LAVIOLETTE’S MUSIC TAKES YOU ALONG ON A PERSONAL JOURNEY
Richard Laviolette’s new album, “Taking The Long Way Home,” is a warm, classic country-sounding record whose songs resonate with enduring themes of life, death, childhood, and home.
Released on You’ve Changed Records last week, the much-anticipated album is the fourth full-length release from the Guelph-based singer-songwriter and the first since his 2009 album, “All Of Your Raw Materials.”
The 11 songs on “Taking The Long Way Home” carry the listener on a deeply personal journey through Laviolette’s childhood growing up in rural Tara, Ont., as well as memories of family members (on songs like the wonderfully-titled “My Grandma’s More Punk (Than Most Punks I Know),” his battle with health issues, and the recent death of his mother.
On album opener “Grey Rain,” a rollicking song about the house where he grew up surrounded by family and music, Laviolette sings that “These memories are calling me home.” In an interview earlier this week, the 34-year-old said the album was originally intended as a collaboration with his father.
“When I was thinking about recording a country album again, initially I was thinking of writing a batch of songs that I’d be able to record with my dad. So I think initially, the place that I was starting from was songs that would be fun to sing with him, and just thinking about different things that we could reminisce about,” he said, adding that this process “took me through thinking more about the house I grew up in and the town and the people who raised me and the music I was raised on, and thinking more specifically about those things.”
Enduring the devastating loss of a parent, as well as becoming an uncle for the first time, shaped the direction of many of the songs on “Taking The Long Way Home,” Laviolette said.
“I’m still obviously a young lad, but I feel like a lot of those memories are slowly fading and so I think maybe I’m at the beginning of a time in my life where there’s slowly more of a concern of them fading and losing them, and feeling more responsibility to maybe be documenting those things. My mom passed in the fall, but at the same time I have young nephews for the first time, and I think the context of those things (was) making me just want to be documenting those things and then be able to pass them on to the next generation.”
Laviolette also confronted his own long-term health issues on songs such as the title track.
“I’ve dealt with health issues since a relatively young age. I was diagnosed with colitis when I was 12, and have had a number of surgeries for various reasons since. So I think either explicitly or not so explicitly, I think that’s often something that comes through in songs that I’m writing,” he said.
With help from guest musicians such as Jessy Bell Smith (Skydiggers) on vocals, Julia Narveson (Ever Lovin’ Jug Band, Lake of Stew) on fiddle and double bass, pedal steel player Aaron Goldstein (Cowboy Junkies, Daniel Romano), bassist Heather Kirby (Ohbijou) and drummer Aaron Curtis (Two-Minute Miracles), “Taking The Long Way Home” marks a return to the old-time country sound of “All Of Your Raw Materials.”
“I’ve been thinking about coming back to country music for a little while now. I think I’ll always be someone who tries to switch things up, for my own reasons and self-motivation, and using different genres as different opportunities to kind of express different parts of myself,” he said.
Like its predecessor, “Taking The Long Way Home” was recorded by producer Andy Magoffin, whose House of Miracles studio migrated from London, Ont. to Cambridge, Ont. in the eight-year interim between albums.
“It’s just a really warm space, and something that he seems to be particularly talented at is capturing that warm, acoustic sound,” said Laviolette of working with Magoffin.
Laviolette’s album release party in Waterloo Region will be at a house show on Queen’s Boulevard in Kitchener, an intimate atmosphere that Laviolette prefers to larger venues.
“I think that’s where I feel most comfortable playing, in house show situations or small, more intimate (venues) like a café or bar-type thing. I like the feeling of that smaller audience and the feeling that people are there to listen to the music, and the music isn’t just something in the background that they’re trying to chat over or whatever. I feel like when you’re playing at someone’s house, it’s almost like it’s their community that comes out to support you, so it’s often people who are there to listen to music and (who are) often interested in finding something new,” he said.