Canadian Musician - January/February 2018 | Page 39

with producer Dan Ledwell at his Echo
Lake Studio. Brooks credits Ledwell as be-
ing a major catalyst in their pivot towards a
more commercial pop aesthetic. Together,
they worked to whittle down a wider pool
of songs at various degrees of completion
to the 10 album tracks.
“Some very obviously lent themselves
to this pop feel and production style,” she
begins, “though there was a handful that
existed more in another world, so when
we tried to integrate some of the pop ele-
ments, it just wasn’t serving those songs.”
Those were put on ice for a future
project – quality tunes that simply didn’t fit
the creative arc of this collection. Others,
though, went through a bit of shape shift-
ing of their own.
“Some evolved pretty dramatically in
the studio,” Brooks shares, “and there were
challenges in, if you’d written something
with a folky feel and then started integrat-
ing more pop elements, the vocal delivery
might need to change or the phrasing
might need to change.”
Therein lies the fun for these sea-
soned songwriters and vocalists – “wrap-
ping yourself into the song and making it
exist in this world.” In some cases, that even
meant reining in the multi-part harmonies
on which The Good Lovelies’ brand has
been built for a more dynamic overall
vocal experience.
With the album wrapped and ready
for its February 2018 release, The Good
Lovelies are now amidst the process of
translating their new material to the live
setting, and in doing so, they’ve realized
their Echo Lake experience has also given
them a fresh perspective on some of their
back catalogue material.
“We definitely want to integrate some
of these newer elements into the old
songs,” Brooks says. “It breathes some new
life into them, and we’re not strangers to
songs taking different forms in different
scenarios.”
The bottom line, she says, is that for a
song to feel at home in The Good Lovelies
camp, they should be able to hit the stage
as a trio with an acoustic guitar and still
make an emotional impact. As the songs on
Shapeshifters prove, both in album and live
form, these three voices interwoven with
one another rarely deliver anything but.
Micah Barnes
The
Essence
of a City
Micah Barnes is one of Canada’s most ac-
complished and acclaimed jazz singers,
though a few summers ago, he found
himself as one of the millions of transplants
residing in New York City. Barnes was in
love, and between a burgeoning romance
and longtime adoration of New York jazz,
it was impossible not to be swept away in
inspiration.
“Billie Holiday stopped me in my tracks
when I was 12 years old. Literally changed
my world,” he begins. “I didn’t know you
could be an artist who would interpret a
song and create such a rich, poetic, emo-
tionally intense but also sophisticated and
intelligent approach to singing.”
That approach – and the many adjec-
tives that comprise it – is what Barnes was
looking to capture with New York Stories, his
2014 collection of original songs inspired
by the city’s seminal jazz scene of decades
past. After all, the voices of Sarah Vaughan,
Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and the like
were integral to his development as a sing-
er, and he saw the challenge of capturing
their essence – and that of the city they
(once) called home – as one of the biggest
of his career.
“There are no jazz singers in the world
as strong as those that come from New
York,” he says. “It pushes you to be the best.
In the competitive world of jazz, you have to
come correct or you don’t come at all.”
And so, living with his partner – a
Broadway performer – right above what
was once the iconic Savoy Ballroom and a
few blocks from the Apollo Theater, Barnes
started writing. Limiting himself to a piano
trio like those crammed onto the small stag-
es of nearby clubs decades earlier – keys,
bass, and drums – the music came relatively
easy; tailoring his vocal approach to fit the
music and its desired aesthetic, however,
was a different matter.
“My vocal style was still very much
like, rock n’ roll, R&B – I was kind of a young
Turk powerhouse singer,” says the onetime
member of world-renowned Canadian a
cappella outfit The Nylons. “I was still work-
ing technically inside of that [Nylons] realm
where I was pushing my voice to sound as
passionate and intense as possible.”
He’d been a self-described “lonely crazy
person for a couple of decades,” and while
his technical prowess is unrivaled as a vet-
eran performer and longtime vocal teacher,
he credits his then-newfound romance with
opening up his emotional range. “As I start-
ed to fall in love, I started to be able to sing
differently – and I had to sing differently,
because this music is very dynamic and rich
and romantic. That’s really what changed
my voice.”
New York Stories offers some striking
contrast when compared with Barnes’ work
in The Nylons – not the least of which is
ably handling sole vocal duties; however,
his background in working so closely with
other vocalists was valuable to one of the
album’s true standouts: his duet with fellow
Canadian jazz great Jackie Richardson on
“New York Story.”
“It’s like two really specific vocal worlds
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