Week of October 15, 2009, Issue #730
MUSIC
Amy Millan
Just for laughs: Amy Millan says you've got to have fun on the road
Carolyn Nikodym / carolyn@vueweekly.com
Amy Millan's latest solo album, Masters of the Burial, is a record for chilly nights and warm red wine. It's a collection of songs to scratch at the places we've hidden our transgressions and embarrassments, to find them still there, but in a safer place.
"I tried to dedicate myself to the gentle," she explains. "With the last record, a lot of the songs I had written pre-Stars and Broken Social Scene, so I had this urge to incorporate pop music with the softer side of the acoustic. And because I have the ability to scratch the itch of pop music with the two other outfits that I am a part of, I was able to say, all 11 songs are going to be the approach of pure softness."
With a second album under her belt, the surprise of Millan's country-tinged music has made way for real acceptance. Her brand of toxic roots is no schtick. She embraces it in both her own compositions and covers of musicians she respects, like Jenny Whitely, Sarah Harmer and Death Cab's Ben Gibbard.
"I didn't really think of covers as something that was away from the genre that I'm in, with the toxic roots that I'm doing," she says. "The tradition of folk music, country music, the people who sing it, when they put out records, they put out songs from the past, or songs from their friends. And so to me, I'm just continuing on something that seems very natural. Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Steve Earle, George Jones, Townes Van Zandt Emmylou Harris ... I could go on and on and on, really.
"It's always the fact that you wish you'd written it, and you haven't, so you basically just adopt it as your own and have the joy of being able to sing it every night," she adds. "I think the Richard Hawley melody is just one of the most exquisite melodies ever written, and of course, the Death Cab song makes my mom cry every time she hears it—what's better than that?"
There is also the fact that her work with Stars and Broken Social Scene keeps a tight rein on her time, and when she writes for herself, compositions start alone with her guitar—moments not terribly easy to come by.
While Millan and the other Stars have been in studio with a new album, she's taking some time to hit the road in support of Masters of the Burial. It helps that she gets a lot of support from her fellow musicians (some even guest on Masters), and it's a short tour in the context of some of the monster cross-continent treks the Montréal band has made over the last handful of years.
"It's quieted down for the first time in about four years. I can feel my toes again," she says. "It helps that I have a great group of people who I really love and who make me laugh everyday. So the whole thing about being hilarious is really important. Like if you're touring with curmudgeons, I urge you to get off the road and meet some people who make you laugh—because it's really the only way to get through it." V
Wed, Oct 21 (7 pm)
Amy Millan
Horowitz Theatre, $17.50
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