By Jim Barber
If absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder, then the Canadian folk music world must be absolutely overflowing with love now that the exceptionally talented, popularly and critically acclaimed and indelibly harmonious duo Dala have reconvened to write, record and release a new album – The Big Bang.
Comprised of longtime friends and collaborators Sheila Carabine and Amanda Walther, the Toronto-based singer/songwriters made an almost immediate impact on the folk music scene from their initial formation in 2002, becoming an eminently popular attraction at folk festivals and every type of performance venue one could imagine.
Known for their uncanny harmonies and how attuned Carabine and Walther are to one another’s souls, spirits and creative sensibilities, The Big Bang sees the pair bringing not only their brilliant and well-attested talents, but also nearly a decade and a half of life experiences, wisdom and perspective to the new collection of songs.
Music Life Magazine’s Jim Barber had a recent Zoom chat with both Walther and Carabine, where they talked about how things have changed … and not changed for Dala. The interview has been slightly edited for purposes of clarity, flow and to eliminate repetition.
MLM – When did you decide it was time for a new Dala record? What were the factors in play leading up to this? And who kind of made the call, the first call, saying, ‘hey, I think it’s about time we reconvened here?’
AW – It was pretty organic, and actually, it was the songs that Sheila was already writing that really kind of told us what we had to do. And we both felt the same way, that Sheila had written a number of songs in a row, a year before we started recording, that we both just felt the world needed to hear, and I felt very passionately that we needed to get these songs out there, and in whatever form they could be shared. That was the start. That was the beginning of the conversation of, ‘okay, well, how are we gonna do this? Is this gonna be a Dala album?’ So, yeah, the songs kind of told us it was time. I know that sounds kind of dorky, but it’s so true.
MLM – So, it wasn’t, like somebody’s going, ‘hey, it’s been 14 years, we gotta get the brand back out there again, blah, blah, blah.’ It was completely organic?
SC – Yeah, I don’t know if we’ve ever referred to ourselves as a ‘brand.’ I think we should, from now on. I’m being facetious here.
MLM – When did you decide it was time to ‘generate some content’ as the kids like to say?
SC – I have this data mining centre in my skull that I use to write songs, right. And it requires a litre of water a day, eight hours of sleep (said with a chuckle, getting in on the joke.) No, you know, Amanda and I are friends, so we’re in touch all the time anyways. And we’ve just been living a lot of life, you know, separately and together. And we’ve been playing shows, and with every show, we are reminded once again, as if for the first time, how much we love singing together, and how special it is.
There have been moments, I would say, in the last 14 years where we felt that pull, but it was never strong enough. And then, as Amanda mentioned, the songs suddenly just felt different, these feel urgent, they need the full force of the harmonies that will do them justice.
And then both of our personal and professional lives just were coalescing, and a window was opening for both of us at the same time that felt right. So it really felt like, okay, everything has been a thousand points of light coming to this point. We’re both ready. We’re both excited. It’s the right time, personally and professionally. So we both were able to kind of run to the edge of the dock and jump at the same time.
MLM – So you didn’t actually ‘break up,’ but you took a break. Was it just the case that it had been quite intense for a significant period of time, and you decided to go explore other avenues and suddenly you just realized that ‘holy crap, it’s been quite a few years since we actually did something together.’
AW – Well, it’s definitely been a long time. We took a break from recording, that’s for sure. But we didn’t really take a complete break from performing together ever. We did turn down the speed and the quantity of shows big time. And the biggest change came when I decided to have a kid and intentionally wanted to create more space at home so that I could be present, especially for those early years. So that was a big change in our frequency of performing that allowed us each to kind of pursue other things.
Sheila went back to school, and I had a kid and that kind of, it’s really, it’s interesting. We had been performing like 200 days of the year or traveling at least for 200 days of the year before we took this break. We really were road warriors. We were together all the time. And so it was a bit of a shock to the system, but I also think it kind of brought us closer together in every possible way, not just music, and allowed our lives to kind of thrive. Yeah, it was a really great time.
SC – I feel like I had a lot of experiences with Amanda on the road that I feel like are quite unique and they helped me grow in certain ways, but a lot of other ways, there’s a lot of arrested development through all of that. So when we went off the road, I moved out and got my own place and went to school. Suddenly the rest of me could kind of catch up and do a lot of the growing that was very much overdue.
