Ready and Willing to Climb – Canadian Interviews

Interview with Oh Susanna

“” A lot of the time the music comes first and then the words come after. It’s something that’s triggered by the music, which makes me think of a word or an image, and then the song grows from there, but yes, I am trying to make things very visual. When I hear words, I see the picture. “”

Soon the Birds is the sixth album from country-folk singer Oh Susanna. Known for crafting insightful tales of lost love and compromised lives, the Toronto-based songwriter has added a darker edge to her lyrics this time around. Listeners will discover an outlaw captured and hung following a murderous rampage, an abandoned mother trying to reconcile her past life with her new task of caring for a baby girl, and a woman attempting to transcend an abusive relationship. Promises are made and broken. Only the slightest slivers of light are permitted to shine through. Each scene seems like part of a larger story, yet what unifies the vignettes is not always clear. A tenuous hopefulness is the sole source of buoyancy.

Born in the United States and raised in Vancouver, Suzie Ungerleider has performed under the name Oh Susanna for fifteen years. While the ins and outs of relationships are foremost in her writing, many of her finest songs feel almost like extensions of forgotten historical events. On Soon the Birds the track ‘By Rope’ takes a snapshot of a young man who leaves behind the poverty of his home to kill and steal on a western train line. The long arm of the law catches up with him in the end: ‘One bright morning fast asleep in bed / One soft voice coos, “Up you sleepy head.” / Two thick barrels pressed against my face / Four strong hands drag me from this place.’

‘By Rope’ is bolstered by the presence of two gifted singers providing harmony vocals: Ruth Moody of the folk trio The Wailin’ Jennys, and Brenley MacEachern of the roots duo Madison Violet. The pair also strengthens ‘So Long’, wherein a woman says goodbye to a disastrous relationship. On these songs – and elsewhere on the record – Bazil Donovan of Blue Rodeo fame plays bass, and one-time Weeping Tile member Cam Giroux handles drums. The musicianship is of high caliber throughout.

The steadfast gloominess of the album is occasionally brightened by a glimpse of the eternal, some feeling for stillness beyond the chaos of time and space. Arguably the high point comes on ‘Millions of Rivers’, the seventh track, where Oh Susanna reaches for a stately kind of country gospel. She delivers a powerful tribute to purposefulness and resilience. ‘Millions of rivers and pines / Mountains that touch the divine / I found a path that is mine / I’m ready and willing to climb.’

Having grown up in the west, Ungerleider maintains that a longing for the landscape of her youth inspired the stirring lyrics. “I come from the West where there are millions of rivers and the pines, and here as well, but there is something about the mountains and the landscape of the West,” the songwriter explains. “I feel homesick for it sometimes. I think I was writing about that. And I love gospel music, the idea of searching for something or overcoming something, which is usually what is in those songs … ‘I was lost, but now I’m found.’”

Toward the end of April 2011, Oh Susanna opened a series of shows in Ontario for Hawksley Workman. Before taking the stage at the Centre in the Square in Kitchener, Suzie Ungerleider chatted with Canadian Interviews about the process of making Soon the Birds. It is intriguing to hear her describe the songwriting process, which for her typically begins with music and the emergence of a word or image. “I’m trying to translate,” she says. “I’m going to make words that make pictures in people’s minds. It’s a weird thing. Do you want to make a movie in someone’s mind with music and words? They could just go see a movie! But there is something about trying to make someone see something, but without the visual stimuli.”

CI: Let me start this way. I always like album cover art. Part of being a little older is still caring about that! Now, there is a bit of a dark streak to the songs, but then on the cover there is a bird and a flower arrangement, and the bird, I think, is a dove. The fellow who designed it, Patrick Duffy – when the two of you spoke about how you wanted the album to look and represent the songs, what was that conversation like?

SU: Well, I had seen these Victorian calling cards somewhere. I don’t know where I got this brainstorm, but I got this idea that I wanted to use those images. So I bought a bunch of these cards and I showed them to him. You can see a lot of images of them on the Internet. I really wanted this kind of image. It’s funny, sometimes I think that, yeah, I have these ideas of how I want the record to look, but does it represent what the music is? In this case, I don’t even think that Patrick listened to the record until last week! I really wanted this idea of the calling card and the birds. What you do is you take the card and you look underneath – there’s usually a little flap or something – and you see the person’s name, the one who is visiting you.

