Interview: Gabrielle Papillon
MYATS: What are you listening to these days?
Gabrielle: I’m actually listening to an audio book most of the time. I am re-listening to Harry Potter right now which is partly because when I have manual work to do I like to have something to listening. I am listening to music, and I will tell you what I’m listening to, but I have to be really careful because if I’m in a writing mode if I’m listening to music it kills the notes. So, unless I’m traveling, I don’t listen to music anymore, or as much as I used to. because I actually like to listen to the notes in my own head which has to do with how I write. If I don’t leave room for those notes to come in then I could not write for months. That said, I’ve been listening a lot to this artist from Ireland, Lisa Hannigan who plays the ukulele, she’s amazing. Also Ane Brun, she has this song called “Do You Remember” which is so different, and the video is just so gorgeous. It’s just so totally inspired, I love it. I’ve been listening to a lot of Florence + The Machine. I’ve been listening to a lot of women. Bon Iver, who sings like a woman. I’ve just discovered Brandi Carlile, she’s amazing. But yeah, often when I’m walking I’m listening to audiobooks or podcasts. When I’m working on a song, if I listen to other music it kills my impulse to write my own song because I get wrapped up in someone else’s music and their notes and their rhythms and patterns.
MYATS: What are you reading these days?
Gabrielle: I’m reading a novel called The Secret Scripture. Ever since I finished school, I kind of have no desire to read academic works and only read novels. I mean to go back and reread Thomas Kuhn and really big books but you know. The Secret Scripture is really good. I’m really enjoying it. The novel is set in Ireland and it’s this hundred year old woman talking about her life. That’s my favourite type of novel.
MYATS: Do you find that what you are reading trickles down into your songwriting?
Gabrielle: Yeah, I think everything does. I think movies do, and T.V. definitely does. I absorb a lot of pop culture. I think mostly my life does now. Anything that’s going on, I make sure that I take time to process it. Especially times like right now, where I’ve just finished this really big tour. Anytime you go on a tour, it’s an epic adventure of sorts. There is just so much to process: the fun stuff, the hard stuff, where you are at in your career. It makes you want to reassess where you are and your goals and where you are going. That, for me, the scary part is being done and not quite having an idea of what is next is usually kind of terrifying. That’s the hardest part of doing this as opposed to academic work where you kind of always know what the next step is and there’s pressure in that you have to get it done, however, now the pressure is that I don’t exactly know what’s going to fall into place and I have to just blindly have faith. To know that I’m making all the right moves and taking the right steps and that I worked hard and it should fall into place but there’s no guarantee.
MYATS: What made you decide to focus on your music and touring rather than go on to your Doctorate right away?
Gabrielle: I think pretty soon after I finished my Masters degree I realized I wasn’t going to do my Ph.D. Just because I was so drained from having even just worked so hard on this master’s thesis. It took me longer than it should have. It took me an extra year to finish my thesis because I was working two other jobs and I was being very obsessive compulsive about the details. I am really proud about my thesis, it’s kind of perfect. In terms of where I was at and job stability and even my interest in the subject, it was all one and the same. The truth is, I don’t think I was committed to going back to school at that time anyways. So I kept working away at music and kept working at the rock climbing gym that I was working at and teaching there. I would give myself a year and I would say ‘Okay, in a year I’ll see where I’m at’. By the end of my second year after my master’s degree, I had done my first big tour and I had toured all summer. Irealized that I could make money and get by if I toured so I just started booking tours. So, I just kind of made this big leap, decided to quit my job and start touring. I’ve basically been touring since June 2010 just kind of trying to gun it and make sure I’m always on the road sort of pushing the career along but also making money. Now the scary part is once you’ve done that the next step is to sort of tour differently and that’s where I’m at now.
MYATS: Can you tell us a little bit about touring?
Gabrielle: It’s hard work. I think for some people, the first time you go is totally an adventure, it’s exciting, and like going on a trip. But it is physically and emotionally very taxing. It’s amazing. It’s totally amazing. You are reaching audiences and making new friends along the way that you wouldn’t have before but there are also times when you show up and you are in some tiny town and the venue is not ready for you and they kind of seem like they don’t care when you get there. Then you play for an audience that talks through your whole set and you don’t make any money. Those nights are really hard. I think everybody has to play those shows. I guess it’s part of paying your dues. The more you tour the better the shows should get. I know there are artists out there who keep playing the same shows and keep doing the same tours and I think in anything that would be the problem: if you don’t progress. Every time you tour again you have to figure out, what do I want to do differently. Maybe this time you feel like ‘okayI’m making enough money and this time I want to hire a publicist’. Touring is like a
whole other beast, I think before you go on tour it is really exciting and it should be exciting. Now, for me, it’s work. It’s fun but I’m going to work for three months and I’m happy to be doing the work that I love but at the same time, I’m usually curled up in my bed the night before going ‘I don’t wanna leave my bed’. I’m still not over sleeping in my own bed right now. It’s been almost ten days since I’ve been home.
MYATS: Do you have another tour lined up?
