Interview - Willow Rutherford

So. At Willow Rutherford’s kind urging, we sent a set of questions to the 3 singer songwriter ladies, including Willow herself, involved in a special show coming up next Saturday Sept 20, at O Patro Vys here in Montreal. Here is the first interview in the series.

ps- Willow Rutherford is responsible for putting together the evening in question and is also performing in the all-day Indyish MonthlyMess Sept 13 in Griffintown - heads up. And she’s been in our Mess before! The Travel Mess and the Fringe Mess, where she melted our hearts and haunted our souls…

Anyway, here are our questions and Willow’s wise answers…

I am from a small farm in southern Ontario

I’ve lived 4 years in Toronto for art school (OCAD), Vancouver for a summer, travelled in Europe for a few months and lived in Mexico for 2 years. The past winter I travelled in South-East Asia. I have lived in Montreal for the past 6 years.

Toronto is the next destination to live, but I plan to return to Montreal to do more shows- I love it here and have found an incredible community of friends I consider my extended family. Newfoundland is somewhere I would love to live for a while. I would like to go to Turkey and Brazil. A tour of Europe is in the works at the moment. I just have to find a lighter accordion so I don’t break my back lugging it around!

My Grandfather lives in Mexico, and I was down visiting him after graduation, and I met a Mexican jazz band. We jammed that week and before departing to go on tour and return to their homes in Mexico city, they asked me to come. My Spanish was terrible and my Grandfather suggested it was too dangerous, but I went with them anyway and ended up having the time of my life. I lived and performed in Playa del Carmen for a summer, and then moved to Mexico city, where I was a singer by night and an English teacher by day.

Generally after my trips, I find inspiration and I believe that is due to being somewhere else, meeting new people, learning a new language,
experiencing a different culture. When you come with music, it almost doesn’t matter if you don’t speak the language, you will find a connection with somebody everywhere, at least that’s what I’ve found.

I like to give glimpses into a fantasy world that laps onto the edges of reality. I really love mournful traditional folk songs from Ireland and Scotland. I have always been drawn to the circus, a reason I moved to Montreal. I like to play with tragedy/comedy like many circus performers- finding poetry in ugliness and beauty combined. Like Wendy, I am very drawn to magic realism. I have written a love song for my accordion, a drug addict, a song based on a historical character from Vera Cruz, Mexico. Aging. My stories are from my life and the tales of others.

The Glastonbury festival really rocks- my friend and I hopped the fence back in 2000 and I loved the wildness of it all. It’s like the rolling green hills of England bloomed into this crazy jungle of music and creativity and I got to see David Bowie, Suzanne Vega and Willie Nelson in the same festival. I think the aesthetic of my music would go over well there.

Wendy McNeill was playing in this hotel room in downtown Montreal for the off-folk alliance festival 4 years ago. She had magenta hair, an accordion and a black lace dress on, and she was fearless. I adored her music-especially her song ’such a common bird’ which had this line ‘I have seen angels, they were sleeping in gutters, they were standing in bank lines, they were jumping from towers, they were calling like seagulls, but nobody heard, such a beautiful message from such a common bird.’ Those brilliant lines still give me goosebumps. It was after that show that I picked up my accordion and started taking it more seriously. Wendy inspired me enormously with her musical story telling.

Cocolove Alcorn is a musician I have admired since the first time I saw her perform in Toronto, and later, in Vancouver. She has this incredible energy onstage, I’ve seen her scat the most amazing solo, play trumpet and then improvise a rap using my name. She is enormously talented and her Dad is a musician just like mine! I am also very happy to say that my good friend bassist Mike Liston will be on tour with her and will be playing at the show on the 20th.

I think I relate to these artists because I like how difficult it is to define their music- sure, they are Indie artists, but you have to go and experience it for yourself- and you WILL be blown away. I was. They helped me define who I am as a performer and what my music expresses today. I am an admirer of their fearlessness and devotion to their craft.

Oh! I have a few…..

I loved it when the Fringe tent’s soundguy Jody Burkholder’s little son Poe got up onstage with me at the Fringe fest this year and sang backups for my song ‘warm worm.’ His whispering “my precious” is priceless. That was cool.

Subs by Vivan Doan

Putting on googley-eyes and singing my song ‘Manic Panic’ to my good friend Fabian shirtless in a horse mask and a gorgeous Pagan princess
named Brigitte doing a fertility dance with him onstage at the Divan Orange. It was for the last show of my old band the Subcollisions - sacrificed for the summer solstice. That was fun. I have a video- I’ll try to find it and post it on myspace.

photo by Fabian Jean

Getting married to the Unsettlers at the Divan Orange.

Performing my songs with the amazing clown Mirko Trienberg and contortionist Andréane Leclerc.

Getting most of the people in a bar in St.John’s, Newfoundland to sing with me in five part harmony- there’s something really special about the Rock and it’s inhabitants.

Jamming with a tapdancer and a jazzband at ‘la Caveau de la Huchette’ in Paris.

Singing my song ‘Anchor’ on a lobster boat and making the Acadian captain cry, he gave me his sou’wester hat at the end of the concert.

J’adore l’acadie.

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Hope to see you all at O Patro Vys Saturday September 20th. The doors open at 8pm, but we won’t get started probably until 9:30. Cover is $10. Please note that both these women will be on tour promoting their albums, so this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see us all together. Also, that night I will be performing with members of the Unsettlers, Salive and other fantastic friends from the Montreal scene for my set.

(Special thanks to Risa and the folks at Indyish for promoting the local scene. Montreal is a better place because of it.)