Jill Barber truly loves and appreciates her fans. The award-winning Canadian vocalist/songwriter has built up a loyal international following of admirers through her excellent craftsmanship as a composer of evocative, compelling and highly memorable songs, often weaving and sometimes bending genres to create a distinctive tone and musical message.
For nearly 20 years, she has also captivated audiences throughout her home and native land, and abroad with her wonderful concerts, building up a reputation as a must see performer and artist. She also has developed a rapport with her fans and works hard at what could be termed as ‘fan service.’
As part of her forthcoming autumn Cross-Canada excursion, Barber is getting fans involved in planning her set list not just for the tour, but for each individual show, as part of what she is called the Dedicated to You Tour.
“I love to play shows and my whole goal is to just connect with my audience. I always thought the audience kind of underestimates the role they have in my shows. More and more I want to bring them in to be a part of the show. So often at the end of the night, when I got out to meet people after the show, I hear from folks that share with me what a particular song meant to them in their lives. Or occasionally they may say, ‘oh I wish you had played this other song because I was really hoping to hear it.’ And I always think, I wish I had known that before the show, because I would have loved to play that for you,” said Barber, prior to the start of the tour. .
“So Dedicated to You is a way to get ahead of that and invite my audience, in advance of the shows, to work with me on building the show. We came up with this method where people can fill out a form online and get in touch with me and share with me either a story or even that they just want to dedicate a song to someone they are coming to the show with. We tried to make it easy and interactive so that I hopefully don’t have to hear ‘oh, I wish you played this song.’ I want to fulfill requests in advance and build a unique set for each night. And it’s been really cool to hear from people. I have been interacting with lots of folks and building the nights around that intel, so it’s been fun.
“I have been getting amazing stuff; personal stories about how my music played a role in people’s love stories, or how people have been living overseas and my music has made them feel less homesick because it reminds them of home. It’s a broad cross section, and there are harder stories from people who have lost loved ones in their lives and whenever they hear a particular song of mine, they feel that person is still with them. It has always floored me and made me feel so honoured that my music has played such a role in people’s lives. I know from my own perspective as a music lover how so many times music and the power of music has saved me. I remember when I was at Queen’s [University in Kingston, ON] there are a handful of albums where, if I throw them on, I am instantly transported back to living in Kingston and being a student. It is so powerful how music can really affect us and take us places. So, with this tour I am trying to embrace that aspect of music and get even closer to my audience.”
With the paradigm destroying changes that have happened to the way the music industry is structured, the way artists create and the ways listeners consumer music, increasingly through virtual methods such as streaming, there is always an interesting discussion with artists as to the purpose of creating full albums as opposed to just writing, recording and releasing a string of singles. It is something that Barber has pondered, but still believes in the importance of developing a collection of music and releasing it as its own entity.
“I am pretty sure, after my last album, that I uttered the words, ‘I don’t think I am going to release an album again.’ I love albums and that’s how I grew up and fell in love with music, listening to albums. But it’s so clear to me that it is not how people listen to music anymore, especially young people. There may still be older people who do. Having said that, I find myself in the process of again making an album,” she said.
“The concept still does have an interesting hold on many artists and on me personally. I think I said I wasn’t going to make another album in a moment of frustration because it does feel like, even though people are making them, I am still not sure that the general public, the average listener, is listening to an album from start to finish. I am making a new album regardless and I guess its people’s prerogative to listen or not. Just like it’s my prerogative to make whatever I want to make, and I do want to make an album. That’s what my instinct is. Once it goes out into the world, I don’t really have any control over if people listen to it or no.
“Honestly, I think we need to just let go of our expectations of other people. So that those who do want to listen to a whole album can do so, and those who do want to work out to just one of the songs as part of a playlist, that’s alright too. I guess we just have to adapt and let go of those expectations of how people will take the music in, as long as they take it in somehow.”
Barber has been fortunate in her career since the 2002 release of her debut album A Note to Follow So to have regularly released albums – nine in all as of 2018, to general acclaim. Her music has also been ‘placed’ in film and television, including in the massively popular Netflix series Orange is the New Black, where the title track from her 2008 album Chances was included in the very first episode.
“I have had some really great placements and, just as you said, it can be good financially and it can be really great just in terms of reaching new audiences. I know a lot of people have come to my music through some of the placements that I have had. It’s great when it happens, but the tricky thing with licencing for me is that there seems to be a code that I haven’t cracked yet. These things kind of fall into my lap from time to time. I do have some pretty good connections to some music supervisors in Los Angeles. I’ve got a couple of people that have landed me some great placements and they know my music and they pitch me regularly and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,” she said, adding that there are many options for generating income through music that go outside the traditional model of being a recording/touring musician and songwriter.
