Never one to allow herself to be pigeonholed, categorized or classified by the minions of the music business infrastructure, Ottawa singer/songwriter/performer extraordinaire Lynne Hanson is also not one to rest on her considerable critical laurels or popular acclaim for long, seeking to ensure that the music she makes is always fresh, always an artistic challenge, and always compelling.
For her upcoming new full-length album, Just Words, set to be released Feb. 7, 2020, her seventh solo album (early in her career she recorded two albums with Shane Simpson and is also part of the roots duo, The LYNNeS, alongside Lynn Miles which whom she recorded Heartbreak Song for the Radio in 2018) Hanson made some bold decisions in terms of both the compositional elements and production phase of the new album, seeking to embrace truly being a solo artist by writing practically every note and word that appears on Just Words, as well as enlisting the production skills of Jim Bryson (The Weakerthans, Oh, Susanna, Kathleen Edwards) to help her realize this new vision.
“Although there ended up being one co-write on the album and that’s the title track, it’s with a totally different writer, someone I hadn’t written with before. I think it was time for me to flex my creative muscles and as I began writing totally on my own, I suddenly realized I think I am actually ready to put out a whole album exclusively of my own stuff. I was over in Europe at the time for seven weeks on tour and then I was out in the Maritimes earlier this year and once I got back from all that, I sat down for six weeks and wrote the record. I knew I wanted something different, I wanted a different sound. I didn’t want to be locked into a certain version of songs. I felt that the songs I had been writing on my own were expanding my sonic landscape. Essentially, I just wanted everything to be new,” said Hanson.
“While some of the songs are probably classic Lynne Hanson type songs – there are some sad songs on there which kind of fit my M.O. if you will – there are also songs on there where even the song structure itself is very different. People’s ears will perk up and they we be like, ‘wow, I didn’t expect that kind of thing from you.’ And even where the inspiration itself was coming from was different. A lot of that inspiration has come from all the travel that I had been doing over the past two years. The title track, Just Words is about verbal bullying, and I certainly have been on the receiving end, probably just like anybody else, of unkind words. I have also met a lot of people along the road over the past couple of years where I heard of the hurtful impact of that sort of behaviour, from sides that I have never heard before. I think those stories just stuck with me and impacted me.
“A song like Clean Slate is talking about the need to put aside our differences. It’s amazing when you go out in the world and meet lots of different kinds of people and you realize how similar we all are and how it’s almost a social construct we put in the way of us all getting along. Even a song like Higher Ground, where I am saying hold your tongue instead of losing your temper was born out of those experiences. I have the usual heartbreak songs on the album and other types of songs, but those kinds of topics were never part of my sphere of creation before. And I think it was through meeting all these different people in different scenarios that it really made its way int my actual writing.”
Bryson’s credentials as a songwriter and producer were achieved in more of the pop and rock veins, which is a little outside Hanson’s normal musical vernacular, but it was for this new perspective, and for his ability to bring out the best in the artists he works with, that Hanson sought him out to collaborate on Just Words.
“Jim Bryson is coming from that indie pop sensibility, whereas previously I had either produced my albums by myself or worked with people who were firmly established in the roots genre. I had known Jim on the periphery for a number of years. We’re in the same geographical region and we have run into each other at different shows and different places. But I had never worked with Jim before, but I was familiar with some of the work he has been doing with other people and knew he was running a studio. So, I did up a couple of demos out at his place – two songs that I knew were probably going to go on the record. In actuality I was taking them for a test drive to see how it would work with Jim in his studio. And even that was a different process for me where I go out and see how we work together, try some stuff first, try out different producers and recording studios,” she explained.
“I found that I loved his creative vibe and I loved where his ideas came from, because they were very organic and it was very exciting to see somebody not get locked into what they could and couldn’t do and being really open to going in different directions with a song. And from that first experience making those demos is when I made the decision for him to produce the record. It worked out and I think I couldn’t have made a better decision. He was the perfect guy for this record.
“I have a pretty strong sense of what I like and where I want to go with something, but he has an incredible knowledge base when it comes to production, which I don’t really have. He is one of those people who has listened to every song, so he has an infinite amount of ideas when it comes to trying new things. He comes up with these intangible little things that the average listener may not even hear, but its that next level of production that doesn’t smell slick. Watching him layer sounds onto a song that I created and making it, you know, making it really stand out for me, I think that was the most attractive thing for me. He had this real creative vision that was really different from mine, but it was like somebody completing your sentences. I think that’s what I am looking for, especially at this point in my career, someone who can make the sum of the two parts more than one plus one. I felt like the two of us working together were able to create something that was bigger than just two people working together.”
Even with the new musical horizons she has begun to explore, Hanson’s music has always been difficult to squeeze into one catch-all category, as she herself admits.