I just liked how nostalgic and graceful it was. A lot of what I’ve done maybe musically and on the record art has been very straightforward and not as delicate as this. I think I wanted something a little more pretty. Also, the whole idea of ‘Soon the Birds’ – of course everyone loves using the bird these days as a graphic element – but in the song there is this feeling of the song as somehow hopeful, but it is a song about passing away. I think that this has that kind of bittersweet, fanciful, fleeting, ephemera kind of feeling. I don’t know if I thought too much about it. I just really liked those images and wanted him to play with them.

CI: In what circumstances would those calling cards have been used?

SU: I had the feeling that, when you go to someone’s house and the butler or whoever comes to the door, you put your card on there and then they bring it to the hostess – I don’t know if this is real! But I think they bring it to them on a little tray, a silver tray, and then the hostess looks – ‘Oh! I’m so happy this person is coming to see me!’ So, I think it was a little bit of presentation.

That’s the other thing about a CD. Now, of course, a lot people don’t do this with CDs, but I like the cover and I like looking at things, and opening it up and having it be this package, like a little gift or something. It literally is sort of a calling card. I just wanted it to have something that people could really feast their eyes on when they got it. I hope that we’ve achieved that.

CI: You mention the title track that closes the album. It seems like an elegy, like a song of mourning, but there is also a hopeful edge to it at the end with the idea of meeting someone in the hereafter. Would you say that it is a spiritual song, driven by that sort of thought?

SU: Yeah, I think so, even though I’m not a religious person, but I find that when people die I have a hard time actually believing that they’re gone. I don’t really believe in heaven per se, but it’s funny – in one part, I go around thinking ‘I don’t believe in those things, those spirits’, and then I find myself actually believing it! … Even though my rational science-minded side is denying it, there is this other part that is actually kind of believing and being more spiritual about it, I guess. Maybe it’s the hope that it isn’t the end, or that there is something that lasts beyond this world.

CI: This comes up often for me in songs, as I listen to new music. I feel this sort of spiritual rush in the lyrics, but I am always a little tentative to ask because sometimes you get people who are very resistant to the idea that there is a religious dimension to it, but they will typically allow that there is a spiritual dimension. The different words mean different things, but I am always sort of stunned when people are so eager to just shut it out …

SU: … I think maybe at the risk of being seen as a conventional religious person because I guess a lot of artists and musicians are rejecting that or trying to find their own way with it, or they don’t want to feel like they’ve been brainwashed, or that they’re going to be pegged as that. I think most people start out wanting to be cool in music, and that’s not very cool, but I think your question is good. I do think people have these ideas, like with the example of myself, where I have these ideas – ‘I don’t believe in this, there’s no such thing as ghosts’ – but then I find myself doing things that make me like, ‘actually, deep down, I probably do believe in this other thing, and I’m not conscious of it or I’m not letting myself explore it.’ Maybe music is the safe way to talk about it. …

CI: There are a couple of songs where Ruth Moody provides harmony vocals. There is one track that I thought felt like a little bit of country gospel, the one called ‘Millions of Rivers’. I thought your voices really worked together effectively in that song. I generally try to avoid asking songwriters what a song means, but often I find it is helpful to ask about the origins. What is the spark that sort of got that one going? It’s the real stunner on the album, I think …

SU: Thank you! Well, that was one of the first ones that I wrote for this round of writing, and I was listening a lot to this woman, Martha Scanlan, who is from Montana. She has one record and I think she’s recording another. She has one record called The West was Burning. It’s a really beautiful album, a lot of songs with that kind of feel on it. I think I was influenced by what she was doing, but also like you said, there is kind of a spiritual element to it as well.

I come from the West where there are millions of rivers and the pines, and here as well, but there is something about the mountains and the landscape of the West. I feel homesick for it sometimes. I think I was writing about that. And I love gospel music, the idea of searching for something or overcoming something, which is usually what is in those songs … ‘I was lost, but now I’m found.’

A little bit of something that is in there, I guess, which wasn’t necessarily explicit, but in Vancouver where I lived as a kid, there is this really seedy side of life there. With the disappearance of the women on the Eastside, actually I went to school with one of the women that had disappeared, and I read a book that her sister wrote about her disappearance, and the police not helping very much, and what it was like to have a sister who had – basically, they were an affluent or middle-class family, and then her sister had sort of gone off and drifted into this world and eventually disappeared. It was this feeling of someone that I knew and had gone to school with, and though the song isn’t really about her, there is something about the hope of overcoming something like that. She didn’t, but there is just something about that side of life and trying to get out of it.

