Twenty years is a remarkable milestone for any creative endeavour, let alone for a musical partnership that at one time was so much more. Brenley MacEachern and Lisa MacIsaac, known to fans collectively as the roots-inspired singer/songwriter duo Madison Violet, have weathered many emotional storms, above and beyond the rigour and challenges of living the lives of independent recording artists in an often unforgiving industry. Neither of them understates the sometimes difficult course they have charted, but both are thankful to have made it through the vicissitudes of life and career with their friendship and exceptionally profound creative relationships as strong as ever after two decades.
This is evidenced by the release of their latest album, Everything’s Shifting, which came out March 8, and sees the group playing dates in Alberta and British Columbia in early April, before moving out to the Maritimes to round out that month.
“I think it’s a testament to our love for the music, our commitment to one another as bandmates and as friends as to how we’ve stuck to it through thick and thin, and there has been a lot of thick and a lot of thin along the way. But we have been able to overcome so many challenges and get through to the other side and see the light,” said MacIsaac of the significance of the 20th anniversary.
“Some of the struggles we have gotten through over the years have been the same. We’ve run sort of along similar paths, particularly in the sense that both of us have lost brothers. Brenley lost her brother about 12 years ago and I lost my brother five years ago. There have been a lot of similarities in things that have happened within our families and to our friends. All through it, we have been able to lean on to one another and be a shoulder to cry on and someone to talk sense into you over the years.
“The first 10 years of our career we were also a couple so about nine years into it we had to make a decision as to what was better for us. Were we going to fight to make the personal relationship work, or were we going to steer our energies towards our music endeavours – and we had to pick one? And, as hard as it was, we made the right decision because here we are 20 years on still making music and with a closer friendship than we’ve ever had.”
MacEachern said the songwriting has evolved as the relationship has evolved over the past 20 years as well, particularly after she and MacIsaac transitioned from being a romantic couple to good friends and keen collaborators.
“It was hard, but then you remember why you fell in love with the person in the first place and you harness that part, that love that you had in those days. The thing is, we already know each other so well and that’s crucial. We know each other’s vices, we know how to push each other’s buttons, we know how to motivate and support one another. It really comes down to trust. We trust each other immensely and I think that has become the glue I guess, or the secret to being able to figure it all out,” she said.
“Twenty years ago, you’re a much younger writer and you’re thinking that there is some magic formula to writing a big hit and you’re always trying to figure that out and so you’re not actually writing so much about what you know. You’re studying other songs and looking at those topics and saying, ‘well I want to write a song like that.’ But one day you wake up and realize, oh I can’t write a song like that because I am not that person. I can only write what I know. And that’s what we have done – we have learned to just write about the things that have happened in our lives, that have brought us pain, joy, love, heartbreak – whatever. We just write that, and I think that’s what has made us better songwriters.”
Everything’s Shifting is such an appropriate title, one that infers many different meanings depending on one’s point of view. For Madison Violet, the timing of its release coming on the 20th anniversary of their collaboration was not lost on either MacIsaac or MacEachern during the writing and recording process. The album came to mean more than simply a retrospective and introspective release on a propitious occasion. It was an opportunity for the two compelling songwriters to unburden themselves of thoughts and feelings, memories and experiences that had taken up residence in the recesses of their hearts and minds for many years.
The album was a chance to empty the vessel of both the dark and the light, to throw down the fetters and barriers and excuses for not bringing these stories to the fore over the years. Everything’s Shifting is at once an ending – a closing of chapters and doorways to pain and hurt, but also a beginning. It is a cleansing of the artistic and emotional palate that will allow MacIsaac and MacEachern to propel their art and music forward into new directions, without as many millstones of the past slowing them down.
“We have got to a point where for this album we didn’t censor ourselves. And I think that has strengthened our storytelling. We have taken the filters off. I don’t know how conscious a decision it was but Brenley and I really decided to tell all the stories that we maybe were too scared to tell at one point. Hopefully, we’re living in a time in our lives right now where maybe this will help someone else, or some of these stories will help people get through their tough moments. There are songs on here where we’re very candid about things that have happened in our lives over the years; things that we haven’t talked about with even our families or with our friends, and which will probably come as a surprise to some of them. For example, the song All Over Again takes me back to when I was in high school and I came back from a ski trip and came into the house and my mother had locked herself in the bedroom. I found out that my brother [legendary, award-winning fiddler/songwriter Ashley MacIsaac] had come out and told my parents that he was gay, and it was going to come out in the newspapers,” MacIsaac explained.
