Watch The Birdie | Great ideas for songs have a way of nesting in Melissa McClelland’s head.
DETAILS
MELISSA McCLELLAND
w/ Jason Plumb. Haven Social Club (15120A Stony Plain Rd). Fri, Apr 24 (8pm). Tickets: $15, available through Ticketmaster (451-8000/ticketmaster.ca) or at the door.
Somewhere in the middle of listening to songwriter Melissa McClelland talk, I realize that somehow our interview has turned into more of a conversation. Her ideas, her stories seem less contrived than the usual question-and-answer boilerplate. Her newest album, Victoria Day, has that same mix of candor and unpredictability: it takes you for a ride, and like all good stories, you don’t realize that it is finished until it is.
“The contrast in my music is that it’s nasty stuff, but it’s delivered in a sweet package,” McClelland says. “I look for the little stories within the big story. I’m always looking for the details. I’m always on the road, so I pick up things along the way because there are so many things to take in and so many colourful characters. It’s those tidbits that make it hard to resist. Sometimes it seems obvious like, ‘Ah, man, this could be a great song,’ but it usually doesn’t come out right away. Memories, I find, are easier to grasp than being in the moment, because during the moment, you’re just taking everything in. Sometimes when you’re remembering something from far away, you romanticize it or there is some kind of nostalgia attached to it, so you can have more fun with it.”
And in true McClellandian fashion, she spins me a yarn as if the two of us were sipping brandy around a glowing hearth. This one, a story about a story, shows a bit about how she does what she does — and perhaps why she does it too.
“There’s a song on my record called ‘God Loves Me’ and that was inspired by a bar in Missouri called the Luna Café that has been along Route 66 for what seems like forever. It’s such a great little place — the guy who ran it was hilarious, we hung out with them all night and they gave us homemade moonshine in a jar. Anyway, they were telling me a story about the motel that is attached to bar and about the neon sign attached. On the sign there was a cherry. At one point there were prostitutes working in the motel and whenever one of them was available, the cherry would light up and that’s how people knew. So anyway, the next day I started writing ‘God Loves Me’ and at first it was pretty literal because I mentioned the bar in the song, but later on I rewrote it because I wanted it to be a little more mysterious. Now here I go giving it all away!”
Canada is a series of small pockets of population connected by roads. McClelland has been down many of those roads but the one to success has been more difficult to find. “With the state that the music industry is in — and this sounds very pessimistic — but you aren’t going to have much luck anywhere,” she says. “You have to find your own way in this industry right now and I don’t know if running to L.A. and showcasing for all the record labels is a good idea. You just have to put the work in, create something on your own, and let that speak for itself.”
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