Serendipity and recognition that there was an artistic commonality played significant roles in the formation of the talented Toronto duo of Harrow Fair, a partnership between experienced, accomplished and eminently talented musicians/songwriters/performers Miranda Mulholland and Andrew Penner. The pair released its second album, Sins We Made, on April 17 on Mulholland’s own Roaring Girl Records label.
Sins We Made is the second album by the dynamic musical duo, who came together a number of years ago to work on what was a much smaller project, that eventually blossomed into the remarkable, edifying and exceptional genre-defying sound that is Harrow Fair’s hallmark.
“I played a solo on one of Miranda’s first albums, although it wasn’t under her name. And we just kind of knew each other from the Toronto scene. Before we started working on anything that would be Harrow Fair, she wanted me to produce a song that she had written. And we did that, and we just worked really well together and kept kind of writing informally for a few weeks. Suddenly we realized we had most of a record done and a sound happening. I think we just looked at each other at that point and said, ‘this is a thing.’ And then it just really sped up from there, and it’s still a thing,” said Penner.
And describing what genre or classification Harrow Fair fits under is a bit of a mug’s game, as there are many different elements that are combined into this musical chemical concoction, but the end product is something that is truly distinct and more focussed than you would expect.
“I think we’re bigger than the sum of our parts, at least that’s what we aim to be. And I don’t mean necessarily louder, although we are, but we have a bigger scope. I think with the fiddle, drums, guitar and percussion and then our two very different voices, we have a real range and we try to use every colour within that ranger that we possibly can to serve the song. We go from something really stripped down on this album, from a song like Rich Looks Cheap To Me, which is sort of an ode to [the now late] John Prine’s songwriting, to something massive like Shadow, which is almost like a film score epicness to it,” said Mulholland.
“The thing about this band that I am most proud of is that we don’t sound like any other band. And that has its problems and challenges, obviously, because it’s very hard to pigeonhole and it’s very hard for the music industry to figure out what it is and therefore harder for them to get behind it. And Andrew and I are always talking about, well, what are we leaving behind as people, as humans, what’s the legacy that we will be leaving on this Earth once we depart, which is dealt with in the song Seat at the Table. Doing something as unique as we are with Harrow Fair, I think is pretty cool”
“It feels like a lot of music nowadays is hard to label. And you see a picture of somebody with an acoustic guitar or a fiddle and you go, ‘oh, that’s folk music,’ or ‘that’s bluegrass.’ So, some of what people think of us is based on the optics of what we look like. And both Miranda and I revel in that idea of you may see us, but we don’t sound the way that we look. And I love that idea that you see an acoustic guitar and a fiddle and two people and then we come out with a song like the title track, Sins We Made, which has a real rock energy to it, but it’s based on storytelling,” Penner added.
“When I am stuck at a dinner, which obviously hasn’t happened in a long time, with other people and they ask me what we sound like, sometimes I say that I want them to listen to the album and then they tell me what we sound like. To me, it’s storytelling set to music, and however the music makes the sound of the story work best, that’s kind of what we do. And that’s not to say that we’re shooting in the dark. There is something that we’re always going towards. I mean, people are surprised that Sins We Made has such a Gospel feel to it.
“It’s all about experimenting and not necessarily just for kicks. Miranda and I both do work and writing for theatre and film and stuff like that, it’s actually a large part of what I do. And I am producing other people’s records as well, and in everything I do, I am always trying to serve the song and the project. With Miranda and I, as soon as we started to get together for what would be the Call to Arms record, we immediately fell into a sound that we chiselled away at, and we honed. But it was pretty awesome how quickly we just distilled into this sound that had this garage rock quality, but also had this folk element and early country. And we basically said, ‘let’s not question it, let’s just roll with it.’ And through a ton of touring and lots and lots of conversations, we have managed to come out with this new record that we’re both so proud of that kind of goes all over the place.”
Mulholland talked about the collaborative partnership and how seamless the process of creating songs with Penner seems to be.
“Things can start very differently. It can be something as simple as a voice memo sent saying, ‘what do you think of this?’ Or snippets of lines or verses or something bigger we have been working on, ideas of thematic things, or the kind of things I want to say in the song about this or that topic. And then we collectively get our brains on it,” she said.
“One of the coolest parts about songwriting in this way, this collaborative songwriting process is I feel that this album has taken such a huge step forward for both of us in terms of collaborative songwriting; we often dramaturge together and once we get something down and rather than it being like building a sculpture from the bottom up, it’s like we have all the blocks set up and then whittle it down so it makes the most sense for the song and is the most concise. And with two people, sometimes we have different opinions, but we talk them out. You have to get rid of all ego and make sure that it’s the song that’s shining through. So, it’s been a really cool process.