“My single sentence description these days is to say it’s too tough for folk and it’s too blues for country. I mean, that kind of describes Americana. The industry itself created this term Americana to try and capture that span where on a record you have this huge variation in terms of the style of song, but they are all tied together by a consistent thing. For me, the thing that ties everything I do together is the sound of my voice, and it’s my lyrics, because those two things are distinct with me. The first single from the album, True Blue Moon, is almost a pop-country song and then Higher Ground is pretty bluesy, while Just Words is like my Nirvana song, because it’s pretty tough.”
The inspiration for the sprightly, wry and effervescent True Blue Moon came directly from a popular French (as if from France, as opposed to Quebec) hit song. Hanson takes a bit of an ironic and good-natured poke and the songwriter/protagonist to undercut some of his poorly camouflaged sexism and whininess.
“I was in France and wanted to do a song that I knew was going to be important and relevant to people who lived there. I started looking around and it was the 40th anniversary of the death of Jacques Brel, who is actually from Belgium, and he wrote and performed probably one of the best known French songs of all time, Ne Me Quitte Pas, which translates to Please Don’t Leave Me. I got a copy of the song and listened closely to the lyrics and there is one line that translates, ‘let me be the shadow of your shadow.’ My interpretation of that was that ‘I would just settle for being the shadow of your shadow if I could just be near you.’ And I thought, ‘my God, what an incredible sentiment.’ If I could write that well in English I would be so happy, but to hear that in French stopped me in my tracks. And that’s one of those things where you know, as a writer, you’re going to do something because it literally made me catch my breath,” said Hanson.
“[Brel] had given an interview at one point where he had talked about his mistress and how they had split up. He said in the interview that Ne Me Quitte Pas was not a love song, it’s not a heartbreak song, it was a song about the weakness of men and how they allow themselves to be manipulated by women. Which to me sounded like a guy who had been dumped and whose ego was a little bruised, and he was denying it. It made me smile when I read that and that’s when I got the idea where I was the woman, he had written the song about and what would I say about him. True Blue Moon is kind of like a movie.
“In my mind I always saw a movie, because when I write I tend to see movies and to me this movie was at nighttime, and they are walking on a boardwalk by the beach, and there were lights and it’s all romantic, and he is dancing around her speaking to her, and she was just walking along with kind of a smirk on her face, knowing that he was as much in love with love as he was with her, and so it was probably not going to last. I made reference to a lot of lines from the song in mine and then there’s the line from Casablanca that’s ‘we’ll always have Paris’ and I wrote ‘we may not have Paris, but we’ll always have Madrid.’ I just wanted to have this cool reference from this movie from the same era as the song. So, True Blue Moon was really written so tongue in check, and I always want to see how many people will catch the references, because I love it when that happens. The song really was just to entertain myself and I ended up really liking it. I am totally poking holes in this poor guy’s balloon.”
At the same time that the Just Words album is released in February, an accompanying book of original poetry and verse, also entitled Just Words, will be released. It is Hanson’s first foray into literature, which she is embarking upon for the same reasons as she has changed her approach to music for the new album – challenges are good for the creative soul and can lead to new realms of expression and adventure.
“I am putting a book of poetry out with this record. I don’t want to be known just as a folk singer. I consider myself to be a real poet and I just happen to do it with songs. I figured if I am going to call myself a poet, I guess I’d better put out a book, and its coming with the record. It’s going to have three parts, so there will be poems then there will be Haikus and then there will be the lyrics for the songs on the albums,” she said.
Just Words and True Blue Moon seem to have injected the already vivacious and high octane Hanson with an added boost of creative adrenaline and adventurousness, which she happily hopes continues for a long time to come, as does her continued desire for trying things outside of her comfort zone.
“With the single and the video for it and the making of this record and putting it out has helped me rediscover the joy in making music. And that’s probably the thing that’s reflected on this record in terms of the whole, all-round tone and vibe and production. Because I have been in this game for a while, and it takes an effort not to be a cynic. I think just coming at this record without any preconceived notions of what I was going to do and how it was going to sound was the best approach. Here’s this group of songs that I have and let’s see what happens with them. I really rediscovered that joy of creating again, and I think that was really important, and I think because of that, the new record has a different tone to it.”
Known far and wide for her approachability and wonderful ability to connect with audiences as a singer, and especially as a spinner of humorous yarns, a self=professed closet stand-up comedian, Hanson said she looks forward to hitting the road again soon to bring the new songs to audiences far and wide.
“If I am home for five days the whole year in 2020, I will be surprised. I think there are four or five big blocks of dates still being booked. I’ve got blocks in the U.S. and I will be overseas three times. I will also be out in western Canada again, in B.C., as well as the Maritimes and Ontario in June. It’s going to be a very busy year,”
And Hanson wouldn’t have it any other way.
For more information about tour dates, True Blue Moon and the upcoming release of Just Words, both the album and book, follow Hanson on social media, or visit https://www.lynnehanson.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for nearly three decades. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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