Eight questions with A'court,vinnick
TRURO — On their own, they're award-winning artists with decade-spanning careers in roots and blues. Together, they're a triple threat unlike any other.
With their new album coming out on May 12, musicians Charlie A'court, Lloyd Spiegel and Suzie Vinnick are touring from White Horse to St. John's, hosting what they call a 'kitchen party' at each stop.
Among those stops will be Pictou's decoste Centre for Arts and Creativity on April 26, and the Marigold in Truro - the community where A'court was raised - on April 30. Both shows start at 7:30 p.m.
In anticipation of their collaborative record, A'court and Vinnick spoke with the Saltwire Network about their love of blues, the creation of their new album - A'court, Spiegel and Vinnick - and what brought together this combined 60-time awardwinning trio.
Tell me about yourselves.
VINNICK: I'm originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; moved to Ottawa when in my early 20s to play music and I'm still based there. I'm a roots and blues musician. I sing and play guitar and bass. I also write songs sometimes.
A'COURT: I grew up in Mccallum Settlement, just past North River. I graduated from CEC (Cobequid Educational Centre) in 1997 and moved to Halifax in the early 2000s. Put my first record out in 2002, and I've been touring and making music ever since. I got my start by playing around some of the pubs in Truro when I was still a teenager.
What brought you to blues?
VINNICK: I grew up listening to classic rock in my early teens, and playing guitar, singing whatever could be put in front of me. My musical tastebuds went anywhere from John Denver to Heart, John Hiatt, and Koko Taylor. I would go to perform at this blues bar in Saskatoon. I didn't know that I knew what blues was because it had informed so much of the other music I was listening to. They'd have bands six nights a week, I'd listen, go to the jams, and I did that for years.
A'COURT: For me, it was listening to a lot of what was in my dad's record collection, not dissimilar to some of the influences that Suzie listed. I was also digging into the R&B side of things with Otis Redding, Same Cooke, Sam and Dave, and Aretha Franklin. There was a group in Truro called the Lincolns, and they were renowned on the East Coast for their dances at some of the Legions, so I used to go watch Frank (Mackay) sing, and he had this huge voice. To listen to some of the tunes they were playing, with this horns section, playing all those great lines. On the guitar side of things, I was drawn to (Eric) Clapton, B.B. King and even younger folks like Johnny Lang.
VINNICK: I wish we had Lloyd here because he's got a great story too. He started playing guitar at four and started playing his first gigs at 10. He had learned some Sonny Terry and Brownie Mcghee songs and had recorded a couple, and the CD made its way to Brownie. One day, Lloyd's dad is at the autobody shop he owned, and Brownie called the shop, and just said, "Hi, this is Brownie Mcghee, your son recorded a couple of my songs and I just wanted to reach out," and his dad hung up on him. He didn't believe it. He called back, talked to him for a bit, and invited Lloyd to come to the States and spend some time with him, and Lloyd did. He was probably 16 or 17, and he got to hang out with these early purveyors of blues music.
How did this collaboration come to be?
VINNICK: It's interesting. The instigator (was) our agent, Sarah Porter. She had worked with all of us a bit over the years, and during the pandemic, with theatres trying to start up again, it's challenging to get people out. One of the ways they proposed is pairing up artists. Lloyd and I did a few shows in Ontario, and Charlie and Sarah started
working together. Sarah proposed to some presenters the idea (of a collaboration between A'court, Spiegel and Vinnick) and theatres jumped on it.
A'COURT: Lloyd has been racking up the miles, coming back to Canada for these shows. He's being introduced to a lot of new fans and markets across Canada. The three of us are kind of leveraging each other's fan base to connect the dots on a national level.
How did production go on your new collab album?
VINNICK: It was great. Lloyd recorded in Australia, Charlie recorded at home in Dartmouth, and I recorded at home in my own little church in Wainfleet. Charlie kindly took on weaving all the tracks we submitted together and coming up with mixes. We would fly them around through Dropbox, give them a listen, and make little lists if we wanted to tweak some stuff. It was empowering to be able to track in our own homes and put a sweet little record together.
A'COURT: Normally for a project like this, you'd want to try to schedule a block of time where you could all be in the same studio together, maybe working on the songs in real-time, but we had to be creative with this. We all brought songs to the table, and we were really excited to see what the others would contribute, and we brought those songs to life.
How's the tour so far?
A'COURT: Coming up to the first night of the tour, we hadn't been in the same room together to actually perform the songs. So, we got to our first stop in Ontario before flying out to Whitehorse, and we set up in the theatre for two or three days before the first show, just working out parts and what songs we wanted to play, and how we wanted to build the show.
VINNICK: (There was) a definite kind of anxiety. We rehearsed, but we didn't do the show from top to bottom. We've done elements of the show, bits and pieces. I think it's beautiful ... I thought it came together cohesively, and people, at the end of the night, loved it.
A'COURT: And that's the crux of it being a 'kitchen party,' too.
Tell me about the lead single, "Better Angels".
VINNICK: I wrote that with Dean Mctaggart (The Arrows). When I moved from Saskatchewan to Ontario, I started taking workshops with the Songwriters Association of Canada and got to connect with Dean. We've collaborated musically in shows over the years, and I told him I was working on a new solo album, and he brought that song to the table as one to work on. For various reasons, it ended up not going on the album, but when we were putting this one together, I said, why don't we do an acoustic kind of approach to it? Story-wise, there are elements in the lyrics, "a better phone, a better TV, we're shooting billionaires into space." Seeing how, during the pandemic, how people were butting heads, it seemed like ... why can't we all just get along? I think that's what Dean was trying to say, to call on our 'better angels'.
What are your favourite tracks from the new record?
A'COURT: For me, one of my faves was the opportunity to re-record a song called "Refuse to Fear". It's a song that I co-wrote with Lloyd back in 2016 when he and I first met, when he came over to showcase as an international delegate at the East Coast Music Awards. We were put together to do some writing, and we had come up with that song, and it was meant to sit in the closet until I had a full collection of songs to put on a record. Unfortunately, on the world stage, there had been some tragic terrorist attacks, so I felt like a song like that couldn't sit in the shadows, so we released it as a single. Very electric band vibe to the production.
VINNICK: It was the same thing with "Better Angels". The arrangement was just a bit too big for us.
A'COURT: To make a more striped-back version of it, and it also represented the first time to actually perform that song with Lloyd. For me, that's a special moment.
Are you excited about the Truro show?
VINNICK: It's going to be my first time playing in Truro, but I'm really excited to get to that part of the country and share our music with the folks there.
A'COURT: I'm really proud that my hometown is part of the tour, and they'll get to meet Suzie and Lloyd for the first time. Once they do, it certainly won't be the last.
A full list of tour dates and times, all well as ticket information, can be found on A'court's website, charlieacourt.com/tour.ril.