Jenn Grant

Going Far

There were surprises in store for those who attended a recent performance by Jenn Grant at the Sydenham Street United Church in Kingston, Ontario. First, her ethereal voice matched well the unique space of the church sanctuary. The Halifax resident played eight songs, including four from her most recent album, Echoes. Released in February 2009 by Six Shooter Records, the collection of thirteen songs has moved Grant several rungs up the ladder in Canadian music, and she has toured steadily throughout the year to promote it. Her voice is the main feature on the recording. It often conveys a sense of raw emotional displacement, particularly apparent in the soft-driving contemplation of the second track, ‘You’ll Go Far’, or in the melancholy folk of ‘Where Are You Now’. Her voice breaks apart and repairs itself over and over again on Echoes, mirroring the cycle of enthusiasm and regret that plays out in many of her lyrics. Asked whether the stress points and accents of her vocals are planned or simply instinctual, Grant smiles and replies, “It’s instinctual, for sure.”

In the Sydenham Church, Grant opened the show with ‘Where Are You Now’, her voice floating from the front of the chancel into the upper reaches of the building. It was a haunting sound. The audience listened attentively and quietly. A quick glance revealed smiles of understanding and appreciation on the faces of many in the audience. Built in 1852, the church itself is a compelling if imperfect live music venue. The sanctuary has a number of unique features: curved pews atop tiers on the main floor, and a double-curved balcony added in 1887 held up by both wood and steel posts. At first Grant and violinist Kinley Dowling seemed a bit pinched with amplifiers in front of them and choir stalls behind them, but gradually their comfort level seemed to increase as they settled into the evening. Grant joked with the audience and offered snippets of information on the songs, introducing ‘You’ll Go Far’ by saying that it was written in England ‘when she ran away from home’, and mentioning that ‘(I’ve Got) The Two of You’ was written for her parents.



Another source of pleasure for the audience was an appearance by Canadian music legend Bruce Cockburn. He played a quick set in support of the initiatives of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, an environmental group that served as a partner in presenting the show at the church. The goal of the group is ‘to restore and protect Lake Ontario’s natural resources, as well as contribute to its aesthetic, social recreational and economic values’. Cockburn performed ‘Lovers in a Dangerous Time’, ‘Waiting for a Miracle’, and ‘If a Tree Falls’, showcasing his masterful guitar work. He returned later to accompany Grant on her closing number, ‘Dreamer’, from her 2006 release Orchestra for the Moon. Quite a punctuation mark to the evening!

A few hours before taking the stage, Jenn Grant sat down on one of the hard wooden pews in the Sydenham Street Church to talk about Echoes, her recent travels, and the relationship between her music and her painting. It is clear that she does not particularly enjoy discussing the songwriting process or the finished product, but she is a good sport, alternately joking and considering each question carefully. It is interesting to speak with a musician several months past the first rush of publicity for an album, and having the opportunity to ask how things have gone. Here is an interview with a recording artist coming off her strongest album to date, and beginning to think about what direction her music will take next.

CI: The Sydenham Street Church here in Kingston is an interesting venue. How much control do you have over the selection of venues these days? Do you try always to find these interesting spaces?

JG: I don’t really do that much. I just hope that they’re nice venues. Our booking agent does that. The venues are getting nicer, better than the alley where I used to drink when I was seventeen and played for my friends -- a little bit different than that alley [laughs].

CI: As you’ve made your way around the country a little bit, do you have a few favourite venues to play?

JG: Yeah, the Blacksheep Inn I always enjoy, in Wakefield [Quebec], and the Trailside Inn in Mount Stewart, PEI. There’s got to be some places out west that I can’t think of, but we haven’t done tons of stuff out west either. I played in a church with Hayden, but I can’t remember what it’s called – that was good. What else? The Company House in Halifax is a place that our friends run, which is great, not just because our friends run it. It’s a great music venue. It’s new. But there are some old places that shut down: the Marquee is not the same anymore, and the Khyber Club in Halifax. That’s all I can think of right now. I kind of like intimate places, even if they’re big, if they have an intimacy – it just depends on the night.

CI: On Echoes your artwork appears on the cover. I am always curious about the relationship between the different arts. Do you find that painting stimulates songwriting, and vice versa? Does one drive the other a bit?

JG: Right now I’m just sort of entering the writing stage for the next record, and I start to think about images that would go with that, what sort of album art would go with that. So in that way, it does. I connect them because I find that they’re both colourful mediums. The way that I approach songwriting and painting is very similar, kind of a free-spirited, see-where-it-takes-you kind of thing. But they are still pretty separate. It’s easier for me to write than it is to paint because in painting you have to commit yourself to a couple of hours of getting paint all over your clothes and putting stains on the floor. With singing and writing music, I can kind of do it for twenty-minute intervals whenever I feel like it. …

CI: Are you patient when you’re painting? When you start one, do you have to get it done all in one shot, or can you let something linger for days and days?

JG: Sometimes it takes six months! So yeah, definitely …

CI: You went to art school.

JG: I have a fine arts degree from NSCAD, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, except now it’s called NSCADU, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. …

CI: Was there a particular artist or group of artists that you studied that have really impacted your own painting?

JG: I really like a lot of artists, but Willem de Kooning – I really enjoy drawing, and I kind of find I’m not really a painter, even though I use paint. I’m kind of a drawer, or a sculptor or something. Willem de Kooning is probably my favourite artist, I guess, but there are lots of cool artists.

