|
Homemade Jam Singer/songwriter Sarah Harmer uses a journalist's eye and a poet's ear to create a different kind of call to arms By Drew Pearce After two and a half years of touring in support of 2000's critically acclaimed,"You Were Here," Harmer returned to her Quaker Valley farmhouse in rural Ontario with a lot of new experiences to draw on. But rather than heading straight back into the studio to hammer out a follow-up, the former leader of Canadian punk-pop band, Weeping Tile, decided to give herself some time to rest and room to breathe. So she and co-producer, Martin Kinack, slowly begun building a studio in her home, changing her bedroom into a control room, the laundry room into a vocal booth and filling the living room with amps, microphones and a drum kit. Without the pressure of expensive studio time looming, she let the songs develop naturally, gave herself time to experiment with new keyboard sounds, and tracked more of the instruments herself, including much of the bass and drums. Harmer says most of the new tunes were only half finished when she began recording, "I pictured some of the songs as like these 12 horses in a corral and some didn't have heads. Over the year of recording the album, I finally dressed them up, wrote the missing lines and worked on them over time at my house. That's one of the main reasons I recorded at home -- so I could really find out what they were all about, really uncover the songs and take my time recording them. AND! I got to play whatever the hell I wanted to because I wasn't paying a crazy amount of money every day in the studio." Recording at home had its own quirks and challenges, though. In the background of some tracks,you can hear some of the sounds of their surroundings such as the pinging of the woodstove as it cools off in the next room. But it's more than just charming imperfections of homemade recording that makes this an interesting record. There's something distinctive about Harmer's voice that's as difficult to explain as the difference between an American and a Canadian accent. But you recognize it when you hear it. Just as you can hear California in the Beach Boys' music or Jamaica in any Bob Marley record, you can hear the wintry isolation and pastoral beauty of Canadian countryside in Harmer's music. That's partly due to the vivid way she writes lyrics, describing views one might imagine seeing when looking out the window of an Ontario farmhouse. On "Tether," she sings: living this close to the road you question your vulnerability / got the curtains closed and there's nothing for those bull coyotes to see / just an airplane in the sky that I hear high up the chimney and the lonely cold coming up to find a warmer place to be But it's not just the words that give the songs a sense of intimacy. If the last record was driven by drum loops and electric guitar riffs, the new record is driven by a more earthy, rootsy vibe, no doubt created in part by the pace of the recording session and the low-key work environment created by Harmer and Tinack. "Our big goal was to make things sound like they would if i were sitting on the edge of the chair. We wanted to capture a real natural quality," she says. "Originally i didn't think it was a good idea to record at my house. Neither of us are very disciplined and so we kind of had a hard time getting down to it sometimes. We played lots of ping pong. There was lots of other life going on while we were making the record. I love music and it's probably the most driving force in my life, but i also want to experience other things and I'm very happy planting trees and tulips." "All of Our Names" also shows that Harmer can write not only punchy pop tunes such "Silver Road" and "Almost," but socially conscious anthems as well. In late October 2001, while touring in Amsterdam, she had an experience that inspired the album's centerpiece, "Dandelions and Bulletholes ," an epic balled that unfold at its own graceful pace and features the album's best line: "This call to arms means wrap them around the first person you see." "I was reading (Naomi Klein's book) "No Logo" and I went to Amsterdam to play a show on a tour," Harmer explains. "I came around a corner in downtown Amsterdam and there were crazy amounts of people walking and cycling... a seething block of humanity...and there's Naomi Klein's name on the marquee about a block away from my name on the marquee." "It was cool because I had just started reading the book. I know Naomi's husband, but I hadn't met her yet. I was just started to recognize that I was an adult and the world isn't run by other people. It brought things down to a more personal level." "It was in October of 2001 that I was over there. It was a big decision to make as to whether or not to take my band o ver there. what the safety of that was to fly to Europe. I thought about it for a while. I wasn't sure if it was a risk. Things really were very sensitive. That definitely informed me. I thought, "People have got to work together, more than ever." And just thinking of the World Trade Centers and people coming out of there saying, "We just made a human chain and found our way down." That image also found its way in the lyrics for "Dandelions": "Hula hoop / a human chain / to warm our hands and find our way / when all the lights go out" Now Harmer is preparing to take a new band on the road and gather up some new experiences. She enthuses ab out all her new band members and sounds excited about introducing them to her fans. "I've got a wicked band," she says. "Dean Stone on drums, Morey Lafoy on bass, Julie McDonald on keyboards and guitars and Mike O'Neill on guitar, who is also fantastic songwriter who used to be in a band called the Inbreds. I'm really psyched that he's going to be in my band." Opening for them on tour will be Sarah's good friend and fellow Canadian songwriter, Hayden. WHAT THEY PLAY "I generally don't write tons of songs. I'm kind of like... this is what I've got. I'd tour with Billy Bragg and watch him from the sidelines and think "Why am I here?" I felt more of a duty to keep my vision broad. That played out in the songs. I never set out to go after any themes. It more about what lyrics come to mind when I hear a certain melody. I've defintely felt more compelled to look more outside myself. I think that happens to a lot of people as they age." Harmer is the youngest child in a musical family that grew up in Burlington, Ontario, singing hymns in the choir of Nelson United Church. When she was 17, she joined forces with a guy she knew from the local record store and formed a band called the Saddletramps. But Harmer says it wasn't until she went to Queens University in Kingston that she really started playing guitar. "I learned three chords and played them for three years," she says. "I learned to play guitar because I didn't really want to write essays." In her third year of University, she formed Weeping Tile, a punky roots-pop band that went on to two records and an EP for Warner in Canada. |