I was at a different point, different pace. And I’m grateful for it now in retrospect. It was totally a shock to the system, but then all the cliches are true. If it’s hard, that’s how you know. If you look back and cringe at how you were before, it means you’ve grown. Right?
MLM – How do all of those new adventures with family and different life modalities impact the approach to this new record and the process and even the tone of this record? Or did it inform it at all?
AC – I mean, it informed it in probably every possible way. But the big thing is how we performed live definitely grew and evolved in those years. Every time we got to share the stage together we did not take it for granted. We absolutely relished it. I found we’ve had a greater sense of adventure on stage and more freedom, so we would play with our performance. So it has turned into this thing where every time we play together now, even though some of these songs we’ve performed for many, many years – 20 years for some of them – they have a new life every time we sing them.
We sing different harmonies and melodies sometimes. We do this joint brain thing where we both go to the same place, but we don’t know how we do it. There’s just a new element of bravery, I think, that we didn’t have before. And it’s entirely because we’ve spread out a little and appreciate everything about this more in our forties.
MLM – That makes complete sense. It’s that whole, ‘I’ve got things that are now way, way more important in my life.’ So music is not the be all and end all because you know, you’ve got a 12 year old at home Amanda and you know, Sheila’s got her continuing education, other musical projects and whatever else is going, you know what I mean? Like you’ve got these other things in your life that are prioritized. Whereas before music was the be all and end all and you probably micromanaged everything and micro-analyzed everything to death.
SC – You’re totally right, Jim. For me anyways, it was all I knew. And I think it got to the point where there was almost no more oxygen left in it. And then having had more experiences, I mean, it just means so much more. I think we can see it in the context of how special it is, almost in comparison to all the other things in our lives that are wonderful. To sing together is like, it’s like magical thinking. There’s nothing like it. It’s a little witchy and it’s transportive. And so when we get to do it, we’re just playing less restrictively.
And I think there’s, I don’t know, there’s less desperation and that cliche, ‘we just need to make it’ isn’t relevant anymore. We’re content in our lives. So we’ve ‘made it’ in that sense, which is maybe a lot healthier. Now when we get together and play, we actually are playing, which I think is, yeah, I think that’s pretty fun. I think it’s more about joy. We had the kind of hustling formative years, which were so educational, and they were so necessary. And, you know, we opened for tons of bands and went across the country and had all like, my God, incredible experiences. We were kind of baptized by fire.
I think it’s also that we can’t ignore what it was like going through COVID as a musician and having to do only online shows. You get so humbled, and it takes all of the delusions of grandeur kind of, it’s just like burst those bubbles and it just brings you right down to earth. And I think that’s kind of what this album also reflects is we got rid of any bells and whistles that we might’ve been tempted to add. So what you see is what you get.
MLM – What are some of the other things that you’ve done personally and creatively in that, that has led to sort of these changes in perspective on life and career and creativity?
AW – So the first thing I did other than be a mom was make a kid’s record purely for fun with my brother and my cousins and my family. And that was an incredible experience of remembering the aspect of play that Sheila and I started from, that moment of play where you’re just having a ridiculous time together, being creative and inventive for its own sake.
And then I had this beautiful experience of writing the soundtrack for a film out of Brooklyn, Walk With Me, which was a totally new world for me. I’ve never done any work in film, and I got to be there right at the very beginning. I was one of the first people to read the script and the director was so connected with me throughout the whole process as I wrote songs for the performers to sing and then wrote songs for the soundtrack and then a soundtrack itself.
It was a really incredibly scary and rewarding project. And then yeah, [her jazz duo] Dizzy and Fay [with Mark Lalama] was the next door that opened. I just have been listening to my gut and saying yes to all these exciting things that have come my way.
MLM – Right. And I know Sheila, you did like solo stuff because I saw you here in Kingston when you opened for Garnet Rogers a number of years ago.
SC – I went back to university, which was amazing. I read more books than I’ve ever read. I went to the University of Toronto, and I did a Master’s in English with a focus on lots of poetry, which I loved so much. And then I took advantage of being a student and got a federal grant for students to go and do this explore program where you essentially go and spend five weeks in a French immersion situation. Mine was in Nova Scotia in an Acadian community, where I met all these musicians there and I met a producer there and there was this beautiful, I think well over 100-year-old chapel. So I recorded a solo album there [All In] that was a big leap in courage as well. I’d never taken the reins on a whole creative, musical project like that before.
