Sarah McLachlan must feel drawn to the rhythm of P.G.
The star singer spent the first 20 years of her stellar career passing Prince George by, and now she is coming for her second concert here in as many tours. She dropped by in 2011 at the tail end of her Laws Of Illusion junket. Now we see her early on in her Shine On whirlwind and she is hauling her Order of Canada-receiving, Grammy-winning, Juno-sweeping, Oscar-nominated, Olympic-ambassador, Lilith Fair-inventing, charity-supporting reputation with her. And her living room.
"I bring my living room with me," she said again, to help it sink in. "I have that on stage, and I bring people up from the audience to sit with us. I wanted to engage the audience, but also to do something just for my fans," she said, admitting a ticketing misstep early in the tour caused scalpers to get a black market edge, so she felt she needed to make it up to fans somehow "so the living room scenario came out of that, to get people on stage and see what its like up there."
It's a reward, of sorts, for sticking with her for the prolonged periods between albums. Although she has set the standard for keeping a presence and showing relevance with cover songs, live recordings, soundtrack songs, "rarities and B-sides" and remixes of previous material, she holds on to herself quite effectively from one all-original studio release to the next. In this latest case, it was four years between albums which is swift compared to the intermission between Surfacing (1997) and Afterglow (2003) and then seven more years until Laws of Illusion.
"I know. There's a lot of big distractions in there: two small kids, the music school, time. It's a lame one-word answer, I know," she said.
What she modestly doesn't mention is the Christmas album thrown in there in 2006. Normally, those hardly count on an artist's project list. They are usually low on work and high on covers and public domain songs from the traditional songbook, but McLachlan is not noted for fractional efforts. Her version of Joni Mitchell's River shot up the singles charts and Jay Leno called her out to play it on his latenight show (in October, way before the jingle bell season).
Her version of Gordon Lightfoot's Song For A Winter's Night caused his reputation a surprise uptick years after the song was first written.
The album itself shot past most of the mainstream releases that season to hit 42 on the Billboard album charts. For a Christmas album, forcryingoutloud!
The same thing happened during that other long gap. In 1999 she released a live album called Mirrorball. Like holiday projects, a live album is usually just a placeholder, or a record company gambit to fulfill contractual obligations, sometimes to catch some of the money going instead into the pockets of bootleggers. But in McLachlan's case, it was a triumphant cherry on top of her industry-altering Lilith Fair world tours in which she headlined a full-day festival of only female acts (Queen Latifah, The Pretenders, Sheryl Crow, Christina Aguilera, the Dixie Chicks, Martina McBride, Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole, Tegan and Sara, Aimee Mann, Natalie Merchant, the list was staggering).
Over the course of that three-year juggernaut, some splendid recordings were culled, so Mirrorball was sonically amazing to the trained ear and a smash hit with audiences. Most live albums get mentioned as cute asides to regularly scheduled music careers but this two-disc package hit No. 3 on the Billboard album charts and one song - released twice before in the previous four years but getting little attention - won her her third Grammy and became a pop culture standard. I Will Remember You also drew a lot of retroactive attention to a compact indie film called The Brothers McMullen and boosted the stock in its young producer/writer/director/lead actor Edward Burns.
All of this leads to whispers among critics that Mirrorball has a place on the list of all-time best live albums.
So even when her career is apparently adrift between studio projects, McLachlan's fortunes continue to climb and she has plenty of those productive distractions. And it puts her in no mood to rush things just to have a shiny new thing on the record store shelves.
"I never claimed to be prolific," she said. "It's a slow arduous process, songwriting. It's hard and I'm lazy by nature. That's not true, I'm not lazy at all, but I do procrastinate, I do have the distractions, and I have a problem focusing. Songwriting takes time and takes energy and takes having something to say, too - finding a thread that is important enough to expand upon."
She clarifies that the heavy lifting is, for her, purely in the lyrics department.
"Musically, I have so many songs - probably 15 - that are waiting for lyrics, waiting for a story. They are in there somewhere. The well is deep. But if they [lyrics] come, I put them out there. I'm not holding onto anything."
Since her poetic material tends to dip deep into emotional pools and under experiential surfaces (a fact that earned her a comical mention by Owen Wilson's character in the film Wedding Crashers) she has to first live the material, recognize the artistic threads, then somehow wrestle and coax them into someone else's recognizable lyrical image.
"Writing is very cathartic in that way. That's where music is such a gift. It is all about sharing, about feeling that you're not alone, that someone else feels what you've felt, and you get that from a song, a book, all art can do that."
Despite the arduous smithing of the lyrics, she enjoys that process and feels she has gotten better at it over the years.
"The muscle improves and the pressure to not give a shit - to not censor yourself - also improves, and that also goes back to having a strong enough story to tell," she said.
The whole Sarah McLachlan attitude, the non-censorship of her own thoughts and the open appreciation for others, plus the artistic eyes and the mad skills with instrument and with voice have made her into one of the most legendary collaborators in music history. She would end every Lilith Fair night by hauling everyone from the day back out on stage with her to sing someone else's song. She lends her music to causes she believes in. She has done duets with a mind-spinning array of other artists like Junkhouse, Stephen Fearing, Blue Rodeo, Delirium, Josh Groban, Pink, Cyndi Lauper, Bryan Adams, The Tenors (with Prince George's own Fraser Walters), Randy Newman, Barenaked Ladies, even NHL rookie Zac Dalpe from her hometown Vancouver Canucks got to harmonize with her last year at a team event.
For her, the reason she's been so willing to work with other musicians, the reason she has allowed so many club-level producers to do remixed versions of her tracks, the reason she offers herself up for so many philanthropic appearances, is because music is for sharing. She's the kind of performer who might take a break once in awhile but never stops giving more art and entertainment to the world. She's the kind of superstar who personally gives free lessons to at-risk youth at her Sarah McLachlan School of Music. She's the kind of performer who'll bring you right into her living room - or at least bring her living room to you - like on Oct. 25 at CN Centre when Sarah shines on for Prince George.
