So you spend years rocking out in one of Canrock’s mightiest indie bands, kicked ass in a few others then put your name on an album of moody, downbeat reflections and now you're stuck with this sensitive singer/songwriter tag.
That was Sackville based Julie Doiron's recent experience and she's having none of it
So welcome to I Can Wonder What You Do With Your Day, the newest effort from the former Eric’ s Trip mainstay and a whole different kettle of New Brunswick mussels. From the utopian “Life Of Dreams” to the briskly anthemic “”Glad To Be Alive”, it’s 12 tracks of roosty, indie rock, steeped in every act she’s ever rocked with and yet all Julie, all the tunes.
“ It felt like a long time since I had made a rock album. I went into Woke Myself Up with the idea of injecting some Eric’s Trip influences in there but in the end it came out a Julie Doiron record”, says Doiron from home base.
“ There’s no overall theme to I Can Wonder What You Do With Your Day, the cohesiveness comes out of the way I record. I don’t do one song and go away then come back and do another I'll go into the studio and not emerge until all the songs are down. I Can Wonder.. was recorded in four days, so the songs have a cohesiveness of feel, of mood.
Whether the songs here are intrinsically better than Wake Myself Up is a personal thing but no denying these tunes are strung together with a happier urgency.
"I'd had the idea for a rock album churning away in the background and a couple of reunion gigs I did with Eric’s Trip brought it all back, how fun it was. So yeah, this album is a lot more rocking and a lot more positive because I’m happier all around. I guess.
I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day was recording at Rick (Eric’c Trip) White's home studio, in a woodsy setting northwest of Toronto. Doiron handled the electric and acoustic guitar parts, with Rick on all the bass and keyboards, and Fred Squire whacking out all the drum parts and contributing some lead guitar.
Squire, a fellow Sackvillian, is Julie's bandmate in another of her projects, Calm Down It's Monday.
The new album’s her best received work to date, generating buzz, concert and album sales to the degree Doiron says that apart from her Christmas break, she’s booked more or less solid until next fall. And all on the strength of an uptempo album a long way away from her glum grunge goddess of the East Coast persona.
“ Woke Myself Up came out reflecting the things I was going through. Those weren’t the brightest of times. I Can Wonder… is also reflective but it’s of how I’m feeling now. Even though some of the songs were written in trying times, the album as a whole came out happy”.
It’s often said that lyrically, Doiron wears her heart on her sleeve, that it’s all thinly veiled autobiographic material. But with songs as nuanced as this that doesn't sound like the whole story.
“ No, not really. I mean some are obviously about me but a lot aren’t. I don’t over think songwrititng, sometimes it feels like the song arrives and it's up to me to figure out how to treat it. Some don’t have a narrative, they're just about an idea, an emotion and you work on that and hope it connects with other people while still staying personal”.
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Doiron’s just back from touring the tunes on the US Eastern seaboard and in two weeks is off to Europe, where she’s come to expect a warm reception.
“ I don’t think it's so much about this album as about the fact I’ve been touring over there for years, people know my work. Eric’s Trip was very big over there and there are fans who've followed me since then. But I am seeing more new people. So maybe that’s from I Can Wonder…”.
Doiron is candid about her rising success, preferring to look at it from arm's length, as befitting a working mother of three
“ It’s getting better but it still doesn't feel like it's solid, that I can step back and take it easy. I still have mixed feelings. sometimes I feel that this, being a performer is what I am good at and it’s what I should be doing. Other times I doubt why anyone would be even interested in what I'm doing or bother coming out to a show. So the positive reaction to what was a very positively inspired album is gratifying”.
While being apart from her brood is likely the hardest part of touring, keeping the process interesting for audience and band is also on the radar.
“ I find audience reaction is not so much about individual songs; it involves other factors like the type of set, whether it’s an audience that knows me, if I’m opening or headlining, the type of show, is it an intimate club or a festival?”.
“To keep it interesting for all concerned; we change up the songs to meet with how we feel about them on a given night. They can be as they sound on the album, very different or just tweaked a little here or there, we may extended some parts, that kind of thing. The players are all very confident with their instruments and familiar with the material, so we can do that kind of thing off the cuff”
This sort of open-handed approach is a clue to Doiron’s status as indie rock’s go to collaborator. A short list of talent she’s worked with would include Eric's Trip, Wooden Stars, Okerville River, Mount Eerie and Calm Down Its Monday.
“ For me, it's the funnest way to musical growth, I get to play around with ideas and bring stuff to the table without the pressure of it being my project. I get to interject an idea and see how it works out. Or not.
“ Why so many people want to work with me? Most likely because I have a rep for really enjoying working with other people, but beyond that, you’d have to ask them that”
The rock chick with the thick chestnut mane has along the way morphed into an indie role model, something she feels ambivalent about.
“ I'm having more young women come up to me after shows and talk about what the songs mean to them. “Sometimes it's a nice feeling and sometimes it's weird. It feels like it’s not real and it's not me or my songs they’re talking about “
But when the fans get up to chanting, “Julie, Julie” at encore time, Julie Doiron from Sackville New Brunswick and her catchy rock tunes is exactly who and what they have in mind.
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