Songwriter finds his true sound
Todd Stewart laughs when it’s suggested that perhaps I’m speaking with the wrong person.
It may actually be the lady sitting beside him, ferrying him to an appointment, who should be on the phone fielding questions about Stewart’s musical project The Northern Beauties.
It is, after all, his wife Kerry Anne who seems to be responsible for not only the musical direction of the group but also the inspiration for several of the tracks that make up the Beauties’ sweet, sweeping six- song debut EP.
“She is,” says Stewart. “Just about anything I do I bounce off her, because she’s not a musician, so I get pretty honest opinion from her, from her knowing me. And it’s a nice filter from the usual paranoia and everything that goes on in the industry. It’s nice to keep your bearing …
“It’s definitely the smartest thing I’ve done in my career listening to her.”
And it all came from her listening to him — or, rather, her listening to and loving the material he was writing before taking them off in an entirely different direction, and encouraging him to pull back.
Stewart, a veteran of the music scenes in both Edmonton and now Calgary, where he relocated a decade ago, admits that most of the songs he’s penned over the years have begun life as the quieter, more Canadiana roots fare that The Northern Beauties employ. But, to “make it relevant to the venues we played and the people we worked with,” he found himself taking those tunes “push( ing) that back into the pop- rock realm.”
Those results can be heard on his previous local project, Brocade, which enjoyed some success around these parts, before Stewart laid it aside to lay it all on the line, listen to Kerry Anne and go back to basics, go au natural with The Northern Beauties.
“It’s a little crazy to think it’s taken me so long to come full circle and just do what I’m supposed to be doing,” he says.
It helps, too, that he’s also surrounded himself with some likeminded players from the city’s roots pool — co- vocalist Craig Aikman, drummer Erik Allen, bassist Aaron Scholpp and pedal steel player Charlie Hase, who Stewart admits adds a “whole other level of atmosphere” to the songs and sound.
That atmosphere is actually as much a defining characteristic as the half- dozen songs on the EP, with the calm and quiet gently bathing Stewart’s likable and relatable personal tales of life and, as previously alluded to, love. It breezes by almost effortlessly, goes down so wonderfully, so easily.
And, as the songwriter says, the reaction has been equally and fittingly as natural, with the album finding an audience quickly when they gave it a soft release a few months ago.
“This has been the easiest music to put out. I find I’m not trying to give an angle or really sell anything to anybody,” he says
“It definitely did the most work on its own. I find I’m asking friends and family and other people to come to our shows a lot less, and I’m getting a lot more messages from people telling me they’re going to be at the show. So that’s been really nice.
“And I think it speaks a lot to the material.”
Things should pick up considerably over the next few months as the band will celebrate the official release of the EP with a show Tuesday night at the Ironwood, before they return much of their focus to participating in the career- making Peak Performance Project, in which they’re now among the Top 12 Alberta finalists competing for the first place prize of $ 100,953 in the radiostation sponsored event.
Wherever it leads, Stewart is glad that he’s following his own talents and his wife’s instincts, finally.
And as for any regrets that he didn’t choose to do so sooner, the songwriter is of two minds with that, noting that maybe the timing is both a little off and also just right.
“I debate that sometimes,” he says. “And part of it is that there’s a bigger wave of Americana and you see a lot more mandolins and banjos onstage now than you did even three years ago, and you always want to be a little ahead of the curve …
“So I do get a little down on my back a little bit about not doing this a long time ago, but I don’t know if I would have been able to do something like this 10 years ago. I don’t know if I would have been in the same place and had the same maturity and confidence to pull this off.”