![\"amelia](\"http:\/\/www.stylusmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/amelia-curran-highres-500x333.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
By Victoria King<\/strong><\/p>\n From her home in Saint John\u2019s Newfoundland, and me from the CKUW production booth in downtown Winnipeg, Amelia Curran and I make small talk: How\u2019s the weather there? Did you see the news about Bowie? Yes, it got to -30 here this weekend. Don\u2019t these sorts of things always happen around time of year.\u00a0Curran has been writing and making music for a significant portion of her life. A singer-songwriter rooted in the Saint John\u2019s music scene, she released her fifth record <\/span>They Promised You Mercy<\/span><\/i> off of Six Shooter Records in November of 2014. Curran\u2019s work has been upheld by many music critics and fans, in particular for her poetic lyrics. Often ripe with insightful thoughts, imagery, allusions, and wordplay, this record was nominated for the 2015 Juno Award for Roots\/Traditional Album of the Year. <\/span><\/p>\n They Promised You Mercy<\/span><\/i>, however, differs from the rest of her discography in it\u2019s approach to song composition. Curran says she made the decision to focus exclusively on writing the lyrics, and left arrangements to her producer and bandmates, writing none of the breaks or solos like she would normally do. She says it was the first time she decided to focus exclusively on the writing, and she describes the process as having been very collaborative. Her producer on this record was Michael Phillip Wojewoda. \u00a0\u201cHe had the vision,\u201d she says. \u201cHe wanted me to singularly do my own job and not get mixed up in the production of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She also explains <\/span>They Promised You Mercy<\/span><\/i> took a long time. Much of her songwriting now takes place in her kitchen, where she\u2019ll record and save files on the computer. In the past, she\u2019d need to play the songs over and over again to remember them. Now, she needs to relearn the bits she\u2019s recorded onto her laptop. <\/span><\/p>\n The first song written for the album was \u201cComing for You.\u201d \u201cNot intentionally,\u201d Curran explains, \u201cbut it was the first one that I thought \u2018for sure this has to get on a record.\u2019\u201d The song was written in December of 2013, and the rest of the record was recorded the following May through June of 2014. She says \u201cI Am The Night\u201d was the last song to get on the album. She wrote it on the back porch of her friend Helen\u2019s house. She brought it to her band and producer that day, hammered it out with them, and it just made the cut on the album.<\/span><\/p>\n Referring to \u201cI am the Night,\u201d Curran laughs, \u201cIt was a funny song, because it was written in the morning but it talked about the night.\u201d A self-described night owl, Curran calls her writing process to be a balance of feast and famine. \u201cI\u2019ll have an intense stretch of all-day everyday writing, working on 4-5 songs at a time until one is done . . . then there\u2019s a lazy stretch,\u201d she explains. \u201cI\u2019m a pretty solitary person anyway. For my writing, privacy is really important.\u201d She laughs, \u201cI can hide away in my house for weeks on end and just pick away at things, happily.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She also says that most of her writing, including the new material she\u2019s currently working on, takes place at home. \u201cSome people can be really creative while they\u2019re touring, but I find it to be kind of an interruption,\u201d but explains she does love touring and playing shows. \u201cIt\u2019s just not really a creative time for me, so I really relish the time off.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n She says she\u2019s working on new material. \u201cWe were out of the studio by June,\u201d she explains. \u201cThere was such creative energy and environment in the studio\u201d She says that energy propelled her into a writing frenzy from June through November of that year. This writing cycle was again facilitated by her kitchen computer, and she\u2019s now fishing through all that material, \u201cjust trying to find the gems, and finish them off,\u201d she says. \u201cIt can be exciting because I\u2019ll forget melodies and verses. It can also be completely demoralising. Like, \u2018what the hell was I thinking?\u2019 With technology, you can record everything. You never know [what you\u2019ll want] and you don\u2019t want to lose it. \u00a0It\u2019s like a map of a train of thought over the course of several months.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When pressed about exactly how many files she\u2019s currently working with, she affirms that there are more than a hundred song pieces. Yet in terms of what themes and concepts this new material talks about, she\u2019s unable to say. \u201cSometimes I don\u2019t know until years after the song is out,\u201d she explains. \u201cI write from an analytical philosophical perspective. It\u2019s exploration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Our conversation is coming to a close – Curran says she\u2019s heading to a Bowie tribute show in just a few hours. With this new material, Curran says that nothing is set but she\u2019s hoping to record in the spring. Reflecting, she says, \u201cThere\u2019s this wonderful magical thing about writing, because, where the hell does it come from? You\u2019re creating something from nothing. I love writers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout February, Curran is spending time in Nashville, TN. She tours Canada in March. See Amelia Curran at the Good Will Social Club in Winnipeg on March 6, 2016. \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Victoria King From her home in Saint John\u2019s Newfoundland, and me from the CKUW production booth in downtown Winnipeg, Amelia Curran and I make small talk: How\u2019s the weather there? Did you see the news about Bowie? Yes, it got to -30 here this weekend. Don\u2019t these sorts of things always happen around time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}