Justin Rutledge

Pause on the Stair

Justin Rutledge turned to some heavyweight talent when making his fourth album, The Early Widows, and the outcome is intriguing.

Acting as his own producer on three previous outings, the Toronto-based musician sensed this time around that he needed another perspective. He turned to none other than Hawksley Workman, the talented performer who has produced albums for a diverse group of artists including Great Big Sea, Tegan & Sara, and Hey Rosetta! The result is often a fuller sound than what Rutledge has turned up in the past, most notably on the dramatic eighth track, ‘Snowmen’, which he acknowledges tested the spirit of compromise in the studio. It stands as a real anomaly in his song catalogue.

‘Snowmen’ is actually an older number, one that the Six Shooter Records artist has been toying with for a few years. In December 2007 he performed the song during a concert at the Enwave Theatre in Toronto, which proved most fortunate. Famed Canadian author Michael Ondaatje happened to be in the audience that night, and something moved him. As Rutledge relates, “I just played it acoustically, but he really, really liked it.” Ondaatje saw some similarity between the musician on stage and a character from his 2007 novel Divisadero. The two met after the show, and within a short time the author asked Rutledge if he would write music for When My Name Was Anna, a stage adaptation of Divisadero set to debut early in 2011.

No doubt the attention from Ondaatje helped boost the young songwriter’s confidence, and their working relationship has been beneficial in unexpected ways. When Rutledge toiled away at the lyrics for ‘Be A Man’, the opening track on The Early Widows, he got stuck. For help he turned to Ondaatje. The writer offered advice on several pieces, and contributed the following line to ‘Be A Man’: ‘I am a pause in a storm on a dark stair whenever your name is spoken’. It is a subtle offering, and the elliptical narrative of the song builds from it.



Justin Rutledge took the stage recently at Aeolian Hall in London, Ontario to showcase his latest material. Highlights from The Early Widows included ‘Be A Man’, ‘Mrs. Montgomery’ and ‘The Heart of a River’. Between the songs Rutledge showed himself to be an amusing host. He introduced a number from his 2006 album, The Devil on a Bench in Stanley Park, as from his ‘Juno-losing’ album. He also took time to assure the audience, following a memory lapse or two, that he was not high. The crowd laughed along and was rewarded by a few gems off Man Descending, his terrific 2008 release, most memorably ‘San Sebastian’ and ‘A Penny for the Band’.

 

Before the concert, Rutledge spent a few moments backstage to talk about the cover artwork for The Early Widows, the influence of Hawksley Workman, and missed opportunities inherent to his songwriting process. He discusses the origins of ‘I Have Not Seen the Light’, perhaps the most insightful moment on his new album, which was co-written with American songwriter Darrell Scott.

The conversation closes with Rutledge contemplating his newest challenge: the small acting role that he has assumed in When My Name Was Anna.

CI: Let me start just by judging an album by the cover. This is a piece of art by Stewart Jones. I’ve noticed his work on a couple of other albums.

JR: Cuff the Duke – he’s done a couple of their albums. He’s done a Sarah Harmer album. He and I got to know each other and whatnot, and I actually have a couple of his paintings. I really love looking at visuals. It’s kind of my favourite part of making an album, figuring out what the hell it’s going to look like and how to convey the essence of the record through the initial visualization of it, if you will.

I thought Stewart was the guy for the job. We get along really well, so we met up a few times over the winter. We started doing some diagrams. I wanted three ships, really bleak, and one of them on fire in the background. There is a – I wouldn’t say a nautical theme to the record, but there is a lot of water imagery, more so than on the previous records. But it doesn’t really look like water. It looks like burnt blood.



CI: What I found interesting is that, when you open the album, there are quite different illustrations …

JR: My cousin did those. She’s a really fantastic artist. It doesn’t even look like a painting. She actually passed a way about four years ago in a car accident. I’ve always wanted to use that piece of hers, and it just so happened that the title synched up nicely with it.

CI: Lolo Dahl is her name.

JR: Yeah …

CI: Well, it just struck me that the cover has a definite aesthetic feel, and the images inside are quite different. Was it just that you wanted to work it all together, or did you like the idea of trying to bring people gradually into the environment of the songs?

JR: It goes with the title, The Early Widows. I guess that idea always reminded me of, obviously, women widowed early in their lives, but as I read a lot of older novels, I encountered it in situations where women were married and then their husbands were off to sea or off to war, and just never came home. So these images are very reminiscent of a period, and there is a compass in there. I think the three images together, the inside art, the compass, and the ships at sea – they all come together in one idea, at least in my mind. I don’t think they’re too far from each other.