Then I was lucky enough to collaborate with Brian McMillan [together known as Kennedy Road] and make an album. And we released it right in March of 2020. So that was the, that was the real experience of having all the biggest dreams. Then they all came crashing down because of COVID and we had to go and figure it out like everyone else on the planet. I had to go out and get a bunch of nine-to-five jobs, which was also quite formative and very humbling because nobody cares about your music when you’re on deadlines in the corporate world. But it’s also great because you meet all kinds of people not in the arts, but who are also equally hilarious and fun and with lots of wisdom to share.
So yeah, just lots of varied experiences. Got a cat, you know. The list goes on, Jim. I took up marathon running. I don’t know. I’m just doing all the midlife things I guess.
MLM – Did it feel like you just sort of picked up where you left off or was it different this time around, writing the songs and putting the songs together, doing the arrangements and all that?
AW – Again, I think we were always like, we had been writing a little bit, so it didn’t feel like a cold stop. Some of the songs, like ‘My Father’s Guitar’ had been around and we had worked for stage ahead of time.
SC – Which we’d also done with ‘Scarborough Fair,’ our traditional cover.
AW – But what felt very new was the recording process. Because we knew we wanted to take the pressure off, we went into the studio more from an archivist perspective, just to make sure we got these songs down and then we could give ourselves some time and space to figure out how we wanted to record them for release. What’s hilarious is we sat down in the studio – right on the floor – and that brought us right back to those moments of when we first started writing together, because we used to sit on our bedroom floors facing each other writing in those early years. So we recorded this whole record on the floor of Union Sound in Toronto.
MLM – But it wasn’t supposed to be that way. You were just going to do the one song that way, right?
SC – Yeah, we went in that day, and I was just getting over a cold. And I said, well, you know, let’s not have any pressure because the perfectionist in me would just not enjoy it and take all the life out of it because I wasn’t feeling my best. And so the whole thing, this whole recording experience for me ended up becoming an exercise in just accept it for how it is, just surrender, just accept yourself.
I don’t think I’ll ever achieve that, but we recorded the first song, and we didn’t wear headphones while recording. Normally we would have done so in the past and it was very comforting because first I’d record a guide track on guitar, sing my vocals, then play the guitar to that. So it’s kind of like you’re layering and doubling back, and I was always happy with how it turned out, but we would never sing at the same time because I don’t know, it would just never sound right. I think it was like we were kind of psyching each other out. Like we weren’t fully singing out and just trusting it because we were also hearing in the headphones, which when we’re on stage, we don’t have that experience.
So it was a different beast recording this album. This time we just said, let’s not wear headphones and let’s just sing in the air and capture it. And I think we were both pretty shocked. Our jaws dropped when we listened back with Chris [Springer, the album’s producer] to the first song, she was like, ‘well, it has all the dynamics. There’s nothing I would add. It’s done.’
AW – It captured that feeling on stage perfectly. The thing that we love about singing together was in there, which was so exciting.
MLM – Were there plans for like string arrangements and for a band and everything for what you had originally planned as the recording?
AW – Well, we left the doors open. A few of the songs we knew we wanted to be simple and pared down, but a lot of them have potential to be recorded with a greater production. We have lots of different instrumentation in mind, and people in mind.
SC – And what’s funny, I was just thinking about this too. Having had the time when we weren’t working as intensively on the road and being home in Toronto more, I feel like I got to know way more musicians in the city. So I actually feel like I’m more part of a community of musicians now, even though I spent the last whatever 10 years, 14 years, not fully touring or working as a full-time musician.
So it’s neat when we were in the studio, we just have a great little mental Rolodex of all the best people that we would want to collaborate with. And then when we heard the first recording back, we thought, ‘it’s fine just the way it is.’
AW – We should just be ourselves. And the songs are pretty much complete takes, unedited. And part of our thinking was like, if there’s a couple of mistakes in there or like not mistakes, but like things we would have, we, you know, done, leave them.
SC – There’s like one for me. There’s this one guitar strum that comes in early and you’re like, yeah, well, whatever.
AW – And I sing a word wrong. We ended up choosing the takes that we felt the most emotionally connected to, like that embodied the feeling – proof of life. The whole album is proof of life. It’s literally the most human thing we’ve ever made.
