Growing in the Manitoba cottonwoods you'll find the earthy strands of Madeleine Roger's music.
She'll bring those sounds to Prince George next week for a Tuesday night show at Nancy O's.
The prairie singer-songwriter scrapes her fingers on the steel strings and layers her voice with harmonies that transport the listener across the mid-Canada landscape and back in time just a little when the most prominent songs were dispatches of information and emotion like a letter mailed with a stamp you had to lick.
Those songs then told small stories and painted big pictures in the hands of Shawn Colvin, Yael Wand, Stephen Fearing, Megan Metcalfe and those turners of phrase and hewers of melody.
Roger was cut from that thicker cloth and fashions her songs with the stronger seams of that handmade era.
"I draw, I sew, I've been making a lot of things out of wood lately like cribbage boards and I made a kayak paddle a week ago, I work with leather making mitts and moccasins and things, it's a little out of hand," said Roger, describing her bouquet of creative outlets.
"It's a great way to spread your life way too thin. My mom is the influence where all the crafting comes from. She's a painter, does a lot of work with pottery, she had a huge sewing area and she'd make me and my twin brother (Lucas, with whom she has a music duo they call Roger Roger) a lot of our clothes when we were growing up. We had a room in our house dedicated to crafting supplies and we were encouraged to do that a lot. We didn't have a TV in the house or, really, a computer, until later, so what we did for fun and entertainment was crafting. And my dad was a recording engineer and musician, so I guess the apple didn't fall terribly far from the tree."
Music was not resisted by Roger early on, but it was not her passion. When her mind was still wrapped by a child she made other choices, and those pursuits lasted almost until she was standing on the cliff of adulthood. When she made that leap, it was music out of which she built her wings.
"Before I decided to be a songwriter I was pretty heavily involved in theatre," she said. "Really from the age of Grade 2 I thought that that was what I was going to pursue for my life path. Then part way through my degree in theatre and film at the University of Winnipeg I started writing songs and picking up the guitar, and I just fell completely in love with songwriting as a vehicle for storytelling. And I love the ability to collaborate with people on a shorter time scale, because with theatre it's like two or three months of rehearsal, then you put on a show for maybe the weekend, maybe it's a week, maybe it's a month-long run, but after that it always ends and I felt this frustration for never having anything to hang onto after the show is done. But part of the huge appeal for me with music is that when the show is done you still have all of your songs, you still have the skills you've developed with your instrument and voice, and there is this community of people you can collaborate with really all the time. You can go into someone's living room in the evening and have this collaboration unfold. To me it's like all of the pieces that theatre was missing has been fulfilled with music and songwriting."
Making music suddenly came out of her pores because it had been steeping there all along. Songwriting is a different craft, though, and she found it almost like a coin on the street. She and two cousins were in a vocal group together and Roger was disenchanted with the songs available for three-part harmony in the style they sang. Her answer was to write their own music. And it never stopped.
When you see Roger in concert now that she is one of Manitoba's new rising stars, you won't see an artist so formative or so in need of definition that she presents cover versions of other artists.
"Almost none," she confirmed. "The thing is, I write so much, I'm more interested in bringing in a new song into a performance or bringing back an old song."
She also has that knack, like the comparative artists above, for packing density into the lyrics. Her songs are lovely background tunes, if you want them to be, but like those folk, country, thought-pop artists mentioned, she infuses the stanzas and choruses with meaningful content.
"I feel that recording has forced me to scrutinize my writing, because you're capturing something forever and I really want that to be intentional, but also imaginative and playful," she said.
She also feels the pressure of borrowing the talents of others who come into the studio to contribute instruments and voices to the recording mix.
They are usually friends, usually busy with their own projects and otherwise in demand, so her self-imposed obligation is that "it has to be built on the foundations of a really solid song."
The solidity comes in part from the organic formation of the songs. She wrote this album mostly out in the Manitoba rural landscape at the family cabin where she can go kayaking and hiking and rugged biking to keep the mental juices flowing. It's a scene right out of a Carly Dow album. Dow is another Manitoba ruralite singer-songwriter who plies the same creative waters Roger speaks of.
When I mention this, there is a brief silence at the end of the line. Roger is a passenger in a car, as the conversation unfolded, cutting through a blizzard on the way to a gig in Montreal.
"Umm, Carly Dow? She's sitting right next me, right now, here in the car," said Roger.
Dow grabbed the phone and gushed about her musical compatriot.
"You're gonna love these guys, they are amazing," said Dow, referring to Roger's collaborator on this tour, Logan McKillop.
"Actually Madeleine is all over my new record, too, and Logan who she's touring there with is also on my record."
Dow has played a number of gigs around the Prince George region, but this is Roger's first time.
"Maybe I should stay in the car. It's been awhile since I've been up there," Dow laughed.
Roger's new album is called Cottonwood - a package she and her father co-produced and co-engineered together - and she is already looking forward to the Prince George date on her cross-Canada tour because she has heard tell of the faces carved into the cottonwood trees along the Nechako River, along the trails in Cottonwood Island Park.