CI: Was that in connection with Robert Pickton, the serial killer?

SU: Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Sometimes when I write stuff there are many different stories that I’m thinking about, but that one was in my mind when I was writing that song. Not from the beginning to the end, but I think there is something about it. I was thinking about writing more explicitly about that, but in the end I didn’t – but there is some echo of it in there.

CI: And Martha Scanlan – she’s from Montana? Have you ever done that drive through there?

SU: She’s from Montana, yeah. I’ve just driven sort of in the north part, but I would love to go back there. She lives on a ranch or works on a ranch or something, and she is sort of connected with this band called Ollabelle. You should listen to her record. It’s really good. A lot of people don’t know about her, but she’s really great. I came across her at the Ottawa Folk Festival.

CI: On a couple other tracks Ruth is there adding vocals with Brenley MacEachern, and combined with your voice, the textures are interesting. On the song ‘By Rope’, which is sort of a dark tale, I thought maybe you could just talk a little bit about the process of balancing the three voices on that song and what the discussions were like among the three of you when you were trying to get that song the way you wanted.

SU: You know what? I think what started with ‘By Rope’ is that I just sang it and then I could hear a harmony on it. Then Ruth, who is a brilliant singer and songwriter, luckily her partner [David Travers-Smith] is the producer of this record! So I would sort of say, ‘can you get Ruth to sing something on here?’ And she wasn’t always there because she works a lot. She does stuff with The Wailin’ Jennys and her own music. So when her stuff was done, I wasn’t there. David was guiding that, and also Ruth probably, herself. She’s so used to harmonizing with two other women – that’s what’s really cool. I’m not used to that, but she does it so easily.

Then Brenley I thought of later because I wanted this kind of textured, husky voice for that other song, ‘So Long’, just this really gravelly voice because I thought that would add this texture that was sort of the mood of the song. I guess we just thought, ‘maybe she could do a part on ‘By Rope’ as well.’

So I would love to say that we were all there singing it together because that just looks like a nice, cool thing, but we actually did it all at separate times. I was there when Brenley did her part, and that was neat, but I wasn’t there when Ruth did her stuff. Actually, it was neat – you know, you go away and then come back, and you get to hear these nice surprises!

CI: You mention ‘So Long’, which is a story of domestic abuse, really.

SU: I guess. That’s what people are saying. I never really saw it so much like that. Of course there is abuse going on, but I think anybody who has seen or been in that situation where you’re just with this person – you’ve got to kick them out or you’ve got to run away!

It was interesting. I was singing these songs at the Dakota Tavern in Toronto before the record came out. This woman said ‘oh, I particularly like that song because my husband’s a drunk!’ I was like ‘wow, this song is very much for you …’

CI: Well, I thought it was interesting because so often when you encounter that situation in film or television or in a book even, the thrust is usually the question of will the woman leave or not, will she throw him out or not – how long is this going to take? In the song you started beyond that point. She’s already gone. As you wrote the song, were you thinking of how to approach this from a slightly different direction to keep it out of a familiar pattern?

SU: No, I think with this song I was drawing upon my own experiences, not so literally, but also friends of mine who have been stuck in these things and finally are just like, ‘I’m so done with this’ … but you can still hear the love for the person! That’s the thing. It’s not all one way. The hate comes from this extreme fall from grace, this fall from love and hope; it’s worse than the indifference …

It’s not a very unique story, which is too bad, but I kind of wanted one of those songs. Also, I was thinking a lot about Shelby Lynne when I wrote that. I wanted to write a song that she would sing! That’s kind of the voice. My voice isn’t totally right for it. I need this other voice in there, this kind of soulful, country thing that Shelby Lynne does so well. I think I was thinking of that kind of character.

CI: As always, it’s nice to hear Jim Cuddy here on the song ‘Lucky Ones’. Is that a song that you wrote with him in mind?