CI: One of the things that I noticed when listening to Echoes, especially on a song like ‘You’ll Go Far’, is that there are really great bass lines, and your voice plays against them well. When you were writing the songs and thinking about how to put them together, is that something that you thought about, the way that the bass lines work with your voice?

JG: Not really. Sean plays bass, and David plays bass clarinet [Sean MacGillivray and David Christensen]. I’ve been playing with the same people for years now. The way that we write songs is that I write the skeleton of the song, the guitar and lyrics, and then everyone comes in and does what they do best. It works out that way. For the next record, I’m kind of thinking a bit more about production, being more a part of it. Maybe now I will be thinking about it more.

CI: There has been quite a bit of traveling for you since Echoes came out. As you are thinking about the next album, and traveling around and writing, are you putting whole songs together, or is it more just a process of collecting ideas that you return to later to flesh out?

JG: Usually I do whole songs, but for this one I’ve been doing parts of songs. I think it’s probably because I have two people that I live with – maybe that’s the reason why, because I’m not alone as much. So I do a bit of a song and then I leave it, but it’s kind of a new and interesting approach. I also have whole songs, but some are just parts of songs. I’ve got a bunch of songs – some of them are good, some of them are bad – we’ll see what happens! I might only record the bad ones.

CI: Only the bad ones?

JG: Just to see what happens, to hear what people say [laughs].

CI: You grew up in PEI. What music was in the home when you were young?

JG: Willie Nelson, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Neil Young, Nana Mouskouri, Anne Murray, Frank Sinatra; there was a lot of music, a lot of diversity in what my parents listened to.

CI: In a number of the articles written about you that I have come across, there is mention of how you had a bit of stage fright when you were younger, which you had to overcome.

JG: That is true.

CI: When you are putting an album together, is there any similar feeling when you get to the release date, and you think ‘oh God, here I go’?

JG: No, I really like all that stuff now. I don’t feel nervous before putting out records or anything, just a little excited, just like I want to get it done faster. As I grow up as an artist, I’m feeling a little bit more patient. It doesn’t have to be right away. After we put out Orchestra for the Moon, I think I wanted to make another record right away, but now I’m just seeing how it works. …

CI: What sort of requirements does Six Shooter Records give you? Do they ask for a certain number of albums in a certain amount of time, or is it fairly open?

JG: I have a three-album deal with them. Echoes is the first one. I have two more to do with Six Shooter. They’re really great. Hopefully we’ll do lots.

CI: Is it flexible in terms of timing?

JG: I think so. I don’t think they have to worry about that with me because I try to do one right away. They have to make me wait a bit. They’re pretty flexible and really into what the artist is doing creatively, letting the artist be an artist. They don’t try to fit you into any kind of mold, so that’s what’s nice about them.

CI: There are two covers on the album, including ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’, the Neil Young song. What did you hear in the original song that made you think you could bring something new to it, or was it more just that it fit with the other songs?

JG: We were interested in doing one cover. The second cover [of ‘I’ll See You Again’ by Noel Coward] is just a piece of a song, a little thing that I did with my dad, a little thing. But we just wanted to think of a song that fit thematically, and that one [‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’] does. It’s a song that I’ve always liked - and loved. I didn’t know how it would transcend, I guess, if I did it, but when I was singing it, it just developed in its own way. Then we just press record.

CI: In the summer in Vancouver I did a little interview with Tony Dekker of Great Lake Swimmers.

JG: Oh yeah? He’s a handsome man.

CI: Well, their recent album [Lost Channels] they recorded down here at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, and I asked him if he was trying to cultivate a sound fitted to the region – because it sounds very unique. He said that he hoped that there was more than that going on, but he was happy when people said that it fit into the tradition of Canadian music. For you growing up out east, did you have a sense of what constituted Canadian music, and were you attracted to anything on those grounds?

JG: I think as I appreciate where I’m from, and the landscape of Canada and the east coast, I am just now understanding what kind of music relates to that. There’s a lot of false pretences about what Maritime music means. It’s not all fiddles and fiddles down there, unless you go to our family’s houses or something [laughs]. But yeah, growing up I didn’t really know about that, but now I do. It’s a nice thing to want to explore that a bit more.

CI: I ask the question because a couple of weeks ago I did an interview with Jason Schneider, the music journalist. He wrote a book called Whispering Pines, which is about the influence of Canadian artists on North American music. Some of the people that we think of as foundational Canadian artists in rock music, when they were younger - Robbie Robertson, for example - thought that there was no Canadian music, that it was all just part of North American music. I have found that, with the next generation, there is a greater awareness of what is Canadian music, particularly in consideration of The Band and Neil Young and artists like that. Would you say that is fair?

JG: I hope so. We listen to tons of Canadian music. We also listen to a lot of North American music and stuff, but we’re big fans of all the cool bands in Canada, and singer-songwriters. But I’m not sure what it’s like for everyone else. I don’t know what people in, like, Ireland think, if they really know. It depends who you ask, I guess. My boyfriend was saying the other day that they were playing in Ireland, and this girl was like ‘oh, I don’t know any Canadian bands except for Nickelback and Céline Dion’, which I think are the two artists who are mainstream and that people outside of Canada know, if you’re only listening to really mainstream stuff. But then the girl listed all the American bands that she liked, and she was listing Arcade Fire, and I forget who else – but they were all Canadian! That’s why I’m not sure if people really know. But I think it depends. If you’re a musician, you’re probably more interested, or if you really love music, you’re more interested.

Date of Interview: 11/21/2009
Location: Sydenham Street United Church, Kingston, ON
Link: www.jenngrant.com