Carolyn Mark swears she isn’t really a terrible hostess.
“It depends on what day,” the Victoria-based country singer said from a tour stop out west. “We have a lot of guests at our place. Heck, I’d like to stay there if I was a traveller. I think it would be fun! Not so terrible— just kind of laid back, I suppose. ‘Help yourself, I’ll be in bed,’ you know.”
She titled her current album Terrible Hostess anyway, following her 2000 solo debut, Party Girl. Mark’s sense of fun comes through clearly over the crackling phone line while motorbikes zoom by in the background. Her jovial drawl is punctuated by a ready laugh every other sentence. She’s in a good mood despite the fact that she and her backing band, the Room-mates (Mark’s real-life roommates Tolan McNeil and Garth Johnson), are doing what every Canadian musician anticipates and dreads in equal measures—the cross-country drive.
“This is only day four, so it’s going pretty good,” Mark said. “I got a new car, a ’79 Caprice Classic. Very smooth. No more Honda Civic—it’s very exciting!”
Mark’s one of the lucky ones. Her classic, torchy country sound found a home on Vancouver’s well-regarded Mint label. But despite extensive campus radio airplay, being embraced by the CBC, and her Corn Sisters side project with her better-known musical partner-in-crime Neko Case, Mark still toils away under the radar, making new fans town by town, show by show.
Terrible Hostess pairs a traditional jazzy country sound with Mark’s witty wordplay and big, keening vocals. It’s musically more sophisticated than Party Girl but the tales of drunken revelry remain the same. Such as a friend of Mark’s, um, sucking whisky out of the carpet?
“That’s Ford Pier!” Marks laughed, referring to one of the backing musicians on the album. “Maybe he can reenact that for the audiences of Ontario!”
It’s no surprise to anyone who’s seen Mark perform live that she got her start studying drama at the University of Victoria. She started playing music “the day I left university” with a seven-year stint in The Vinaigrettes. When that band broke up in 1998, Mark teamed up with the Room-mates for a CBC Radio performance and went solo.
Carolyn Mark and the Room-mates will be spending the next few weeks in Ontario, with a stop at the Horseshoe tomorrow (Sept. 13). Mark can’t say enough about our local roots-country scene, citing The Sadies, Terra Hazelton (“Wicked singer!”), Dottie Cormier, and Sarah Harmer (“We opened for her for four shows, and it was so great”) as favourites.
Our interview is cut short as the Room-mates honk from the car, ready to hit the road again. One of those artists that is at home on the road, Mark lives to play live. She’s not just a musician, she’s a real entertainer, able to draw in the crowd and keep them happy. Sounds like a pretty good hostess to me.
“I don’t know if there’s going to be any more songs at this point,” Mark said. “I used to have a bunch, but I’ve used them all up at this point (for this album). But I’m pretty happy with the album and how everything’s going. We love people, we love to play for people, so we’re bringing the party to the people.