SU: I kind of did! Halfway through writing it I thought ‘oh yeah, Jim really should sing this song with me.’ He’s also got that country-soul thing. And the other thing about Jim is that he’s sort of this icon of the ideal man, right? He’s Mr. Perfect in some ways. That’s his image. I don’t know if he cultivates that necessarily, but that’s how he comes across, I think, when we watch him on stage. … His voice is the first thing! I’ve sung with him a bunch of times. ‘Try’ is a great soul song, and we’ve done songs together … sort of those sad, soul, country-ish songs. So his voice was the first thing, but there is something about him also that kind of works with the song.

The song is about appearances and how they deceive you – again, hope has disintegrated into this despair. His voice can achieve that, hope and despair at the same time, but also his image of someone who looks so great all the time – even as he ages, it’s kind of a Robert Redford thing, or a Clint Eastwood thing, where the age doesn’t matter; it actually adds more character. He is sort of this classic man. So the song is, again, not a very original story, a story that’s told in song again and again where people look at you and think you’re the ideal couple or the ideal people together, but really it’s not that way. That’s almost more painful, when the appearance and the reality are so far apart – that’s more painful than simply just thinking ‘oh, this isn’t going well.’

CI: This may be an odd question, but as I listened to the album a number of times, many of the songs have a female narrator, and after a while the songs felt sort of like snapshots, a series of scenes in a film or something. There is a coherency to the scenes, although I’m not quite sure how to identify the heart of it. I wonder if maybe there was a book or a film that influenced you, one that had a measurable impact on how you wrote the songs – if there was something visual that stimulated your writing.

SU: Sometimes there is. Some of these stories just spring to mind because of the music putting the ideas in my brain, and then some of them are things that people told me about their lives and I wrote it into the songs, like ‘Long Black Train’ – it’s not from a visual experience but from a story of a woman’s life, who I met. And ‘By Rope’, I just love those kinds of folk songs where the protagonist is doomed, and the sort of outlaw tale. So it’s not so much where I immediately saw something and then I wrote about something, but I do think a lot of it has to do with visualization.

A lot of the time the music comes first and then the words come after. It’s something that’s triggered by the music, which makes me think of a word or an image, and then the song grows from there, but yes, I am trying to make things very visual. When I hear words, I see the picture. I think most people do that. From a young age I would notice that – ‘oh, I had this really clear photograph in my brain because somebody said these words.’ So I think I’m doing it the other way around. I’m trying to translate. I’m going to make words that make pictures in people’s minds. It’s a weird thing. Do you want to make a movie in someone’s mind with music and words? They could just go see a movie! But there is something about trying to make someone see something, but without the visual stimuli. …

CI: Just the last question, since you are doing a number of shows with Hawksley Workman. Have you done much with him in the past?

SU: No, but we know each other.

CI: What is your relationship with the man and with the music? He’s one of those guys that, to me, is just a tremendous artist, and occasionally he seems to fly a little bit under the radar but I find that many people have a profound connection with some of his songs.

SU: Yeah, I think with him, I don’t know … I think he’s a very interesting person and musician. He can wear so many hats. He’s a producer, a writer, a performer – mostly his performance, I guess, is what’s drawn me to him. I saw him a long time ago. Talk about under the radar!

I saw two gigs: one was him at this place called Van Gogh’s Ear in Guelph, and hardly anyone was there. I don’t even know why I was there! I happened to be in Guelph for some reason, but I don’t know why. He did this performance that was so theatrical and so incredible! And his voice is so amazing. So here he is in this weird kind of restaurant-bar place, doing a performance that was very cabaret but he has none of the props, nothing around him, but he’s still doing it! I thought ‘wow, that is ballsy.’ I was really taken with it. Then I saw him a few years later and he had become more famous. It was in Toronto at The Phoenix. He had this whole red velvet thing with all this stuff protruding everywhere. I think he made all this huge set! Again, he’s doing this theatrical stuff, he had a band, and his voice was going everywhere. It was the same stuff but in the right place, finally. It was stunning.

I’ve mostly seen him since at folk festivals, and again, there’re no props and nothing around him. There are just these silly little stages that they build out in a park somewhere, but that he can bring people together in this way and be so theatrical, but in this good-humoured, positive way … I don’t know. Mostly it’s the theatricality and the vocals. For me, the voice is just amazing. I love watching him. Being able to be on tour and do these shows with him, I’m feeling very lucky to do that.

Oh Susanna toured with Hawksley Workman early in spring 2011. She is now set to hit the road with Matthew Barber on the He Said She Said tour.

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