LUCIDMEDIA

Sarah Slean: Letting Music Happen

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Thursday, 30 April 2009 12:43

This interview started very Phantom of the Opera-like. I was lead to the back of the Gig Music Hall in Kitchener; past the seats, past the stage and down a brightly lit hallway to the theatre’s Green Room. Or make that Black Room. The walls of the Green Room are painted pitch black, and in the back corner, at an old piano, there is a person tinkering away on the keys. But when they turn around, it’s not the horribly made-up face of Lon Chaney that greets me, but the adorable, smiling visage of the talented Sarah Slean.

“I find that when I go on tour, that’s the time I’m most excited by music, and most in the zone, as they say,” she explains. Tonight, it’s the Go Music Festival that brings Ms. Slean to Kitchener. She’s among one or two other big-name, mainstream acts brought to town for this Festival, which is predominately reserved for emerging talent. How does Slean feel about now finding herself in a mentoring role?

“Oh heavens, is that what it is? I quit, I’m running away,” she says jokingly. “It’s lovely. You know I opened for so many people for so many years, that’s how I met most of the people whose music inspired me. That’s a kind of the school of hard knocks in that certain respect and I treasure that, It’s the kind of education you can’t find anywhere else.”

And speaking of education, Slean performs tonight just one exam away from being a university grad. She says that she’s OCD about finishing the things she starts, having been signed to a record label while she was still in school at the University of Toronto. She thought it’d be a waste to let the course work she already put in slip by and just calls it “The longest undergraduate degree in history,” one that she started 1997. Studying philosophy by day and making music by night has led to some interesting exchanges for the singer/songwriter.

“Sometimes I have moments where I did a Juno press conference before I went to class. So normally in class I have no make-up on and my hair up in a pony tail or whatever, right? And then I had to go in there with a dress and heels and make up all over my face and then [my professor] said, ‘I think I saw you on TV this morning.’”

And although she says that she’ll miss the regular intellectual stimulation, Slean can now exclusive focus on her music, and she already has an idea how. “Now that school is over I’d like to be a little less cautious and methodical about [music], and I’d like to be a little bit more, and I hate to use the word, cavalier,” she explains. “I’d like to take more risks because it’s a struggle for me to not make it so heady and intellectual.”

Well, it’s worked so far, but by the numbers Slean’s released only four albums in 10 years, including last year’s Juno Award nominated The Baroness. “I think I’m maddeningly slow when it comes to music, a friend of mine actually said I was a constipated artist, which kind of hurt,” she says. “I think I could probably just make an album every year, but the good stuff comes out of me when I’m inflamed about something.”

This is one of the reasons she doesn’t plan out her albums in advanced anymore. Slean explains that she’s stopped trying to work out the music beforehand and just let it happened because no matter how good the plan, fate always has its own ideas. “Invariably, the muse is kind of behind the curtain, laughing at all of your plans and they don’t deliver what your album’s going to be. […] I’ve kind of stopped trying to author it, and I kind of just let it come now.”

She adds, “Half the time, I write songs that I think are my best songs are when I’m washing dishes. In some ways, it’s when your mind kind of forgets itself and when it’s not busy.”

But the mind of Sarah Slean seems always busy with one thing or another. Aside from writing, performing and producing her own music, she’s also an accomplished photographer, artist and poet. Her only worry is that whatever this “pipeline” is between the creative force of the universe and herself, that she might one day loose it.

But Hawksley Workman told her once to trust in the pipeline, and that it will always be there, even if a year goes by without writing a song. And so far, his words have held true. For Slean, keeping a positive attitude and being prepared to receive inspiration when it hits is a combination for artistic success. “I think the main thing for me it that I practice gratitude, and I practice being so happy that I have this pipeline between me and it.”