She thought her complex and somewhat quirky songs weren't “coverable.” Then another Vancouver musician came calling
Album a tribute to the music that gave comfort amid COVID
The first time Veda Hille heard any of Nicholas Krgovich's music was a cover of one of the songs from her album Here Is A Picture (Songs for E Carr). The second tape he gave her was a bedroom recording of one of his quirky pop originals.
That was decades ago when Krgovich was still a teen. He would go on to play with Hille's husband in the chamber pop act P:ano.
Krgovich revisits Hille's extensive song catalogue once again in his latest album This Spring: Songs By Veda Hille. The 16 song collection covers Hille's earliest writing up to new material from 2020. The two musicians will preview the record in a joint live concert playing sets of each other's songs in the beautiful Historic Theatre at the Cultch, where both have performed many times.
“A year ago, like everyone else, I wound up with a lot of free time and found myself listening to a lot of Veda's music because it is something I've always found comforting,” said Krgovich. “Since I've listened to her almost my entire life, I got to thinking about who I was at those various times listening to those songs and decided to go and record an album. It's an exploration of that past material with a healthy dose of my scent all over it.”
That Hille's intelligent, often quirky material hasn't been widely covered isn't surprising. Her complex compositions are a far cry from humalong pop ditties and frequently associated with specific commissions or projects, from the Emily Carr songs mentioned earlier to the soundtrack to the plays Peter Panties and Craigslist musical Do You Want What I Have Got? It takes someone with Krgovich's knack for lush, orchestral pop to figure out a way to make her music their own.
“Nick kept it all secret from me, and the first example I had was a cover he did of my song Plants on his Pasadena Afternoon cassette last year,” said Hille. “Nick was somewhat worried about how I would feel about it, but I told him I loved it and to go out and be my ambassador any time. Then he told me about the whole huge project and I broke down in tears.”
That was last December. Hille found the experience of being able to hear her own music without judgment about her performance profoundly moving. Now she's excited to be going one step further and becoming a side player in a concert of her music.
“I always thought that the reason I wasn't covered often was because my material just wasn't `coverable,'” she said. “Now I'm in the interesting place of having to learn my songs through the lens of Nick's talent and, guess what, they are really hard. Learning the different keys, chords and so forth in preparation for this has been challenging.”
This Spring is still very much a Krgovich record.
In the opening 16 seconds of Plants, a swinging bossa nova rhythm is established with tasty flute and some nice
vintage organ over top of sparse percussion. Then his breathy, smooth croon comes in and it sounds nothing like the original. On Miracles, he appears to be accompanied by piano and music box as the song gets one of those classic California '60s pop harmony sheens he is so adept at styling. In other words, you've never heard Hille sound quite like this.
“In the back of my mind, unconsciously, I think that I'd had this idea kicking around for a long time and just hadn't acted on it,” he said. “Somehow, it just jumped to the front of the line during the pandemic and became the only thing I wanted to do, to just jump right into the Vedaverse and consume it. There were always songs that resonated with me in a very clear, strong way, but it was also important to select some wild cards and to cover the entire scope of Veda's discography.”
The resulting 16-song set wasn't sequenced in the traditional manner of approaching the album as a whole and shaping the listening experience from start to finish. Instead, there was a randomness to the final decision of what went where on the album.
“Honestly, I was just letting the tracks play on random, and when something came together well I would note it down,” said Krgovich. “Eventually, that added up to all the songs and I could just let them be in this naturally haphazard fashion because it just sounded right. In the past, I might have taken a lot longer to arrive at the final decision.”
Naturally, it only made sense for Hille to dive into Krgovich's back catalogue to select what songs to play with the same amount of random fun.
“It's been great getting into Nick's catalogue the same way, from revisiting the old days when my husband was in his band, to getting reacquainted with the new stuff which I don't know as well,” she said.