Have you heard of the one with Emmylou Harris [the Cayamo Cruise]? The Barenaked Ladies do an annual cruise, and last year we were one of the artists, as a duo, and Sarah McLachlan was on that, and the Weakerthans, and Sloan. You’re on a boat with these people all week. You finish playing, and you go to the next venue to see Sloan play or whatever. It was a lot of fun for us. We met the people who organize those cruises, and they invited us to do the Emmylou Harris and Lyle Lovett one, which is totally up our alley. That’s our crowd! I’m really excited for that. … It’s mid-February, and we’re going to be dying for some sunlight. It’ll be good. Then in the spring, just more touring, maybe go the States and do some stuff there, and then I’ll start thinking about my next record.

Date of Interview: 11/01/2009
Location: Bad Dog Café, Hamilton, ON
Link: www.melissamcclelland.com