MLM – It’s almost the antithesis of everything in the modern recording process. So it’s funny, because it’s like, everybody brags about doing it live off the floor, and how rare and ‘authentic’ that is, and you went the extra mile. You were doing it live ON the floor.
SC – Chris is a great producer, a great engineer and it’s a proper studio and he was wonderful to work with.
MLM – Did he sit down with you?
SC – He was setting up these little mic stands we called one ‘Stumpy Pete’ and it’s this tiny mic stand for our guitar. And it’s hilarious. He was so accommodating. He just rolled with it. He’s like, ‘all right, let’s do it,’ and made it work. Because it was such a short process the only downside was we didn’t get to hang out with him more, but it was a great process.
MLM – In terms of the mechanics of songwriting, how much has that changed over 20 plus years or has it at all? And what is that like, how do songs come together for Dala these days?
SC – It’s the same process, I would say. Every song is different, but the feeling and the place, the headspace is the same. I actually just saw this great documentary, about the poet Mary Oliver, she’s a great poet. She has this famous line along the lines of what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? And it’s about your creative self, the voice inside of you.
I can’t remember the exact quote, but she advocated for setting time aside every day to write. She believed if you plan to write, your creative self, it’ll be there, it’ll meet you there, it’ll be waiting. So the idea is it’s always there to kind of to tap into. For me, things kind of are percolating, and then the feelings fall to the surface. I kind of go into this like hypnotic trance as I’m figuring out the song; moving through it and repeating things and whatever sticks and latching onto whatever I feel an emotional twinge to. That’s the dowse that I’m being led by. I’m like, okay, this is, there’s something to this. And then I’ll share with Amanda, and I can often tell by her response if my feelings were true, if they were right on the money, and most of the time we’re totally aligned. Like we know when this is something worth pursuing.
AW – There’s an ease with the back and forth when we write together. We often follow sounds, even if we don’t have words. And if there are a couple of words that feel right, then we’ll sing them over and over again until it becomes this very meditative state. We try very hard not to engage our brains too much. We’ve learned to take breaks when that happens, when we’re thinking about it too much and just let the feelings kind of drive the song.
MLM – If I can throw a Star Trek analogy in, you’re part Borg. You operate with a hive mind.
SC – Oh my gosh, we dressed as the Borg in high school. That was a Halloween costume. And we stood in a cardboard box and then walked together. There’s no picture of it, but it’s a costume I’m most proud of. You know, Amanda, I think it’s time to bring it back.
MLM – Do a Halloween show.
AW – A Halloween show dressed as the Borg. One million per cent. We have to perform the entire show like that.
SC – I actually feel like that’s a good PR take on it. Like, ‘you might not think you’re a Dala fan yet, but resistance is futile.’
MLM – Is there a theme or is there connective tissue that joins all the songs, either thematically or emotionally on this record from your point of view?
AW – I feel like there is. So we recorded more songs than we included on the album. And part of that was we wanted there to be a good representation of where we’re at right now. But also a lot of the songs, I feel like there’s some overlap with some of them. And urgency is one of them. Joy and like love being at the heart of everything. Gratitude. Like, I feel like a lot of those things, questioning, like just asking questions about life, love, everything.
SC – Speaking plainly to power is definitely a preoccupation.
AW – Yeah, and a lot of personal stories too. Like really honest, frank, personal stories.
MLM – So let’s talk about a few songs. The title track, what’s it about and how did it come together?
SC – There are a lot of lines that allude to a lot of the poems that I love. [Iconic Canadian poet] Irving Layton has a poem and there’s one of the lines in it is like, well someone blows birthday candles out for the world. It’s this idea of this distant presence keeping track of all the years going by. Anyways, that was kind of on my mind.
And then there’s the fear of nuclear warfare and then also the concept of beginnings and endings. There’s this other line I love in a [American novelist] Cormac McCarthy book, which is like, where do you think we go when we die? And then this character responds, ‘well, where are we now?’
It’s this idea of the impossibility of locating ourselves even in the present, and the idea of, just the mystery of it all, but also the deep fear of what lies ahead of us and recognizing how little control we have over it. Yet the thing we do have control over is just being like defiantly hopeful and resistant to despair and tyranny and cruelty. So I think it’s a kind of a call to action song, like I was calling myself to action, I would say.
