Jun. 17, 2009 - Issue #713: Works It
Jenn Grant
Messed up: Grant gets paint all over, but keeps her songs tidy
But she played a gig at her old PEI elementary school last week, and it happened. A couple of wide-eyed young girls asked her if she was on that "horse show."
"I was, like, yes, and I was, like, that's really cute," she laughs. "There's a lot of really cute, little girls who watch that show, and sometimes I get emails from them."
Although, the similarity between Grant and those tween idols pretty much ends there, especially when you take into consideration the honest and organic quality of her second full-length, Echoes, released last February. While her 2007 Orchestras for the Moon was a little piece of magic, with its six-month recording process and numerous collaborations with the likes of Ron Sexsmith, Matt Mays and Jill Barber, it was also quite the production in comparison.
For Echoes, Grant wanted something a little different. So she, her band—Sean MacGillvray, Dave Christensen, Kinley Dowling, Gary Craig—and her friend Rose Cousins holed up on Puck's Farm north of Toronto with producer Jonathan Goldsmith (Bruce Cockburn) and recorded live-off-the-floor in analogue.
"Since Orchestra for the Moon came out, we've been with those guys and we were really comfortable. We were comfortable enough with each other that we could play it live and try to mix it up, kind of on the spot," she says from a hotel room in Guelph. "The record is definitely more cohesive—where maybe it doesn't feel like there are a lot of 'stand-out hits,' but I feel like it sounds more like an album that you would listen to. I did want to make some music that was going back to a kind of classic recording style and get that kind of warm sound—that was my goal."
Echoes also marks the Halifax resident's first recording for Toronto's Six Shooter Records, and when you take in the label's motto ("Life's too short to listen to shitty music") and roster—from Hawksley Workman to Christine Fellows—it's the perfect match.
"They're really supportive and awesome," she says. "They wanted [Echoes] to be an analogue record and for it to be, like, around animals and outside because they knew that I was like that—so, they're pretty great."
Although Grant has never worried too much about the business side of things ("There's a lot of business, I've noticed. But mostly other people do it"), with the label situation ideal, she can be left to her own creative devices, which includes her fallback career, painting. Not only has Grant provided the art for her own albums, but she also has commissions.
"I have a bunch right now, which I find slightly overwhelming, because I ... don't have time to do it," Grant says. "I find it way harder to make paintings. Because you have to dedicate a big chunk of time to it and change your clothes, because I'm really messy; I always get paint on my clothes. And then I want to have the light a certain way, I want to have space around me, and get all of these things out. And then writing a song, I can just sit down, maybe I'll write one in 10 minutes and it's done. And I don't have to change my clothes or do anything, and it doesn't matter what the light is like either. Mostly.
"I'm writing a lot of new stuff, now—sort of happier songs, higher energy," she adds, almost apologetically. "And I'm doing some co-writing with Buck 65, and that's fun. Hopefully this will pan out." V
Wed, Jun 24 (7 pm)
Jenn Grant
With Dan Mangan
Haven Social Club
New comments for this entry have been turned off and any existing ones are hidden. We apologize for any inconvenience.