By Jim Barber
There’s a sense of refreshment, an enlivening tone, a focused but yet dynamic exposition of life, love, journeys and new beginnings on From Here to the Sea, the new album from Canadian roots/folk singer/songwriter Meredith Moon.
The album is somewhat divergent from her previous two albums, in that she has removed any barriers to her creative exploration as, for the first time, she is wholly committed to stretching all of her considerable songwriting talents. Yet it never wavers from the sincerity of the lyrics, the deftly expert and expressive banjo playing, and the colourful vitality of the stories she tells.
From Here to the Sea was composed and recorded in both Nashville and at Jukasa Studios at the Six Nations of the Grand River in southwestern Ontario. It was produced by legendary Canadian roots artist/producer Colin Linden and features an impressive array of guest artists, including Rebecca Lovell of Larkin Poe, Julian Taylor, Jerry Douglas as well as members of Jack White and Bob Dylan’s bands. It will be released Sept. 12 on New Motor Records/Compass Records.
It was also recorded in a state of sobriety and the clear-headedness and confidence that has accompanied Moon in this new state of being.
Moon said she started putting together what would become From Here to the Sea with a couple of songs that were left over from her previous album, Constellations, which came out in 2023.
“I had those two songs and as soon as Constellations was done I was like, ‘okay, great, it’s out and it’s in the album cycle now, so I can start writing again.’ So, I pretty much started writing right away. And it’s really interesting because the sort of theme for the record kind of happens on its own. With my first little album, Forest Far Away, I accidentally wrote songs that were all forest themes and the for the second one [Constellations] I wrote songs that were all space and universe themes. And then for this one, I accidentally wrote songs that were all about the sea. So it’s really interesting how they just kind of happened like that on their own. I think it’s dependent on where I was at in that time of my life – certain songs followed a certain pattern,” she explained.
In many ways, From Here to the Sea marks the foundation for a new chapter in Moon’s life, both as a human and as an artist. It features what some have termed a departure away from the prominent role Appalachian folk music has played in her two previous records and performances, towards something more diverse – yet never losing its resonant authenticity or unpretentious storytelling.
“I would say that the new record is more on the lines of contemporary folk music, which falls under the umbrella of Americana music. Americana music is an umbrella term for folk music of the United States and some of Canada, and it can include Appalachian music, which is sort of based on traditional banjo and fiddle tunes. What I did for the last two albums was to include a lot more banjo and fiddle tunes specifically. But for this album, I wanted to really focus on my songwriting, which are songs that are still influenced by Appalachian music because that’s sort of where I learned to play music, but really sort of allowing myself to be open to more contemporary folk than traditional folk,” she said.
Not being an expert by any means on the different styles and traditions of folk music, the humble author of this piece asked Moon to talk about the particularities of Appalachian folk, and why is holds such a deeply held place in her heart, and within her creative repertoire.
“I was playing the Appalachian dulcimer at the time when I first got into folk tunes and folk music. I was playing guitar at first and then I was playing Appalachian dulcimer like Jean Ritchie and Joni Mitchell. I was just very inspired by them. So then I decided to go down the rabbit hole of Appalachian music and learn where it came from and what it was all about and I discovered that one instrument seemed to tie it all together for me, which was the banjo. The banjo is the symbol of Americana music because it originally came over from Africa. It was an instrument called the akonting, so it was brought over by enslaved people and became the instrument we know today. To me, the banjo is really the centre of Americana music as a whole because it symbolizes how most of the music that we have in terms of folk and blues was created by African American people and the banjo is really at the centre of that because it was an African instrument that was turned into the banjo. So a lot of the formative roots of all American music is in the banjo,” she said, going on to explain her particular ‘clawhammer’ style of banjo playing, which has become as emblematic of her music as the brilliant songs themselves.
“The clawhammer is the traditional way of playing a banjo. That’s the most similar way to how the akonting was played traditionally in Africa and it’s sort of like a down stroke with the thumb on a drone string, sort of plucking the drone string. So clawhammer actually originated from traditional African playing. Someone like Bela Fleck does mostly picking. I know he’s a very good clawhammerist as well, but he mainly does picking banjo, and that sort of moves it into the bluegrass world. The bluegrass style is sometimes called clean Appalachian music. It was seen as the more ‘proper’ way of playing the banjo. Clawhammer was kind of looked at as the down-home, old-time root of it all. I wanted to play clawhammer because all of the banjo artists that I loved and all the songs that I loved and wanted to play were clawhammer style. I do love bluegrass, but I definitely am an old-timey player and not a bluegrass player.”
So how does a kid from Canada come to have such an appreciation and passion for Appalachian folk music and traditional, roots music in general?
