Jill Barber: A Modern Classic
“It was definitely important to me,” she says, “to challenge myself to try to write songs that, at the risk of sounding immodest, can stand alongside old standards.” It was her aim to write what she terms “new standards,” pieces with a classic touch but a modern sensibility. “If I’m really lucky,” she says with a nervous laugh, “contemporary jazz artists will start covering my songs, because I think songs some on the album could go on album with other standards, and hopefully not stick out.”
The winner and nominee of numerous East Coast Music Awards, and nominated for two Junos earlier this year (include New Artist of the Year), Barber originally hails from Port Credit, Ontario, but was based, along with her singer-songwriter brother, Matthew Barber, in Halifax for many years. Playing with the Symphony Nova Scotia this past February (as part of a Pops concert) re-oriented her musical interests and began her stepping into the world of jazz and classic ballads. The experience was, she says, her “first foray into a world of having that kind of power behind me. It was probably the most amazing night of my life.” Sensing an opportunity, Barber says “that’s the next goal I set for myself, is to try to do show(s) that with symphonies, but across the country.”
In writing Chances, Barber “totally referenced a lot, listened really closely to research a lot of music.” She and producer Les Cooper “wanted it to sound authentic to the style we were going for, and that’s not a style that you hear much in modern music, so we had to look back.”
Along with the title track of the album, two more songs (“Old Flame” and “One More Time”) are co-written with Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith. Barber says he is “an encyclopedia” of music history knowledge. “He knows and loves all those old classic songs,” she says, clearly still in awe, “so we kind of broke the ice by talking about all of our favourite songs. He was at the piano, I was at my guitar, and we started singing our old favourite songs, getting ourselves into the mood of that old music. I think he’s like me: he gets taken to a place when he listen to things.” Barber says “the challenge of working with an amazing songwriter made me work harder.”
Her experience of working and recording at the renowned Banff Centre for the Arts was a key part of the process. Like Virginia Woolf’s book A Room Of One’s Own, Barber, found that by having a purely creative space of her own, she was able to accomplish more than she ever had. The genesis of Chances was during her three-week artistic residency at the Centre, and she says working there made her realize “how important it is for creative people to have a space. It doesn’t have to be in Banff, but to have a space, a symbolic space where they go to work, where their job is to work…” She pauses, remembering the moment and searching for the right words, before settling on a personal example. “I’m good at working in my home. I work in my living room. But I’m also good at getting distracted by whatever… so it’s nice to have my own studio space. (In Banff) I felt like this was the space I went to be creative, and that was really useful to me. I realized that’s how I work best.”
In terms of working in her old material alongside the new, Barber says it’s a contrast she’s still adjusting to. “It feels like I’m reading from an older chapter,” she admits. 
“It’s funny, a lot of the songs I’m still performing are ones I wrote four and five years ago. My relationship (with them) changes over the years, and with music in general.” She says the ways she listens to, and experiences, music is vastly different from the way she did it a few short years ago, and admits to moving in and out of exploring various styles and genres. “With my last record, I was just in a different space, listening to old country music,” she reflects, “and with (Chances), it was old jazz music. I do feel like if you go back far enough, old country and jazz meet.” She names Willie Nelson as an example, and indeed, one of her many current inspirations. “He’s associated with country, but he’s a jazz-country guy. A song like “Crazy” is a kind of country and jazz fusion.”
Vocally, Barber’s unique throaty sound has never sounded better than in combination with the classic, classy tunes on Chances. The material called for a different kind of singing, but Barber was up for the challenge. Besides, recording Chances gave her an opportunity to channel some of her favourite female chanteuses. “Because I write the songs, I have a pretty good idea of how they’re sung,” she explains, “of how, depending on the song, it calls for a different kind of way to sing it, but I do look to some of my favourite singers, especially with this album.” Some of those favourite singers include Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and notably, Patsy Cline. “I looked a lot to older singers. There is a certain way of delivering songs that I love, so it’s not trying to emulate the voice but the delivery … I’ve definitely have been inspired by vocalists in terms of delivery.”
Touring Australia now through January, she’ll be promoting her last record, For All Time, with just an acoustic guitar –a switch from the big bands and lush orchestration of Chances. But that doesn’t mean the songs on the new album couldn’t be done in the same stripped-down way. “Even though there’s not a lot of acoustic guitar on my new album, I can perform all of them. To me, they’re all songs I’ve written –they have that in common, they all have me in common,” she says, then adds with a laugh, “so I guess they’re related siblings with their own personalities!” She’ll be returning to tour Chances through Ontario and Quebec in February.
“I feel like I’ve been inching closer to this sound,” she says of the dreamy quality on Chances, “in terms of the songs I write and have always written. I always wrote romantic songs that lend themselves well to a classic production style. I had the means to record an album like this too. I guess I wanted to make an album that shares a sound with some of my favourite classic albums.”
When told it’s the sort of material that could be shared between parents and children, her response is immediate. “Everyone is sharing it with their mom!” she says laughing, “I get that comment so often and it’s great!”
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