Interview by Bradi Breckman
On Sunday, July 14, I had the pleasure of interviewing local singer/songwriter Leith Ross at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Ross had been busy all weekend with performances and workshops at the festival, and I was glad to finally find a moment to pick the indie-folk singer’s brain.
Bradi Breckman (BB): Since we’re at the Winnipeg Folk Festival this weekend, it seems relevant to mention that you are a local artist. However, you were originally from Ontario, correct?
Leith Ross (LR): Yes.
BB: What made you decide to move to Winnipeg?
LR: I was lucky enough to get the help of Birthday Cake, which is a Winnipeg label/company, to release my first EP. They brought me out to play the Harvest Moon Festival, and I fell in love with the city. It is also way more affordable, to be honest.
BB: What do you think is unique about Winnipeg’s music scene, or more specifically, our Folk music scene? What makes us different from other places that you’ve been?
LR: My favourite part about the music scene here is that there isn’t as much of a sense of overwhelming industry. The other place where I worked as a professional musician was Toronto. I do love Toronto, but there was a lot of big industry there. There felt like there was a lot of pressure to be getting the interest of people high up in the industry or getting people from labels to come to the shows. Whereas in Winnipeg, probably because it’s in the middle of nowhere (in a good way), there’s less of that feeling. I know a lot of people in Winnipeg that do music because they love it, and that’s my favourite way that music is made, for the sake of it.
BB: How has your experience been performing at the Winnipeg Folk Festival this year?
LR: It’s been good! I love Folk Fest; it has such a welcoming atmosphere. I’ve made a lot of new friends and heard a lot of great sets.
BB: Great to hear. Going into more about you as an artist, how does it feel to be a young, queer artist in the industry, and how do you think your identity feeds into your music?
LR: Well, being queer for me is more than just an identity. I think of it as a politic and a way of life. And so, I would like to think that that is a part of everything I do, inherently. I never try to make anything queer on purpose, my dream is that I will make queer things because I am queer, and that is how I navigate the world. Being a young queer artist in the industry, it is important to find a community and create a space for it to thrive because it won’t always be given.
BB: Talking more about your music and writing, what generally inspires you? Where do your songs come from?
LR: Mostly my own life. I am a very journalistic writer, so I write about things that happen to me, at least for the most part.
BB: Are any of your songs particularly close to your heart?
LR: Yeah, some are more tender than others. Some are written about more difficult or confusing personal experiences, and those ones always feel a bit sore.
BB: One specific song of yours, “We’ll Never Have Sex,” blew up on TikTok in 2021. What effect do you think social media has had on your career?
LR: It basically gave me my career, for which I’m very grateful. Social media is always an interesting and confusing concept for me. I’m grateful to it, and I think that it has made the music industry more democratic. But it’s hard because I think that social media is bad for my mental health and for everyone’s mental health, so I have a tumultuous relationship with it. But I am very grateful, and I definitely owe my career to the people on social media who resonate with my stuff.
BB: Was “We’ll Never Have Sex” going viral the moment you felt as though you’d really made it as an artist, or was there another specific moment?
LR: I would say that that moment for me was very early on, before anything blew up on social media, when a stranger messaged me on the internet and told me that one of the songs I’d released resonated with them and helped them get through the loss of their grandfather, about the song “Tommy.” That was the moment because when I was growing up, that’s what music did for me, and I found it miraculous that I could do that for somebody else.
BB: That’s wonderful. I want to ask you about something you said in an interview with Dazed Club. You are quoted saying that “folk is an inherently political genre” and that “you want to make indie music political again.” Do any of your songs have a particularly strong political message or any messages that you feel are important right now?
LR: Good question! I feel like I’m currently learning how to do that through lyrics in recorded songs in a way that feels genuine and good and not unhelpful, which is really hard to do. I’m getting there, even though it is a steep learning curve. But also, more than that, I want it to be in the music, I want it to be part of the culture of folk. I think that is what we have lost a bit of. There is no longer a sense that the general folk and indie community is inherently political. You can kind of participate without believing in things like human rights. I think that it is to our detriment that we lack that sense of solidarity and sense of understanding of the world that we live in and how music interacts with it.
BB: Interesting, thank you. You talk a lot about community and politics within the music world. Do you believe that music can bring people together? Specifically, folk music?
LR: Yes, definitely! Even historically, all you have to look at is the way that folk music has been integral to so many revolutions and so much building of important communities. It has also been so helpful in many communities in getting through oppression and horridness. It is linked in a way that can’t be undone: music, life, community, and politics. They will always be intertwined.
BB: Well said. You have two albums out now, Motherwell and To Learn, how did your sound change between your albums, and how have you evolved as a musician in the last few years?
LR: I’m not fully sure. The sound mostly changed because the first record was live off the floor, and for the second record, I had my first opportunity with Joey Landreth, a local musician, to shape it more purposefully and add more production and arrangement. It was more of an evolution of the resources I had at hand rather than the writing because a lot of the songs were written in the same couple of years. But also, it’s hard to tell because I can’t see myself from the outside.
BB: Can we be expecting a third album anytime soon?
LR: Absolutely, I’m recording it.
BB: Can we get any hints about it?
LR: Hmmm, I don’t know! It’s a little bit of a different sound, which isn’t that my sound is changing because I’ve always wanted to record music that sounds like my next record; I just didn’t have the resources. It’s a bit different, but I think that its core is the same.
BB: Finally, last question: do you have any words for aspiring artists or people wanting to follow in your footsteps as indie musicians?
LR: Much of the same. Find your people, invest in that community, and it will invest in you in return. And make sure that it is good and doing good in the world, not harm.
It’s clear that we can expect more from Leith Ross soon, and I for one am very excited to see what their future career holds. Hopefully they will return to the Folk Fest stage next summer, and grace us with their sweet sounds again. Until then, their EPs will have to do!