“I was never into radio music when I grew up. My mom listened to a lot of classic rock and folk music, so I would hear that in the car. As soon as I started to listen to music on my own, around age eight or 10 or something, I was also into that, but also finding my own music. By the time I was 13 or 14, I was listening to a lot of grunge, like Hole and Smashing Pumpkins and stuff like that. But I always sort of wanted to find out where these traditional folk music songs, or let’s say the songs of Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs and Odetta came from. These were musicians that I loved and I began to notice that there were different versions of different songs performed by different artists. So I would listen to a Doc Watson song and it was the same song that Odetta did and that’s when I knew, ‘oh, these are traditional songs. This is traditional folk music.’ And they’re songs that everybody plays in their own way, like ‘Shady Grove’ [which has a tradition dating back to the 1600s],” Moon explained.
“I started learning the origins of the traditional folk and the fact that all the songs that I loved by Bob Dylan like, ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ is actually a traditional song called ‘Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I’m Gone?’ So there’s a lot of ties between the folk revival and classic rock and traditional songs; English folk tunes and Appalachian folk tunes.”
One theme that transcends all three of Moon’s albums is that of travel, of moving around from town to town, place to place and soaking in all the vibrancy of the experiences along the journey. She has busked from coast to coast in Canada, and traveled by both rail and road throughout much of North America, accumulating a wisdom of the world and an understanding of humanity that comes to very few. Many songs contain very specific, very colourful and detailed references to people, places and things. Moon is, in a way, very much like the travelling folk or blues musicians of a bygone era, going from venue to venue, guitar (or in her case, banjo) slung over her back, or even like the troubadours of Medieval Europe. Imbued with a fearlessness and a heart craving stories to sing about, she has been satiating her wanderlust since her mid-teens, and has fortunately been able to now make a living from it as a composer and singer of beautiful, compelling songs.
“I dropped out of school pretty early. I just knew that there was more. I knew that there was more out there for me, so I decided to just go in the direction that I wanted to and take the leap of sorts. I met some similar-minded folks and they sort of taught me how to travel. I guess as a teenager I was inspired by the whole Woody Guthrie thing, but more than that, I just wanted to go and see the world and connect to the world and I knew that music would be the tool for that. As long as I had an instrument, I could connect with people. I had a conversation with my parents [Elizabeth Moon and Canadian music icon Gordon Lightfoot] and they were concerned, but I still went on my way. But then later, sitting down with my parents and telling them all my travelling stories, they were excited to hear them,” she said, adding that the seemingly more ordinary and less conspicuous the places she would visit, the more they would inspire her songs.
“When I’m travelling and I get a second to sit still and I’m in a new place, and it can be any place, I just get bombarded with ideas and words and I have to write them down and I have to record them in my phone. I really believe if I were to stay still, I don’t think that I would be able to write songs. I admire those who can go and rent a cabin and have, you know, a writing week with their band. I wish I could do that, but I kind of have to be in these weird, tenuous positions of being like, ‘where are we gonna sleep tonight?’ I really feel those are the places where, when I am in that place, that’s when I write,” Moon explained.
“I’ve got a couple of songs that didn’t make the album that I wrote when I was in San Diego and Ocean Beach [California]. That was a really crazy place. I also spent a lot of time in Boston and Salem [Massachusetts] and a lot of old New England – things like Paul Revere’s house. For me, the driving force when I am someplace is history, because I’m a history nerd. If I am in a state in the States or a province in Canada, I am thinking about where am I gonna go for the next few days? And I’ll look on my map of historic sites and figure out which town is the oldest, or see what crazy things have happened in a particular area. So, a lot of my songs are about towns and their histories. The song ‘No Closing Time’ on the new album came about when I was in Florida. I was totally driven by my fascination with the Spanish treasure fleet that sunk off the coast of Florida in the early 18th century and just the general pirate history of Florida. I was totally engulfed in that for a while. So, I just really like to travel and find the histories and the personalities of the places I go and write songs about them.”
Beside a change in musical style to a more contemporary and diverse sound, From Here to the Sea was the first album that Moon had composed and recorded after finding sobriety in 2023, something which she is completely open to talking about.
“I got sober from booze in May of 2023. And it was something that was with me from the time I was 17 or 18 [she’s now 31] and it was something that I had a very toxic relationship with, a very unhealthy relationship with. I knew I was at the point where if I didn’t quit then I was probably not going to be around much longer. Part of what happened was I started dating the guy who would become my husband around that time. And he’s also sober, so that’s a huge part of it, and that was very helpful. The other thing was I wanted to know what it was like to have complete control over my own boundaries, my own outlook on the world and just to experience it with a clear mind. And it’s amazing what it did for my music. I think the reason I stayed drinking for song long was that I was afraid, I mean, I’d never played a show sober,” she explained.