“I had already known, but unfortunately I was only 15 or 16 when I found out and I am not proud of the way I reacted. I don’t think I was 100 per cent supportive. I don’t even know if Ashley even remembers how I was, but it’s burned into my mind. This song is me telling of my brother’s coming out and how I was affected by it. He was in New York City when all of this went down, and I was in Cape Breton and this is 25 years ago or something, and it was a different time, so it was quite traumatic for my family.
“In the song I am wishing I could do it all over again, and the regret about how I initially reacted and how your reactions and words can affect other people and me wanting a ‘do over.’ We never talked about it, and he hasn’t heard the song yet [at the time of the interview], but we’re pretty close, as close as siblings can be three years apart. We both have strong personalities, but we haven’t discussed it and we talk about everything so maybe it was just a fleeting moment for him, but it’s something that really affected me because I wish I had done it differently. It has been stewing.”
For MacEachern, the eighth track on the album, Nobody, also strikes and deep and highly personal note, as it deals with the emotionally wrought subject of miscarriage.
“Nobody wants to talk about it is the chorus. There are so many women out there who don’t want to talk about miscarriage. I miscarried on the third month – the day the calendar hit exactly three months which means you can start telling people, that’s the day it ended. We were on tour in Germany and it was a pretty traumatic experience for us, but we got through it. It’s taken almost 10 years to be candid about it, to talk about it, because there is still all the shame and second guessing. I was saying, ‘I shouldn’t have been on the road. I should have been home taking care of myself.’ And even though a thousand people can tell you that it wasn’t mean to be, or that you didn’t do anything wrong, there is still a hole in you; you are always thinking there was more that you could have done,” she said.
“This was 10 years ago when they first started designing these apps where you could download them and follow the progress of the baby growing inside you. You would find out ‘oh now the baby has limbs and the heart is this size and now the baby is the size of a jellybean.’ And once you lose the baby you’re thinking, ‘okay, I guess I have to delete the app. I guess I have to delete all the expectations and everything I was looking forward to because they’re just gone.’ Its so hard for women because we are the vessel that carries that baby, but it’s so hard for the men too because there is a huge loss and guilt and shame for them too.”
While there is sadness and the sharp emotional pangs of the difficult experiences Madison Violet have experiences collectively and individually, Everything’s Shifting is not a morose, maudlin or malevolently dark album. As with life, there are moments of light, moments of happiness, but all facets of the record are draped in the garments of reality and authenticity. The more difficult material is not overdramatized, while the more upbeat segments are not dripping with soppy sentimentality. Songs such as the album’s lead off track Sight of the Sun and the final song, Real Love, are nuanced and complex – as each experience in anyone’s life can be.
“Real Love is about when you call it quits and you’re packing up your house and packing up everything you had together. But at the same time as you’re packing all this stuff up and you’re going on to the next path you’re carving for yourself, you’re also asking, ‘is this as good as it gets? Maybe I should stay and put the work in here because maybe this is real love. This is as close as it comes, so am I going to stay here where it’s safe, or am I going to keep moving on and see what else I can find, or what else finds me,’” said MacIsaac.
“I think Sight of the Sun is speaking about those paths and finding a way through. Sometimes you think you’re going in one direction and life sort of veers off course and you leave a trail of emotions and things in your wake, and all the while you know it’s hard sometimes to find your way back,” said MacEachern.
“But we are saying that regardless of the day you’ve had, there will be one constant every day and that is that the sun will rise, and the sun will set, and you can rely on that. But you can’t make that your only beacon, your only hope, because if you do and you don’t work on the things around you, you can get burned. So, Sight of the Sun is about trusting the ups and downs and trusting that they will guide you but that you also have to be creating your own path at the same time.”
Everything’s Shifting is both a prescient title and one filled with truth. It represents the relentlessness of time and change, which can be interpreted as either a blessing or a curse … or more accurately both to differing degrees. It also is a bold statement by two artists who have evolved over the shifting sands of time for two decades, dropping pretense and trepidation along the way as they pushed through creative and personal crucibles along the journey to become the revelatory and profoundly insightful songwriters they are today.
With the unburdening of their spirits and souls through the endeavour of creating this new album, admirers of long standing and new adherents to Madison Violet must be filled with excited expectation of what is yet to come.
For more information about Madison Violet, Everything’s Shifting and forthcoming tour dates, including jaunts to Europe and the U.S. later this year, visit www.madisonviolet.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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