NAC show a ‘nice chance’ for emerging band Shadowhand
Songwriting residency inspires Ottawa musician
A Friday night at the National Arts Centre’s Fourth Stage is a sweet gig for an emerging act.
They get to experience one of the country’s most prestigious venues, work with a professional audio and lighting crew, and introduce themselves to an audience likely to include a fair number of people seeing them for the first time. What’s more, each of the Friday at the Fourth shows is beamed out to the world on Facebook Live, potentially attracting a few more fans. (Go to the NAC Presents/ CNA Présente Facebook page to watch the livestream and check out archived videos.)
“It’s a nice chance for us,” says Ottawa singer-songwriter Jamieson Mackay, whose band, Shadowhand, is in the Fourth Stage spotlight this week.
“I think it’s a milestone for bands in Canada. It seems that if bands make it to a point where they’ve played a couple festivals and they’re doing good stuff, they can do this show and see how it goes.”
For Shadowhand, it will be their first gig since last June, with the exception of the month of Sundays they played at Irene’s Pub in January, which Mackay described as more of an open jam than a proper show, since they didn’t have a rehearsal space at the time and invited friends to sit in with them. That weekly stint also marked a regrouping for the band, with Mackay, the main singer, songwriter and creative force, back in town after several months in Berlin.
During an interview in a friend’s living room, crowded with instruments, that serves as the rehearsal space for Shadowhand and several other Ottawa bands, the longhaired Mackay talks about his adventure in the German capital. The idea to go there was sparked at the Banff Centre, where he did a month-long songwriting and recording residency in the fall of 2018, and befriended some Germans.
“That was the first time I met other weirdo artist people from all over the world, all in one place at the same time. It was really eye-opening, and then going to Berlin was more of that,” says the 28-year-old musician. “There was a very high concentration of interesting and strange people.”
At first, the plan was to work in the German friend’s recording studio but, to his surprise, Mackay landed a City of Ottawa grant he applied for months earlier.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I thought I’d have to get a job, but I got the grant and was able to spend time writing songs. My project proposal was to go to Berlin and learn stuff and come back and share with the community.”
Between Banff and Berlin, Mackay has a whole new batch of unreleased songs ready to unveil during Friday’s concert. Only a couple of tunes in the set will come from the trippy alt-folk of Shadowhand’s 2018 debut album, Through The Fog. There’s also been a change in personnel, with pedal steel player Pascal DesGagné joining the core lineup of Mackay, drummer Sean Tansey and bassist Brandon Allan Walsh. They plan to record a new album this year.
The new songs are inspired by the people Mackay met on his recent travels, and their similarities and differences.
“Everyone is really all the same, more or less,” he says, “just trying to live, be happy, love their family and keep it together, one day at a time.”
Born in Ottawa, Mackay grew up in Nepean and attended Nepean High School. His parents signed him up for piano lessons at the age of three, and he stuck with it until he was almost 10. He started playing guitar at 13, writing “really bad songs” as a teenager.
His parents’ musical tastes were a big influence, and Mackay grew up listening to the classics, including the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Joni Mitchell. In university, where he earned a degree in molecular biology and was “totally miserable” doing so, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Neil Young kept him going. In fact, Shadowhand has an alter ego as Bruce Berry and The Econolines, a Neil Young cover band that’s sold out the past two New Year’s Eve parties at Irene’s.
A more contemporary influence is Toronto’s so-called freak-folk songstress Jennifer Castle, with her quirky lyrics and songs tinged with psychedelia. If freak folk is a legitimate sub-genre, Mackay is all in.
“I could see it fitting,” he says. “The new record is going to be pretty varied in the scope of the sound: Some songs will be rock ’n’ roll, some folky and some in the middle. And hopefully, it will all be a little weird.”
Also playing Fridays at the Fourth:
March 20: Moscow Apartment March 27: Louis-Philippe Gingras April 3: Shay Lia
April 17: Mclean Trio
May 1: G.R. Gritt
May 8: Dennis Ellsworth
May 22: Rosie Valland
May 29: Han Han lsaxberg@postmedia.com
Everyone is really all the same, more or less, just trying to live, be happy, love their family and keep it together, one day at a time.