It is an interesting phenomena that so many artists and bands are releasing albums that have themes and messages that see tailor made, not just for the strange days we have been living in politically and socially over the last few years, but even more specifically for the incredible upheaval, dislocation, fear and introspection caused by the current worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. What is remarkable is that in these instances, including for Harrow Fair, the material was written, months or even years prior to the pandemic.
Seat at the Table, one of the most powerful and compelling tracks on Sins We Made, has an almost exponential sense of relevance now, in April 2020, even though it was already a pretty biting and prescient commentary on modern life and modern disconnect when penned last year.
“I feel like a big part of the theme of the album, for us, is about contact. Which is strange to say in a time like right now. But it’s about talking to one another in a way that’s real. And it’s about getting back to care, and this idea of small interactions between people, and creating a world and an ecosystem that you want to live in. We were having his conversation about a year ago and the song Seat at the Table came from something Miranda was talking about, regarding the Arts and Crafts movement in England, which really seemed to inspire this idea of creating your own world,” said Penner.
“The Arts and Crafts movement was a reaction to the harshness of the industrial revolution and how everything was speeding up and people were becoming irrelevant because machines were taking over. An we’ve seen a lot of that also happening in the digital revolution through the last 20 years. And Andrew and I talked a lot about the things that truly make us happy in our lives, and weirdly that became a little bit precious, like cooking a really great meal, or gardening, or being into some thing that’s bigger than the sum of it’s parts,” added Mulholland.
“So, Seat at the Table, we feel, is a song that people need to hear right now. It’s full of hope, but it’s also full of these little, small gestures where we’re asking who we are, what are we leaving behind as a civilization on a max scale and on a micro scale what are we leaving behind as people.”
Penner picked up the thread of the conversation.
“I think what we’re seeing right now, especially on social media, is people having to deal with themselves in a way that they can’t be in contact with other people. On social media I am seeing people dealing with this isolation in a bunch of different ways. Some people, they can’t stop putting out stuff, or videos of themselves, because they need to cope with it in that way. Other people you haven’t heard from in a while. What we have is a major opportunity to kind of slow down in a way, and face who you are. Again, it goes back to the idea behind Seat at the Table, where it’s as simple as sitting down with someone, cooking a great meal an creating this relationship with yourself and with each other that you want to live with,” he said, linking the sentiment with a couple of other tracks on the album.
“With the song Dark Gets Close, one of the repeating phrases in the song is ‘no courage without fear.’ And the last song on the record is called Rich Looks Cheap to Me, and that’s the idea about really dealing with the simplicities of life and really figuring out what is important in life.”
Harrow Fair released the single and highly entertaining video for the single Rules of Engagement earlier in the spring, and the song delves a little deeper into the blues vibe than most other songs on the album, again illustrating the versatility and variety of the tones and feels of the songs, within the context of Harrow Fair’s overall milieu.
“I was over in Twyford [a small English village where Mulholland spent time a couple of years ago, housesitting and writing] and I had some red wine and I think I sent Andrew this weird voice thing and the first couple of lines of the song. I think I was thinking about bullying as I was watching some junk British reality TV, like Love Island or something just as awful, and I was realizing how much bullying there was on the show, so that’s where that one started. Andrew added some of his bluesy licks and we were away to the races,” Mulholland said, with a chuckle.
“As for the video, I used to live in Los Angeles and when I was in L.A. I was in a band called the L.A. Hootenanny, which was just like a musical bowling league for a bunch of people who had other professions. There was a clown, and a Hollywood movie star, a carpenter and a guy in the army. We would just get together once a week and perform. And there were these dancers who would come and dance in front of the band with these choreographed routines. That whole scene became my lifeline and I loved them so much and they really became my crew in L.A. I still see them whenever I go back.
“I was there over New Year’s, which feels like a year ago, and I talked to my friend Sacha [Senisch] the dancer who is at the front in the video, and she said she wanted to do something choreographed for the song. So, she is the one who put that together. I got her to shoot it on several different cameras and different angles and then we edited it all together back here. We wanted to be able to go there and do it with them live, but obviously we have been grounded.”
“I kept teasing Miranda saying, ‘you know you just wrote a blues song, right?’ Which was hilarious. Then I took it, and I have my own studio [he produced the entire album, with mixing by James Bunton and mastering by Joao Cavalho], which is our home base for a lot of the production of the record. I played with it and sent the parts that I added back to Miranda and she liked it, so we just chipped away at the words and figured out the arrangement, all from that initial message,” Penner said.
The Covid-19 issues has squelched any opportunity for Harrow Fair to tour in support of Sins We Made for the foreseeable future, but the duo is being as active on social media as possible.
For more information on the band, on the new album, and any forthcoming live shows, visit www.harrowfair.ca, www.twitter.com/harrowfairmusic, www.facebook.com/HarrowFairMusic, or www.instagram.com/harrowfair.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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