Amanda Marshall with very special guest Serena Ryder
Amanda Marshall
“It takes years to learn how to play like yourself”. I don’t know who said that. I think it was Miles Davis, but I could be wrong. It’s true, though. It takes years to fully develop any kind of creative voice. Painters, writers, musicians — all kinds of “creators” take the same journey. Basically, whether you’re making stuff or just making stuff up, it takes awhile to find a groove and figure out what “your thing” is.
I was six years old the first time I walked into a recording studio. A classmate’s mother sang commercial jingles, and she took a bunch of us kids along to watch. I instantly felt at home.
Cut to 1995. My self-titled debut album was released (Epic/Sony). It went on to become one of only eighteen albums in Canadian history to achieve Diamond status, and achieved Gold or Platinum status in fifteen countries. That album turned twenty-five in 2020, and like the parent of any successful twenty-something, I’m proud and more than a little amazed by the passage of time. The next two albums, Tuesday’s Child (1999) and Everybody’s Got A Story (2001), both multi-platinum, were no slouches, either. Music has taken me around the world. I wound up meeting, recording and performing with many of the folks whose work lived on those shelves in my parents’ living room during my formative years. It was humbling and exciting; I picked their brains and tried to learn as much as I could during each collaboration.
“Making music” and “being in the music business” are two very different endeavours. The latter is a chronic distraction from the former. For the better part of the next decade, I spent time doing what a lot of musicians find themselves doing — trying to get on with actually making music while dealing with the business of making music. But all that worked out just fine, and most importantly, it brought me to this: Heavy Lifting.
Heavy Lifting is my first full-length studio album release in twenty-two years and was the winner of this year’s JUNO for Adult Contemporary Album of the Year. These songs explore a variety of themes. The first single, “I Hope She Cheats” (Marsha Ambrosius/Canei Finch) is a blistering, funny, cutting, brilliant take on heartbreak. “God Forbid” is a smart-ass song about consumerism, religion, and the excuses that humanity makes for its’ mistakes. “I’m Not Drunk ” is a ladies’-night-at-the-honky-tonk closing time anthem. “Rainbows In Gasoline” is about domestic violence and what it means to ‘know better’. “Dawgcatcher”, “Built This House”, and “Halfway Love” are straight-up riff-driven blues-pop, a nod to the musical mentors who welcomed a teenaged belter to their party and gave her the mic.
“It takes years to learn how to play like yourself”. I’m getting there.
https://www.amandamarshall.com/
Serena Ryder
Serena Ryder tours her compelling latest album, The Art of Falling Apart, which invites listeners to join her mental wellness journey through a driving pop sound and the full range of her powerful voice.
On The Art of Falling Apart, her eighth studio album and seventh JUNO Award, she helps us understand the importance of sitting with the uncomfortable moments and the wisdom in their messages. Over a driving pop sound bursting with irresistible rhythms, pulsing bass lines, and the full range of her powerful and expressive voice, she pulls listeners through her own winding, transformational journey, detailing despair, toxic relationships, and breakdowns alongside hope, joy, and big, big love.
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