  Sarah Slean (DAVE ABEL/QMI Agency) |
Toronto-based singer-songwriter-pianist Sarah Slean admits releasing a double album at a time when most artists are scaling back their musical output -- as singles dominate over albums -- might seem foolhardy.
But when the idea for her new disc Land & Sea came to her, she had to act.
"The only thing that really slowed it down was me doubting, 'Oh, this is impossible, why am I trying to do this?' " said Slean, 34, before Tuesday night's launch of her extensive Canadian tour.
"Or listening to other people who were saying, 'Really? Twice the budget? Twice the time? Twice the resources? You're crazy!' But when I could tune that out it had this momentum ... The sheer excitement and joy about that idea never dimmed."
Essentially, Slean -- who has a B.A. in music, philosophy and English from University of Toronto -- had an epiphany about her profession through philosophical exploration by reading the books of Joseph Campbell (he inspired George Lucas to write Star Wars), among others.
"Looking at my own occupation going, 'How hilariously vain and meaningless!' I had a whole decade of that," said Slean, relaxing in a coffee shop near her Toronto home.
"As an artist I feel like I had to go through that sort of trial by fire, that extreme doubting of myself and even condemnation of art to get through to the other side to see how meaningful it is. I feel like this project was a real opening in world view. Of a real making peace with life and what I do.
"It's so funny, that happened, and then great things just sort of avalanched on top of me. Then I graduated, I got married to (fellow musician Royal Wood). I made amends with a whole lot of people. Forgave a whole a lot of people and they forgave me. And I stopped fighting a lot of things. I just stopped raging against things."
Land is the poppier of the two records, recorded with East Coaster Joel Plaskett as producer in the summer of 2010 while Sea is the mellower, more orchestral offering with Jonathan Goldsmith behind the boards in June 2011.
Luckily for Slean, also a visual artist, poet and sometime actress, the writing session for Sea found her ensconced by herself, through a friend who is an art dealer, in a "rickety old cabin," in Pouch Cove, Nfld., north of St. John's, with a grand Yamaha piano in it, full of "June bugs and beetles.
"It was very rustic. But there was this massive window and I would look out, as I was playing and literally, like 10 paces, would be cliffs, oceans, whales. It was so beautiful. And I was imagining this music and the pitching and the lolling of the sea and the changing sky, these are in the rhythms and the harmonies of that music."
Content-wise, she says, Land was about "being in this particular space-time reality. Like right now in my particular form ... and Sea is the part of you that is housed by that physical body. The part of you that is eternal. I hesitate to use the word (soul) because it's so loaded and it's so religiously tied but that's really what I'm getting at."
Together she felt Land & Sea belonged together because she was "particularly interested in the way those two things inform each other.
"I tried several times in my 20s to quit music," she explained. "In 2003 after my first album came out on Atlantic in the U.S., all this wonderful stuff happened to me, I dropped everything, sold my belongings, took a piano, and went into the forest and didn't know when I was going to come out. The only physical trappings I ended up keeping were my piano and my paints, which should have been -- ding, ding -- an indication."
‘CAN’T WAIT’
Sarah Slean got married to fellow music maker Royal Wood of Peterborough, Ont., in 2009 after sparks flew when he showed up at her place to sing on Looking for Someone from her 2008 album, The Baroness.
"He knocked on the door and I opened it and I kind of looked at him, like I was looking at him for the first time, like I had never seen him before, even though we had met many times. It was suddenly like, 'Oh, I really wished I had washed my hair!' "
In fact, Slean had done her annual Harbourfront Christmas Show with Wood opening for her previously.
"My boyfriend from Paris had flown over and he was being an absolute petulant child and Royal was opening for me. And he had his girlfriend there who was freaking out on him. They were fighting in this dressing room and we were fighting in this dressing room, and we really didn't even register on each other's radar. I was like, 'Whatever. This guy's opening for me. Who cares?' And he was the same."
In the end, Wood produced one song on her new album, Land (one half of a double album called Land & Sea), but they aren't planning on future collaborations, other than children -- at some point.
"I just love children," she said. "We both can't wait, but we have to find the right time. But I'm excited. We will for sure."
Jane.Stevenson@sunmedia.ca
Sarah Slean's Canadian Tour Dates
Nov. 1 - London - Aeolian Hall
Nov. 2 - Peterborough - Market Hall
Nov. 3 - Hamilton - Studio Theatre
Nov. 4 - Alliston - Gibson Centre
Nov. 5 - Toronto - Winter Garden Theatre
Nov. 10 - Winnipeg - West End Cultural Centre
Nov 11 - Regina - The Exchange
Nov. 12 - Lloydminster - House Concert (PRIVATE EVENT)
Nov. 15 - Saskatoon - The Broadway Theatre
Nov. 16 - Edmonton - Myer Horowitz Theatre
Nov. 18 - Calgary - University Theatre
Nov. 19 - Nelson - The Royal
Nov. 20 - Kelowna - Kelowna Community Theatre
Nov. 22 - Victoria - St. Ann's Auditorium
