ROSE COUSINS’ SOARING ‘NATURAL CONCLUSION’,
Halifax-based singer-songwriter Rose Cousins is pretty excited right now.
Her acclaimed album “Natural Conclusion” is nominated for seven East Coast Music Awards, including Song of the Year (“Grace”), Folk Recording of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Album of the Year, and Video of the Year (“White Flag’) plus two East Coast Fan Choice Awards.
She’s also got a Juno Songwriter of the Year nod for three songs — “Chosen” and “Grace” with Boston cowriter Mark Erelli and “White Flag” with Nashville cowriter K.S. Rhoads.
“It has been a crazy award nomination season for me,” notes Cousins with a laugh, adding she attended the Grammys Gala where the album was up for engineering and mastering.
It is no surprise that “Natural Conclusion” has so many nominations.
The work comes from a deep emotional place with Cousins’ songs breathing beautifully into one another from opening track “Freedom” to opulent finale “Coda.”
Cousins prefers that listeners explore the songs for themselves rather explaining exactly what they mean.
“I think people interpret things different ways and I think that is more important than what my specific story might be,” she notes.
The album also has a distinct visual identity through three music videos for “Conclusion” songs “Chains,” “White Flag,” and “Grace.”
Cousins, originally from P.E.I., is also a noted photographer.
She chose to work with three East Coast filmmakers for each video.
“The videos are all curated through me,” she says. “‘Chains’ was made with Nathan Boone, a young filmmaker that I found through a couple of other filmmakers that I knew ... He brought me a couple of ideas and so we went back and forth. But it is really cool and I like the dark grittiness of it,” adds Cousins, referring to this dark and bluesy swamp-banjo rocker about two people tethered to each other.
Heart-wrenching ballad “White Flag” was directed by filmmaker/bassist Shehab Illyas of East Coast musician Alan Doyle’s Beautiful Beautiful Band. Cousins and Illyas combined two ideas. “I told Shehab that I wanted to do something out on the coast and I wanted to use a drone,” says Cousins, “I had the idea of the coastal part. Then he wanted me to do the lying down/singing part in silhouette and those two ideas went together so beautifully. I love that video so much,” exclaims Cousins, referring to the black and white video with rich grey tones throughout. She is lying down with nature’s imagery flowing through her.
For “Grace,” Cousins decided on a “oneshot” approach. This soaring plea (also used in a moving episode of Canadian drama series “Heartland”) was shot by filmmaker Jenna MacMillan in St. Paul’s Church, Charlottetown, P.E.I.
“I picked the cast,” recalls Cousins. “I had the idea of doing it as a ‘one shot’ in a church. It is on P.E.I. so I had my mother, my sister and very young childhood friends. I also had one of my first friends from university and cast members like (P.E.I. troubadour) Al Tuck, Kinley Dowling (from Hey Rosetta) and other people significant to P.E.I. and to my life. That made this very special choir, which made the shoot all the more poignant,” says Cousins.
For this tour Cousins, who also plays piano, will have pedal steel player Asa Brosius, who also plays on her album. And this time she’s also thinking about bringing along another old friend.
“I just took my 35 mm (camera) down from a shelf today and I am considering taking it on the tour with me and doing some shooting,” says Cousins. “35 mm is hard because I shoot black and white and then I develop it myself. Then I need the time to just get into the darkroom and develop it. It makes me not want to shoot it because it makes me not want to sit on that film for a really long time. I think I need to do a better job of carving out more time,” she notes.
“There is very little down time when you are touring. But I’m excited to get back to Waterloo.”