Modern folk, Newfoundland style
Quote the Raven soars from Trinidad to Truro
Given reports this week of snowfall across the Cabot Strait, it’s no surprise that Newfoundland modern folk duo Quote the Raven is happy to be heading to Trinidad and Tobago for a few days.
It’s only for a few days, and then it’s back to the mainland for a Maritime tour that picks up at Truro’s Nook and Cranny on Saturday, but they’ll take all the sunshine they can get. After all, Kirsten Rodden-clarke and Jordan Croaker didn’t call their new album Golden Hour for nothing.
Before the Conception Bayraised pair is back in Nova Scotia, they’ll be in Port of Spain for NL producer Fabian James’ 2018 Fusion Project, promoting unique collaborations between artists from Atlantic Canada and the Caribbean.
“It’s a lot like Newfoundland, there’s a big conglomerate of cultures,” says Coaker over the phone from the departure lounge at Pearson International Airport. “There’s French and Irish and English components there, and their main exports are oil and fish, so it’s similar in the broad strokes of it all.
“Now we’re upgrading that with music, so it’s pretty cool.”
If you compare Golden Hour to Quote the Raven’s debut EP Misty Mountains, you get the sense they’re in a constant state of upgrading, sharpening their songwriting skills and adding more glow to their already impressive vocal harmonies.
But they had some extra help this time around, thanks to their Nova Scotia-based publisher Sound of Pop and musician/producer Chris Kirby, who teamed them with some of the region’s best scribes for an intensive songwriting camp last winter that was perfect for their naturally collaborative personalities.
“Even when we recorded our first EP, we asked the musicians that came in to play what they thought the songs needed, as opposed to being more directive about it,” says Coaker. “A lot of the time, they played almost exactly what we wanted the song to be.
“With the new album, it was a lot the same. First we got together with 10 songwriters,
and in the span of two weeks we wrote and recorded the new album. Which was crazy and really dumb, and I wouldn’t suggest that any other musicians do it, but it was really fun.”
Besides Kirby, and accomplished singer-songwriter in his own right, the camp connected Coaker and Rodden-clarke with artists like Gabrielle Papillon, Charlie A’court, Keith Mullins, Ian Janes, Victoria Howse “and Monty, Chris’s parrot, who helped write a line in one of the songs,” says Coaker. “Although I don’t think he really likes Chris.”
“Victoria told me Monty doesn’t really like men,” laughs Rodden-clarke, “but he loves me . . . and he didn’t like Jordan much either.”