MLM – So how, what’s, how’d ‘Love With a Broken Heart’ come together? What’s it about? What was inspiring it?
SC – Well, it started with a broken heart, mine. I think it’s that feeling of maybe being born with some notion that you never feel whole, but you’re searching for that feeling. And I think it’s definitely, for me, a reckoning with past loss and reflecting on how you go forward and carry that with you and still leave yourself open to something beautiful that you have yet to experience or know.
MLM – ‘My Father’s Guitar.’ What’s the story behind that lovely song?
AW – So my dad, Dominic, is the musical heartbeat of my family. We all sing together. Sheila knows this because she’s an adopted member of my family. When we’re all together at Christmas or any holiday or even just all in the same room, someone will pick up a guitar and usually it’s my dad. And music will just start flowing and singing and all these harmonies. It’s a pretty beautiful way to grow up, and my dad was at the center of that. He’s so enthusiastic. He’s always up for playing and singing.
Anyways, he has this Martin, the 1969 Martin guitar. It was his first guitar, and he still has it. And it’s been woven into family memories my whole life. A few years ago, we did a guitar swap, and I was the steward of this guitar while he was off in Thailand. It was a pretty big honour, and also really fun to play it again. One day it started writing a song with me about my dad.
MLM – I gravitated towards the song ‘35/115’ because I’ve been on that part of highway many times, and pass it every time I come west along the 401 from Napanee? It’s like your ode to Canadiana, or more accurately, your ode to Ontariana. It’s such a road song, but it’s also like…
SC – It’s such a [Gordon] Lightfoot song.
MLM – Yeah, it’s like a cultural song, a heritage song that’s very specific yet it’s so identifiable. You don’t necessarily have to know what road or area you’re talking about to get what it’s all about and relate to it.
AW – I was driving on the 35/115 with my family, and my son started singing this song. He does this amazing killer fake country star accent when he makes up songs sometimes, and he was singing a song called, what is it? ‘’Sand Hanitizer. He was just being a goof, and then I got just so excited about 35/115, because it’s always the point at which I’m like, woo-hoo, I’m officially out of the GTA. And then I literally just started singing these words. It just came out of my mouth, and that was it. That was the whole song.
MLM – Why ‘Scarborough Fair?’ Of all the billion songs that have been written and played and recorded, why was that the one that you gravitated towards and wanted to cover?
AW – Well we love singing it so much, and it’s this cool crossover in terms of references for us. It’s exactly how we crossover and how we crossover as teenagers: that 1960s folk vibe that we grew up with from our parents’ records, and then the traditional music that our dads played.
We grew up with both of those things as huge influences, and Scarborough Fair is both of those things in my head. It’s a traditional song, but then a song also made famous by the 1960s, and by Simon and Garfunkel. And so we actually didn’t sing it for a really embarrassingly long time. It’s kind of bananas that we only started singing it a few years ago.
SC – And actually, I heard it covered at a John Sheard show. He was the musical director of [Popular CBC Radio show] Vinyl Cafe. He puts on these wonderful tribute shows to, it could be like music of the 1960s or whatever, and I went to the Simon and Garfunkel tribute, and they did ‘Scarborough Fair.’ And it was like I heard it again for the first time. Then I thought, well, we need to sing this song, so Amanda and I sang it. I think the first time we sang it was in Calgary. And it was just so hypnotic. I felt like we could be playing this for 100 years. That guitar pattern is so much fun to play. It’s one of my favorite things to play.
And Amanda’s harmony is so fascinating. I think it’s really at the forefront on our recording of it too, which is it’s featured for a reason. It’s really haunting. It does feel like when we play that song, we’re able to reach our hands through the centuries, and touch some ancient tapestry in some castle somewhere.
MLM – So does this record mean, Dala, you’re back, full on? No going away for a decade and a half? Or is it more like you’re back and you’ll see how it goes, and play it by ear?
SC – I mean, we’re back and the enthusiasm is just on fire. We’re so excited about these songs. They’re all we want to play. And we’re getting incredible response from people when we play them. So it’s proving we’re not crazy. We believe in them so much, and people are responding. I’m excited about where that will lead, I would say.
For more information on the new album and upcoming tour dates, visit https://www.dalamusic.ca.
