COUNTRY HOME
Calgary's Sykamore releases new EP, pens publishing deal, Eric Volmers writes.
In the fading moments of Dance Card, the defiant country stomper that ends Sykamore’s new EP Self + Medicine, some one can clearly be heard yelling “Take that, all you hillbillies!”
It turns out the hillbilly taunter was drummer Chad Cromwell, an experienced Nashville session player who has also laid down beats for Neil Young and Mark Knopfler among others. Perhaps he was joking or perhaps he was just moved by the irreverent tone of Sykamore’s salty tune, which has the singer vowing to “scratch your name right off my dance card” atop stinging guitar riffs and a driving beat.
Whatever the case, he probably thought it would be safely edited out of the final mix. But Sykamore, born Jordan Ostrom in Carseland, had other ideas.
“It was just so funny and not rehearsed,” says Ostrom, in an interview with Postmedia. “I remember hearing it on the demo and being like: ‘Well, that’s going to stay in there. I’m not taking that out. It’s awesome.’”
It goes to show that, even when backed by Nashville’s polished, well-tuned machinery, the Calgary-based country singer-songwriter likes to stubbornly maintain an independent streak.
All but one of the songs on Self + Medicine were solely written by Ostrom. This is a rarity for new artists in mainstream country, where budding singers tend to be carefully groomed to echo whatever happens to be dominating country radio at the time. Only Better Half, a catchy and relatively straightforward ode to a dedicated lover and the EP’s latest single, was a co-write with Nashville songsmiths April Geesbreght and Jason Massey.
“The thing that I love maybe the most of what I do is being able to brand things and put my signature on things,” says Ostrom, who is conducting promotional interviews from the family farm she grew up on near Carseland on this particular morning.
“Having that creative spin is really important to me and so I think that definitely bleeds into the songs. With the material that’s coming out, I want to have the custom-made signature. You can definitely do that in terms of production and stuff like that. There’s a lot of different ways to put your signature on a song. But my preferred method is to just be in the room and help grow them from the ground. I also just love writing. I love flexing that muscle.”
That said, she has no doubt collaboration is in her future.
While there is no denying the purity of Ostrom’s voice and phrasing, it’s her songwriting muscles that seem to be taking her to the next level in Nashville. Self + Medicine will be released on Friday through Toronto-based Road Angel Entertainment and Warner Music Canada. An Alberta-shot video for Better Half by Calgary filmmaker Brock Mitchell was released last week as well, boasting a dusty, road-movie vibe complete with a vintage GTO, motorcycle and airplane.
In November, Ostrom also signed with Nashville’s Home Team Publishing, which is run by Virginia Davis, Rhett Akins and his son Thomas Rhett. This has had the singer splitting her time between Calgary and Music City, where she is now collaborating on songs that could very well become hits for other artists.
“Honestly, it’s the best place to learn how to be a better writer,” she says. “It’s where all the No. 1 writers live. You can learn so much. It’s just a great place to break down your writing process, learning how to be a better writer; to just do it day in and day out and build up that muscle.”
All of which may seem to be bringing Ostrom ever closer to the Nashville establishment. It’s true, the songs on Self + Medicine, which was recorded in Nashville and Calgary, are not as stylistically far-flung as those on her 2013 indie debut, Petal, which found her dabbling in bluegrass, folk and pop alongside more traditional country fare. But this seems less a concession to the marketing demands of Nashville and more a reflection of Ostrom’s tighter focus as a writer.
Whatever the case, songs such as the bruised and wistful opener We Were Alright or sweetly lilting Hayloft hardly seem pandering. If anything, Sykamore seems more in line with left-of-the-dial artists such as fellow Canucks Lindi Ortega and Whitney Rose than purely mainstream country.
“I think there’s a lot of people who have a lot of momentum and they are coming in from the outside, coming in from the fringes,” Ostrom says.
“People are getting really excited about it and all of a sudden they are getting quite a bit of attention and a spotlight shining on them. I think it’s definitely changing the genre. It’s changing the boundaries of what we are capable of in terms of country artists, of female artists.”
Ostrom has been an up-andcomer in Alberta for a number of years. Her first memories are of performing You Are My Sunshine at a family reunion as a precocious four-year-old. She hasn’t really stopped since.
After releasing her debut album in 2013, Ostrom’s star has steadily been on the rise. In 2014, she picked up a win in the All-Albertan Song Contest for her ballad Heaven In the Pines. In 2015, she was a finalist for the Canadian Country Music Association Awards Discovery Program. A year later, she won the $75,000 2016 runner-up prize for Project WILD.
But even before that, Sykamore put in her time in Calgary’s indiemusic trenches.
“As cliché as it might sound, those are the moments that shape you as an artist and make or break you,” she says.
“I did a lot of playing to empty rooms or bars with two people in them and stuff like that. That’s where you get your chops as a performer. You have to think on your feet and maybe be a little bit embarrassed or have something go wrong and have to fix it.
“I’m really happy I got to do all that within Calgary. On top of that, the Calgary music scene is very close-knit. Everyone is very nice and they all help each other out.
“So I think the early years taught me whether or not I wanted to do this. You go through this and you learn how to be tenacious, you learn how to persevere and you learn how to be humbled over and over again. If, on the other side of that, you still want to be a musician, I think it’s something that’s really inside of you.”