Gabrielle: No. Usually you book your tours kind of four to five months in advance. Right now, I’m getting my ducks in order for spring touring but I’m taking some time off. Touring in the winter is not something I really want to do. It’s hard. Driving is hard, audiences don’t come out as much. So if you don’t need to tour in the winter then it’s kind of best to try and avoid it. Maybe organize some bigger shows in your area to have a modicum of an income. So I’m organizing some shows in the East Coast to have a couple shows lined up. Right now I’m looking at booking March, April, May.
MYATS: To give yourself time to write music? Do you find that you write on the road?
Gabrielle: I write all the time. So I’m lucky in that I’m not someone who needs to go to a cabin to write. I actually don’t function that way. If you sit me down and tell me ‘now you are going to write’, I will not be able to do it. What I’ve had to learn to do is kind of write all the time. Pick up my guitar every day and always be humming and listening for notes. The next album is actually already written.
MYATS: What drives you to create music and then what motivates you to share
it?
Gabrielle: That’s actually really easy; I hear notes in my head. I’ve always heard music in my head. I don’t know where it comes from. Sometimes in dreams. Last night, I dreamt that I was sitting there and four singer-songwriter friends of mine were singing. There were these two parts and it was Lisa [Malachowski] and Cory [Corinna Rose] harmonizing and then my friend Carmel Mikol, who used to tour with Kim [Wempe], and Kim start singing. I remember in my dream thinking ‘that’s such a great song, I want to be a part of this’. Then I woke up and realized I’d just written this song in my sleep for my friends. What makes me want to present the music, is I guess that I have to. I don’t really know, but I have to.
MYATS: What are your musical influences?
Gabrielle: It sounds really cheesy but, life, and basically whatever is going on in my life. It could be anything: Having a conversation with a friend who is having a tough time; my grandfather passing away; talking to my mom, who’s also my best friend. When my heart is full, that’s when I want to write. Musically, I think probably the stuff that inspired me the most has been the stuff I didn’t realize I was listening to like as a kid. The harmony stuff definitely comes from The Beatles, The Band, the McGarrigle Sisters. The McGarrigle Sisters in a major way for sure. We always had classical music playing and I love orchestration. I love quiet intimate songs with just a voice and a guitar or a voice and a piano but I also really love very impassioned big fully orchestrated sound. Bjork, I love Bjork.
Photography by Warren Zelman
MYATS: Could you tell us a little bit about The Currency of Poetry? What inspired it and what went into it?
Gabrielle: It’s not an accidental album, but the way I got around to putting it out was a series of events in which the end goal wasn’t to put out an album. Initially, what happened was that Simon Honeyman and I were playing in a duo called Papillon & Honeyman, and we got into this festival. We had done tours together before and we’d sell our individual albums and people wouldn’t know which one to buy. I’d be selling Gabrielle Papillon and he’d be selling Honeyman & The Brothers Farr. We needed a proper album with our material. Generally what we used to do in our shows was we used to play songs a good bulk of which were my songs. Basically we had to go into studio and we decided to do an EP with J.S. [Jean-Sebastien Brault-Labbé]. We decided to use some tracks off of The Wanderer to take the original tracks and add parts, added Simon’s parts. We added his guitars to Dust to Gold. We took out Lisa [Malachowski]’s vocals from The Wanderer version of Paddle and Row and took out her melodica and put in Simon’s vocals, guitars, and whistling. We sort of did what we could and cobbled together this six song EP. One of the song’s was Simon’s and five of them were mine. We went to this festival with it, and then I guess what happened was that I was touring on my own most of the time. I would always have this album but people didn’t know what to do with it since it didn’t have my name on it. So they weren’t buying it, they were buying The Wanderer which is a great album but I had recorded it before I toured. You know, I had played a lot of shows since I’d recorded it. Everything was different, both the way I played and the way I sang. So I wanted people to buy the Honeyman & Papillon EP, but it was a bit tricky because it was our duo project.
This summer it started becoming increasingly obvious that I needed to have that material available to me. I couldn’t even send the songs to the CBC or for radio play since my solo act name isn’t on them. So these songs were done and stagnating and I couldn’t do anything with them. We just talked and I asked him if he was okay with me re-releasing the album. I had already gotten a FACTOR grant and was already going into studio and this time into the Treatment Room to do these four other songs. I asked him if I could take Currency of Poetry, that title is from one of my songs entitled “One Small Frame”, he would get an associate producer credit and I’d add these four songs to it and make my own album. Simon is pretty much okay with anything. He’s all over the album and is a big big part of my band. He is coming with me to Canadian Music Week as is Cory [Corinna Rose]. So we kind of went in there and it was just a matter of taking people who had been playing with me into the studio. Then, because I was doing that and we were going on tour, Kim [Wempe] suggested I relaunch my album since I’d only soft-released it and technically hadn’t launched it as my solo record. So I decided to do that and I had just started working with these publicists from Audioblood. I really wasn’t expecting it to do so well. It’s been charting since September on College radio charts and people really like it and it’s getting good reviews. I hadn’t planned for it to be my next album but it just ended up being this real gift. It’s current to what I’m doing, it’s really simple, it’s well produced especially the four songs that we did at The Treatment Room with drums on them. It’s an indication of what I can do with more funding. I think it just represents a year and a half of touring and developing this relationship with this really amazing band.
Interview conducted by Pamela Fillion.