“I’ve never written a song sober. I’ve never recorded an album sober so how do I know that I can still do that? So I took that leap because I had to and it turns out that I can do everything that I could do while drinking, but better. I guess for this album, for my small little audience, whoever is listening or reading this, I just want anyone to know that it is possible to continue making things despite sobriety. And it actually makes everything a lot easier and it makes you more creative. I did go to a couple of meetings [Alcoholics Anonymous] but what helped me in the end was just actually learning to love the person that I am in the life that I have now. And there’s this rush of fear that goes through me just thinking about, ‘if I ever started drinking again, I would lose all this right now.’ After a while, for me, it’s the joy of sobriety that keeps me there. I have tried drinking a couple of times and even just a glass of wine makes me feel like garbage and just takes away my creativity and joy for a couple of days. It’s amazing how different I feel now. Also because I had taken that leap into sobriety I guess I felt like I can take a step into anything, so that’s why I decided to take some creative liberties with this album because, why not? I feel like I’m a new person so let’s see what my music sounds like now that I’m alive again.”
While the atmosphere and energy of creating from a place of sobriety has led Moon down this interesting and new musical excursion, one of exploration and limitlessness, the actual nuts and bolts of writing a song haven’t really changed over the years.
“There’s a mix of ways that I kind of happens for me. If I have a poem that I wrote, I sometimes try and put a melody to that. But really what is the easiest thing for me is to have a sort of riff on the guitar or on the piano and then I build the words around that and often just sort of write them as I go. I find it easier to have the melody first. But sometimes I will have a poem and just make up a riff and then I’ll sort of pick bits and pieces from the poem to fit into the music. For me, no matter how it starts, the lyrics are the most important part of the song,” she explained.
‘East City Blues’ from the new album, has much of what Moon has been talking about thus far. It has the specificity of a particular part of a small Ontario city, Peterborough, and is from the point of view of someone living in a different part of the same community. It is riddled with imagery and detail and the emotion of longing, where one wonders whether she’s talking about a neighborhood or a person.
“That’s actually one of the only songs on the album that I did write while I was still drinking. I was living in a not-so-safe area of town. I would have people coming and knocking on my door at 2 a.m. and I was living alone in a house. So you’ve got a young woman, living in a house alone and it was just spooky sometimes. So I wrote a song about how all my friends live across the [Otonabee] river in East City and I wish I could live in East City because I fell scared sometimes,” she said.
“I had been up all night one night and just wishing that I lived in East City and that’s how the song started. I actually ended up going to my backyard and I was sitting with my notebook in the grass writing and it was about 5 a.m.; the sun was literally coming up and there was dew on my notebook, and that made it into the song. The song sounds like I wrote it about a lover but it’s actually about East City. I wanted to make it relatable to other people, so I sort of did write it like a love song to East City if it were a person.”
The first song Moon wrote once attaining sobriety was ‘Freight Train,’ a tried-and-true travel song that harkens back to the original travelling folk artists of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as images of desperation and disparity during the Great Depression.
“It’s kind of traditional hobo folk music. That’s a huge part of Americana music – the images of the dustbowl and people migrating for work using freight trains. That’s a huge inspiration for me, because I’ve done my share of train trips. I wrote ‘Freight Train’ in my first month of sobriety and it’s about how I didn’t think it was possible, at the time, to write music and carry on. But I realized, ‘oh, I can just write songs about how it’s really hard to be sober and then I’m still writing songs.’”
‘Sapphire Blue’ is another powerfully evocative song from the album, and one that is garnering deserved attention from fans and critics for it’s emotional depth and fantastical melodic tone enmeshed within a story of trying to exorcise a darkness from her soul.
“In a spiritual sense, I have had this weird feeling like there is this dark force that was clinging to me when I was once driving across the country. I was following the prescriptions of this Lightworker woman I had met with and she told me all these different things to do. She said if I was going out to the Mojave desert to wash my hands in the sand to cleanse myself. She gave me a cross to wear, even though I’m not religions, and all of these sorts of things. She said to pour a line of salt at my door every night before going to sleep and it will help me sleep better. So I was doing all of these things she prescribed while also living in my car,” she said of the experience.
Moon is playing a showcase on Sept. 12 at Americanafest in Nashville, followed by another festival appearance at Darien Center, NY. On Nov. 9 she is in Toledo, Ohio, while her agent is currently booking an extensive tour of Ontario and Quebec in early 2026.
For more information, visit, www.meredithmoon.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