CI: In most of the articles that I’ve come across recently, there has been quite a bit of attention paid to the fact that Hawksley Workman produced the album. Instead of getting into the dynamic between the two of you, which I think has been addressed elsewhere, I thought I might ask about the other albums that he has produced. There are some really good ones. Are there a few that you heard that led you to think that he was the guy who could help you to alter your sound slightly for this album?

JR: Not really. I’m not very familiar with what he’s done recently. I’m only familiar with his stuff. Aside from what I hear on the radio, I am really not familiar with – are you talking about Jeremy Fisher and Tegan & Sara …

CI: Yeah, Tegan & Sara and Hey Rosetta! – that’s a favourite of mine that he did a couple of years ago.

JR: Yeah, Hey Rosetta! – I know that, but I wasn’t looking for that sound because I think Hawksley is someone who addresses things accordingly. He’s not going to produce my material the way he would produce Tegan & Sara or Hey Rosetta! It’s a very relative process for him. To answer your question, I never said to him ‘hey, could we do something that sounds like this or that?’ There was no talk like that.

CI: From what I gather, the main thing that he told you was to put down the acoustic guitar and pick up the electric. On a number of songs, ‘Be A Man’ and ‘The Heart of A River’ especially, there is a more driving rock feel. In the live performances, are you sticking close to the arrangements that listeners will be accustomed to from the album, or are you expanding them?

JR: We’re expanding it a bit, but we haven’t really played it a lot yet. Once we get comfortable with the material, we can diverge a bit. For now we’re trying to keep it pretty close to the record. Once the songs are second nature to us, we can do with them what we want. We usually do, anyway, as a band. A lot of our older songs don’t really sound live like they do on the record. Sometimes I’ll return to a song and think, ‘oh, that’s how I did it’.

CI: So you subscribe a little bit to the Bob Dylan theory of reinventing the songs as you go from show to show?

JR: Well, yeah. I think a song is always changing. My songs, I play them solo, I play them with a band, I play them with different arrangements and orchestrations – so I think what’s important, if you’re playing a particular song for a long time, is to keep it interesting not only for the audience but for yourself as well. Changing up the arrangements isn’t just for changing up the arrangement’s sake. It adds a little variety to the show: what was once a really slow song, speed it up! Just keep things interesting, and see what environment the songs work best in.

 
On June 3, 2010 Justin Rutledge performed at Aeolian Hall in London, Ontario. Photo Credit: David Irvine Photography.

CI: There are ten songs on the album. Right in the middle is a song called ‘I Have Not Seen The Light’, one that you co-wrote with Darrell Scott. For what it is worth, that’s my favourite track on the album. It struck me as a flirtation with faith, at least thinking about what that is. Given that it is right at the centre of the album, I was wondering if, when you sequenced the record, you wanted that song to be the heart of it.

JR: I see what you’re saying. It’s funny that you mention that. I guess the answer would be no, I didn’t intend for that to go there, but that being said, I’m happy that it ended up there. It seems to divide the two sections of the record, and I do think it’s a very good song! It challenges the old idiom about country music – you know, ‘I saw the light’, the old Hank Williams thing. Country music has changed so much. It’s a little bit of a commentary. That song – it was a really interesting experience writing that song with Darrell in Nashville. He’s a really great writer. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his other stuff. There’s a great song called ‘You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive’. He’s from Kentucky. That’s probably his most famous song. If you Google his name, that one will probably come up. A lot of people have covered that song.

So I was happy that song ended up there. I think that sequencing is very important. I’ve always written long albums. We cut two songs. Initially the album was about an hour and ten minutes, and we cut two songs. But I am very happy that that one ended up right in the middle, for some reason.

CI: Of all the songs the one that stands out as maybe the most ambitious is ‘Snowmen’. Perhaps you could give a little background on how that song came together in the studio because there are a lot of different elements at work there with the choir and just the structure of that song. Was it difficult to get that one how you wanted?

JR: Well, that was an older song. I wrote that one when I was twenty-one, so about ten years ago, and I came back to it. I was just playing around with it a couple of years ago, and Michael Ondaatje heard it. I played it at this thing at the Harbourfront Centre. I just played it acoustically, but he really, really liked it. I thought maybe I should readdress it. So I did. I changed quite a few things here and there lyrically.

When we went to do some pre-production of the record, we just played it bigger. It was actually Bazil Donovan’s idea to have that big build at the beginning. Musically it’s called a ‘scrub’. Usually you end songs with it. Bands will hit that at the end. He said, ‘let’s start with a scrub and go right down to nothing.’

