It is not uncommon for a songwriter, especially one as clever with a turn of phrase and a compelling melodic hook as Damhnait Doyle, to use their creative vehicle to riff about the complicated, multifarious, sometimes infuriating, sometimes infatuating nature of live and especially love.
The Labrador City-born singer/songwriter, known for her exceptionally compelling solo albums, her collaboration with East Coast creative colleagues Tara McLean and Kim Stockwood as part of Shaye, as well as for her roots ensemble The Heartbroken, waxes eloquent – and with more than just a little bit of her tongue planted firmly in check – about a long-standing love/hate relationship that has been both her savior and tormentor.
No, it’s not a long-lost boyfriend, or a tale of two ships passing in the night whilst on the road as a touring musician. Instead Six Feet Under is a tale about a fractious ‘conscious uncoupling’ after many years with a live-in companion known to some as the demon liquor, booze, ‘the sauce,’ hooch, the sauce – alcohol.
As only someone who is as gifted with her deceptively sharp and incisive wit as she is for her striking authenticity and remarkable gift for deconstruction many aspects of the human experience, Doyle has created a masterful piece of songwriting for what seems on first blush to be a simple, darkly sweet song.
“It’s funny how my favourite songs are where you can listen to a song and think it’s about one thing, like you can think about it being the breakup of a relationship or something like that, but it’s really not about that at all. This song was written about my love/hate relationship with alcohol before I quit drinking. This is a love song to booze. So, now for those who didn’t get that, if you go back and really listen to the lyrics, they are kind of similar to a relationship breakup with your partner,” said Doyle from her home in Toronto, where she lives with her husband and kids.
“It’s a reverse metaphor: it’s literally about alcohol and going, ‘oh this makes me feel so terrible. Why do I keep doing this?’ But everybody has felt that way after a hangover. And it does mirror a relationship and can still fit that theme. That’s the great thing about songs and their universal themes.”
Six Feet Under is a new song to Doyle’s fans and the broader music community but was actually written and recorded for sessions that led to the release of her critically and popularly acclaimed 2019 album Liquor Store Flowers, which came out in the early autumn. Although an excellent song that lyrically and tonally fits in with the rest of the songs on that incredibly bold and epically honest collection of songs, Doyle still didn’t think it fit in well enough to garner inclusion on the record. But in this the age of streaming with a focus on singles, it was decided there was no good reason to let the song sit on the shelf collection proverbial dust.
“It was the only song from those sessions that didn’t get on the record. It was sequenced on there at one point, but it just felt out of place a bit. It was a little bit more rocking, and it didn’t really fit the mood of the rest of the record, so we just decided to not put it on there. And also, everybody has been telling me that streaming has changed things; people don’t listen to albums anymore, they just listen to singles and songs. But I was like, ‘I don’t care, I want to put an album out.’ So, I put out the album, but I can’t deny the fact of how people are consuming music these days, which is through streaming and on a song by song basis,” said Doyle.
“I reached out to Sheri my manager and said, ‘you know, I still love that song Six Feet Under and it’s already to go, it’s mixed and mastered, we just need to put it out.’ So, we decided to put it out. Because times chance and things change, so from here on in as soon as I make some music, I am just going to release it, the marketing and all that stuff, will happen. I think the way that the world consumes music is very different from what it was 20 years ago, and I am just trying to keep up with the times. That seems to be what people are doing with their songs. And the thing with Spotify is that they don’t consider it a single if you’ve already released it. So, if you put out an album and the whole album is already out , you can’t ‘quote unquote’ release any new songs from it. It’s just a different system. I would totally do it that way. I am just going to release music as it comes to me. And it may come to me as a full record, or maybe it will come as two songs or three songs. This is kind of like it was back in the day when people would put out an album, and the put out a bonus song or two. It’s really not too different than that.
“Thematically, it does fit with the other songs on Liquor Store Flowers, but sonically, in terms of the sequencing – figuring out where to put songs is an art form in itself. Sometimes it could be the best song on the record, but if it sounds like it’s ‘popping out’ wherever you put it on the sequence, well then maybe it’s not meant to be on the record. I am just happy with the way it worked out because I had the music just sitting there, ready to go.”
The song itself is a collaboration between Doyle and long-time pal, Nashville-based expatriate Canadian songwriter/producer Robyn Dell’Unto, with a not insubstantial assist from another talented friend, Serena Ryder.
“I am a fan of Jason Isbell, and he had a song on the last 400 Unit record called Cumberland Gap and it had a real driving beat and I said to Robyn that I wanted to write a song like that, with that beat. So, we kind of focused the rhythm of the track based on that tempo and the lyrics came out super, super, super fast. I wrote all the verses in about 20 minutes and we had sort of finished it in two or three hours,” Doyle explained.
“But with the version we had, the chorus wasn’t sitting where I wanted it to. So, my friend Serena Ryder came over and we were sitting on my back porch and I said, ‘we have this song that I started, but I don’t think the chorus is right.’ And we sat there, and we finished it on my back porch and sent it to Robyn and she said, ‘okay, this is the new chorus.’ I went back to Nashville and finished the demo for Six Feet Under with here. So, it happened independently with two of my dear friends and we kind of made this thing which I love – I just love this song.”
The song was produced by John Dinsmore, with Mills Logan mixing and Joao Carvalho mastering. Performing the song alongside Doyle are Adam Warner, Miranda Mulholland, Luke Doucet, Andrew Boulos, Ensign Broderick and Serena Ryder. Jessica Edwards shot the stripped down, but impactful, video.
“I think solitary pursuits, for me, they have their limit in the sense that it’s no longer interesting, where I have mined my own brain to the point where I need to talk it out with somebody and see what is underneath the surface that I am not able to get to myself. So that’s why I love collaborating with people in every form,” she said.
“And Robyn is a Canadian living in Nashville, and she is killing it. I am so proud of her; I am so excited for her. I am so thrilled that she moved to Nashville and so excited that she is out there as an amazing producer and as an amazing female producer. She’s is something else.”
Doyle is currently on a run of show in Ontario opening for the reunited Crash Test Dummies. For more information on Six Feet Under, Liquor Store Flowers, tour dates and more, visit https://damhnaitdoyle.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.
