By Michael Elves
They may have entitled their album Sweet Nostalgia, but Winnipeg’s Oh My Darling wasn’t looking back longingly when they went into the studio to record it. Instead, the roots quartet (consisting of Rosalynn Dennett on fiddle, Allison de Groot on clawhammer banjo, Marie-Josée Dandeneau on upright and electric bass, and Vanessa Kuzina on vocals, guitar and mandolin) was clearly focused on the present and the future with their sophomore full-length.
“We knew we wanted to have a different sound for this record – not necessarily something that was surpassing the other record, but just something very different,” notes Dennett, explaining that “we definitely wanted to incorporate more of our live sound in it so our whole method for recording this album was very, very different from the way we did our first one. We mostly did it live off the floor, all in the same room, playing together, focusing on the acoustic sound and capturing the energy of our live performances.”
Aiding them in their attempt to capture that energy was Juno-award-winning producer Steve Dawson, an accomplished musician in his own right.
“We were a huge admirer of Steve Dawson for both his producing and his musicianship. We met him at the Western Canadian Music Awards when we were nominated a couple of years ago and kind-of followed him around a little bit star struck,” Dennett relates of how they made their connection with Dawson. “He’s definitely been a huge inspiration for us so when we got him into the studio and started working with him he had a lot to say in terms of the overall sound. He really embraced the idea of doing it live – he was a big push for that whole thing. We had a lot of the stuff pretty arranged but there were some songs we essentially wrote in the studio, that we hadn’t played live before and so he really helped shape that – and he plays some really rippin’ solos on it too,” she notes excitedly.
Bandmate Kuzina chimes in with credit to a second figure: “We recorded the album over seven days in a straw bale house and studio with Don Benedictson in beautiful Roseisle, Manitoba.”
As important as the recording process was for Oh My Darling, Sweet Nostalgia’s strength lies in its material and for that the band found a balance between the old and the new in crafting a collection that Dennett calls “more representative of how we sound live.”
“The collection of songs on Sweet Nostalgia is a mix of some of the songs we’ve been doing since the very beginning. Like ‘Roustabout’ is the first song we ever all learned and performed together and so that one always felt really good to us,” notes Kuzina.
As to the new material, she concludes: “Our writing was really starting to form in a way where we were finding just the right balance between our inspiration and our love of old-time and traditional music but marrying that with some new sounds in our original material. It definitely speaks a bit to the past and hints at some of our older work too, but is moving forward in a way that way more cohesive – we’re finding a way to balance all of our different inspirations and passions.”