Local piano songstress Sarah Slean should be a star by now, having carved out a stellar oeuvre over four albums of charming, literate pop tunes. There’s no predicting the music business, but hopefully her latest cabaret-inflected disc, Day One, will do the trick. She’s been on tour with like-minded singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith the last few months, will take a break in December to star in a movie about Hamilton murderess Evelyn Dick, and then hits the road again in March for a cross-country Canadian headlining tour. We caught up with the busy Slean as she was driving in her tour van across the bridge to P.E.I. (“there’s beautiful, shimmery ocean on either side of us!”) last week.
Tabassum Siddiqui: You chose to work with two producers, Pete Prilesnik (Sarah Harmer’s You Were Here) and Dan Kurtz (Feist’s Monarch, also bassist for local live-house trio The New Deal). How did all three of you manage to work together?
Sarah Slean: It was me and Peter originally, and we butted heads, to put it lightly. Dan was a mutual friend of ours and I have a lot of respect for him, and he fit right into my whole plan to have knowledgeable rhythm section guys [on this album]. So we met with him a couple times, and tried stuff out, and it just worked-he was a real balancing force between myself and Peter. I had just come back from living in a cabin, so I was completely fucked in the head, having a bit of culture shock, and the anxiety of being back into ‘this is your life,’ trying to be a pop singer or whatever. Peter is really, you know, opinionated (laughs). He’s passionate about what he does, so Dan sort of provided a balancing force that was really needed.
TS: What did you learn about the production process from working with them?
SS: It was good for me; I learned a lot from them. Basically, I learned skills-they have a lot of computer knowledge that I don’t have. But it was tough! This was the hardest record I’ve ever made-simply because of my mindset at the time. I felt really shattered when I got back, because I did a lot of very intense self-seeking and digging. I was very, very alone for four months, and intensely observing the world and thinking… And coming back and getting into contracts with record labels and seeing a mirror of yourself every day and making these choices, and every sound you put on the record has to reflect who you are as, I don’t know what-I guess a ‘brand’ or something-it was really difficult to digest all of that.
TS: You’ve mentioned this dark period you fell into right before making the record when you went into the woods near Ottawa for a bit to get away from it all. What was making you so anxious?
SS: I dunno… I thought too hard or something. Something in me just kind of broke down. I’m obsessed with the notion of trying to live a noble existence and doing as little harm as possible. And I couldn’t really reconcile the way I chose to live my life with being noble. It seemed to me sort of vain and indulgent. The advertising, the posturing, the ambition just started to absolutely disgust me-it was like I got the nausea that existentialists talk about, and I couldn’t shake it. At all. So I had to do something drastic.
TS: So how do you reconcile your desire to live a simple life with the madness that is touring?
SS: I’m getting accustomed to the swinging between extremes (laughs). I’m technically a gypsy right now, I don’t really live anywhere or have an address, but I’ve decided that my next address is going to have to be somewhere rural and peaceful, and have nature around it, not a lot of advertisements or vehicles or noise.
TS: In a similar vein, the entire music business is based upon the notion of selling. Doesn’t that bother you, then?
SS: That was part of my whole crisis, if you can call it that, because it seemed despicable to me. I thought, ‘Oh, my god, I’m whoring the thing that matters most to me in the world.’ But then I thought, I think that selling this [music] and giving it to people-which is what you’re doing, in exchange for money-if you’re giving that out and people are wanting it from you, then it’s better than me selling widgets or hiring people in sweatshops to make running shoes. It’s a hell of a lot better than most of the stuff out there. Maybe in the more confident part of my mind, I feel like when I put stuff like this out there, it does a bit of good.
Sarah Slean opens for Ron Sexsmith tonight at the Danforth Music Hall (147 Danforth Ave.). Tickets are $25.00 at the door.