The arrangement just kind of came together. I had an idea to have it just big at the centre, and the smallest part at the end. We played around with Hawksley. It just seemed the best way to do it, as opposed to just ramping up, up, up – we thought it was better to ramp up and then go right down for the rest of the song. I can’t remember how that came about! But it was Hawksley’s idea to do that Pink Floyd moment in the middle. I kind of wanted it gone to be honest with you. I told him that everyone is going to say that it sounds like ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’. He was like, ‘who cares?’ I thought ‘well, I do.’ Of course now everybody is writing how it sounds a little like ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’. That’s the only negative comment that I’ve really read about the record! It’s one of those ‘I told you so’ moments, but I don’t care, really. I kind of do and I kind of don’t. What are you going to do? This is my first time working with a producer, so you compromise sometimes.

CI: You mentioned Michael Ondaatje having heard ‘Snowmen’, and he helped to write the song ‘Be A Man’ on The Early Widows. I was amused to hear the story of you going to see him – it almost seems like an image drawn from a film or something with you running over to see him, holding papers, looking for some help with the lyrics for the song – but I’m guessing typically that is not the way in which you write songs, trying to find someone to help out. What is typical? Is it quiet reflection at home? Do you write on the road?

JR: Not really. I just always write. For example, driving here today, I can pretty much work in my head. I don’t have to go away somewhere and be all precious with myself, wallowing in whatever it’s popular to wallow in these days!

I don’t have any fundamental process. I’m just always writing. People will say ‘you’ve put out four albums in six years – how do you do that?’ I always have songs on the go. I don’t make a record, stop, work it for two years, and then go off to start writing another record again. For me the most creative time is when we’re in the studio recording, just during that whole process of making a record. While we were in the studio recording songs for this album, it revs me up creatively and I start writing other ones. By the time we finished The Early Widows, I’ve got seven songs - new songs - ready to go. In about a year and a half when we get to record again, I’ll have eighteen songs ready to go, and so on and so forth. Some of my albums piggyback on each other. I’m just always working at it. I don’t have a notebook or anything. I don’t write anything down. My girlfriend gets really upset about that! We’ll be sitting on the couch, watching TV and just playing a tune. She’ll say, ‘what is that?’ I’ll say, ‘I don’t know, but I kind of like it’. The next day she’ll ask me to play it again, and I’ll forget it! So again, I’m not saying that I’m a prolific writer, but I’m saying that maybe I should be a little more responsible.

CI: That’s interesting. Sometimes I ask that question about the typical circumstances for songwriting, and there are people who are very cut and dried: when the album is done, they are travelling, and there is no writing involved. I was here in this venue a couple of months ago talking to Taylor Kirk of Timber Timbre. He said that, when he’s travelling, he doesn’t write anything. Then I remember speaking to Tony Dekker, who said the opposite, that whenever it happens he has to be open to it or else he loses it. It’s always interesting to get that window into the processes of different writers.

JR: Yeah, I’ve spoken to Tony about that. He’s been very serious about his writing, which is a great thing to do. Maybe I should just take myself more seriously. I’m kind of afraid what would happen. I would probably get more done if I did.

CI: Last thing that I wanted to touch on about you and Michael Ondaatje: the two of you are working on a theatre project, When My Name Was Anna, an adaptation of his book Divisadero. From what I understand, you will be taking on an acting role of some sort. Is there any nervousness for you in stepping outside your comfort zone?

JR: It’s a little weird. You’re right. I was hesitant at first to accept it, partially because for the past ten years I’ve been having a recurring dream. It’s the only bad dream that I have. Well, maybe it’s a nightmare. I don’t know. In my dream I’m in this play, and it’s opening night. I don’t know my lines. I haven’t even bothered to learn them. I’m reading them in the dressing room and thinking ‘how am I going to remember this?’ Then it’s curtain call. That’s where the dream ends.

When I was asked to act in this play, I thought ‘well, maybe this is it.’ I would always wake up from that awful dream and think ‘ah fuck, thank God I’m not an actor!’ When Michael asked me to do this, I thought Jesus. We had to do three preview shows and I had all these lines. It was really daunting, actually much scarier than playing music. It’s a very weird thing to do, act, and I don’t know if I’m very good at it. I don’t think I am.

We did some preview shows in November. We’re working with some great names in the theatre world, and they’re very busy. I’m the only one that’s really free most of the time! They send us availability dates, and I just say ‘anytime’.

Date of Interview: 06/03/2010
Location: Aeolian Hall, London, ON
Link: www.justinrutledge.com