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Julie Doiron
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We might do well down here in the States to order up a subscription to a Canadian newspaper just to keep better track of our musical friends in the Great White North. While the name Julie Doiron probably doesn't mean a thing to most American music listeners, in Canada she's all that and the chips.
Doiron's latest dark musical excursion, the eponymously titled Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars (recorded with ... The Wooden Stars), has just been nominated for a Juno which, if you had that Canadian paper rolled up under your arm, you would know is our neighbor's Grammy.
Of course, this one is no big deal to Doiron. She's been Juno-nominated before as a member of Eric's Trip, a trippy, jammy, stripped-down acoustic band of Canadian hippies who were critical darlings for most of their six-year existence. At the age of 18, she joined the band as a guitarist, switching to bass after another guitarist joined.
The dichotomy between the critical acclaim and cult devotion that Eric's Trip enjoyed in America, as opposed to the very real commercial success lavished on them in Canada, was simultaneously the thing that kept them together and ultimately the thing that tore them apart. At the time, the band could easily afford a little anonymity south of their border because so much attention was being paid to them in Canada. The end came in 1996, just as the band was about to embark on one of its patented American obscurathons on the heels of its new Sub Pop album. Half of the band wanted to forget the whole idea of tracking American success and simply remain a strictly Canadian phenomenon. The other half was willing to wait out the American audience and continue to tour our great expanse for very little money. With the members deadlocked over the issue, the band disintegrated when it was clear no resolution would be reached.
Doiron (French derivation, pronounced "dwa-rohn") began her solo career and a small label at the same time, releasing her first solo album on her own Sappy Records. Sub Pop was still interested in the splinters of Eric's Trip, and they wound up releasing Doiron's second album, Loneliest in the Morning, but the label's interest waned rapidly and Doiron was ultimately dropped.
Doiron's new album, recorded with fellow Canadians, the Wooden Stars, is a minor masterpiece, filled with brooding melancholy that stops just short of being morose. Although she is often compared to Joni Mitchell, Doiron's moody minor key whispers make Mitchell seem almost giddy by comparison, begging perhaps a closer kinship with the more somber moments of the Roches and Suzanne Vega and the late Nick Drake. This is clearly Doiron's album, but she's quick to point out the Wooden Stars' invaluable contribution and their long-standing relationship, which began when Doiron and her husband, Jon Claytor, released the Wooden Stars' Mardi Gras album on Sappy in 1997.
"When Sub Pop was putting out my album, they wanted me to tour with a band," Doiron recalls from her home in Quebec. "They had a few suggestions, and I asked a few people, and they suggested the Wooden Stars, because Sub Pop had tried to sign them a couple of years before, but they turned them down because they weren't ready to sign. I thought at the time that it would be pretty weird, because I was really intimidated by them musically, and sort of in person, too. But that summer we all went out on a Sappy tour -- I was supporting my album, they were supporting theirs, there were a couple of other Sappy bands -- I was playing solo, they were playing as a band. I got to know them and wasn't quite as afraid of them. So Andrew, the drummer, and Mike, the guitarist, said they would come on tour with me for the fall. So there, I thought I had my band, and that was that. I never even thought to ask the other guys or even talk about it. When I got home from the tour, there was a message on the machine, saying, 'Call us, we have an idea.' When I called, they said they all wanted to do it, so I got the whole band, baggage and all. And it worked out really well."
That experience led to the recording of the new album, especially given the effect working with the Wooden Stars was having on Doiron's songwriting. Although she continued to write personal and emotionally downcast songs, Doiron she had abandoned the desolate tone of her solo material.
"We loved working together so much that we felt it was really important to do an album," Doiron says. "The songs that I ended up writing once I started working with them turned out to be quite different from what we had done before. Everything I had done prior to the Wooden Stars was pretty sparse. I was really using the guitar as a minimal part. Mainly my vocal melodies was what I was concentrating on. Once I started working with them, and I actually started practicing, I just loved playing. I started writing very different types of songs, where the guitar played almost more important a role than the melodies. They affected me in a big way, even though it wasn't a conscious decision. I didn't just decide I was going to start writing Wooden Stars songs."
Doiron is aware of the evolution caused by the collaboration, but she's reserving judgment on what impact that might have on her next project. Whether or not it features the Stars again,. she knows her music has been altered significantly.
"I'll wait and see it happen," she says with a laugh. "It's already affected me quite a bit, and I've matured a lot musically since working with them. Even since the record came out, a lot of the newer songs that I've written I really like, and they're getting a good response. So I think I have at least another good record in me. It's hard to say where I'm going. I'm planning on making some kind of a dent in this huge world."
Doiron begins hammering on the world with a vengeance this year, as she hits the road with the Stars to promote their album. Later in the year, a handful of her newer songs, freshly recorded this past fall, will be released in a variety of ways. Three of the new tracks will be included on the second volume of The Shanty Project (which will also include work by Kristen Hersh, Melissa Auf der Maur, the Spinanes and Edith Frost), and two more will appear this month on a 7-inch on the Michigan indie label Plumbline. Both sets of tracks will feature a single song featuring the Wooden Stars, with the remainder performed by Doiron solo. Her longer range plans include a French mini-album this fall (one song on the Doiron/Wooden Stars album is sung in French, an homage to Doiron's Acadian heritage), and then a full-length album early next year, performed with either the Wooden Stars, a completely different established band or just a group of session musicians.
However it plays out, the constant will be Doiron's evocative and Spartan presentation, and songs that boast an almost joyous melancholy. And it is here that the word "dichotomy" comes into play once again when discussing the tone and style of Julie Doiron's music. Anyone familiar with her past solo work or this new album, might be surprised at how animated and upbeat she is outside of her songs. For half of her 10-year music career, Doiron has also been a mother, dividing her time between roadwork and homework. She is a devoted mom to her two kids, and clearly has their best interests at heart, even as a working mother whose work takes her out on the road for weeks at a time. Her husband, American artist Jon Claytor (his painting adorns the cover of the new album) is completely supportive of her need to follow the industry standard of album/tour/album/tour. The kids go to daycare while she's on the road, and she's nearly a full-time mother when she's home, relying on daycare when she needs to write or do interviews.
And like any self-respecting artist, Julie Doiron has a dream. It has an artist's ring to it -- to someday move to France. But Doiron's dream is not borne from the purely romantic notions that are inspired by the history and atmosphere of the place she wishes to one day call home. There is a mother's practicality at work here as well. Both of her children are bilingual, and she wants them to experience the French culture firsthand.
"Whenever I go away on tour, nobody speaks French around the house," Doiron says. "My husband is taking a course, and he does speak a little bit of French. But before what would happen is that when I'd go on tour, they'd speak English, and when I got home, they'd be speaking English. After a week or so, they would start speaking French again. It's amazing now, though. My daughter speaks only in French to us now. And my son will start kindergarten in the fall, which is also French. So we want to move to France, for a year or two maybe. You have to dream."
A melancholy dreamer in France ... Julie Doiron will fit right in.
JULIE DOIRON opens for the Brothers Creeggan at Bogart's on Saturday night.