“More recently I have been collaborating with a composer down in L.A. and together we are writing songs that are specifically for a sort of music bank to be drawn from for film and television. So, for instance, we have lately been writing songs that sound like they are from the 1940s. He writes the music and sends it to me, and I write lyrics and melody and record that and send it back to him. We have never met personally, but we have been writing songs together and have this great partnership.
“It’s kind of a side thing I am doing, which is very challenging and fun and cool, and I like it. I am actually writing under a pseudonym because it’s separate from what I do as an artist. I don’t have any shame about doing it, but I do want to keep it separate from what I do as Jill Barber the artist. I am excited to do more of that kind of stuff. It’s really fun to do and it doesn’t feel like a drag, it actually feels like a cool challenge to write within these more strict and specific parameters and see if I can pull it off.”
At various stages in her remarkably diverse and award-winning career, Barber has been seen as a folk artist and a jazz maven, with deeply imbedded pop sensibilities. That pop aspect of her musical personality came to be explored in a more profoundly open and powerfully melodic manner on her most recent album, the enchantingly atmospheric and robustly lush 2018 release, Metaphora.
“It’s definitely the album I needed and wanted to make. I wanted to address some more contemporary issues and I felt like I wanted to use more of a contemporary musical vehicle to do that with. And I love pop music. So often my albums are reflective of what I am listening to at the time, and unlike 10 years ago, I actually feel that a lot of modern pop music is great. I like listening to a lot of modern pop music; I think it’s gotten better,” she said.
“And I guess I was just inspired to write a more energetic record. I have always been inspired to push myself to make different music. I like that all of my albums sound different from one another. It’s important for me to keep things interesting for myself and for other people. I have a diverse musical collection so to me it makes sense that my musical output would also be diverse and reflective of the music I am listening to.
“It is confusing to some people and it’s frustrating for my team of people because over the course of my whole career I have heard things like, ‘I like it, but I don’t know what to do with it. Is it folk, or should we book her to play jazz festivals?’ That’s kind of the cross I bear. I am a songwriter first and love music and I love making music. I love so many of my inspirations and at the time, that’s the album that I chose to make. I am super proud of Metaphora. It’s exactly the album I wanted to make. And I feel like a lot of people have embraced it and maybe some people haven’t. But that’s okay because there will be another album and they might like the next one. I do have a lot of faith in my fans and that people are not so fickle that they will let go of me completely if they don’t love a particular album. I think what ties it all together is my actual voice but also my songwriting voice. Metaphora was just a different way of me expressing myself. It may not be exactly where everyone wished I would go but, again, that’s why we make albums. It somebody loves an older album of mine; they can always return to that because it’s always there and it never changes.”
As if to confirm all that she had been talking about regarding her desire to branch out in new, bold and adventurous directions creatively, Barber almost matter-of-factly mentioned that her next album, already in progress, will be a truly unique artistic statement.
“I am in the process of writing and later this fall recording another French album. About five or six years ago [it was 2013] I made a French covers album called Chansons, and I loved making that record. I really loved singing in French, and I love the French language. So, that was an album of covers, but this is actually going to be an album of original songs, and it’s very much inspired by the 1960’s French Yé-yé music. So, it has a bit of a fun, pop sensibility, but does sound a little like a throwback to that 1960s French pop sound, like the Françoise Hardy [French pop chanteuse of the 1960s] kind of sound,” she explained.
“I feel like this album is going to be really fun and energetic, but also lyrically contemporary – but in French. Part of the reason that I am enjoying writing in French is because it’s amazing to switch up the language. I feel like I say things in French that I wouldn’t say in English; I say things in a different way, and because my voice is my main instrument, it’s also just really nice to use my voice in a different way. Singing in French is really a different way of expressing myself. So, it will be a fun, upbeat, French pop record with 1960s flourishes. I think it was also be a very summer-ish record, so we’re probably going to release it next June. I am going into the studio in October and hopefully by early next summer it will be out.”
Jill Barber’s Dedicated to Your Tour begins Sept. 11, at The Station Theatre in Smith Falls, Ontario, before moving on to Doghouse Studios in Napanee Sept. 12 and then the Neat Café in Burnstown the following evening. From there, she and her trio featuring pianist Johnny Spence and drummer Morgan Doctor play in Wakefield, Quebec, cross back into Ontario for shows in Peterborough, Paris and Ridgeway before returning home to the east coast for a short break. A western Canadian jaunt starts up Oct. 2 in Regina and wraps up Oct. 15 in Whitehorse.
For more information, and to contribute your requests and dedications, visit www.jillbarber.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.
SHARE THIS POST:
