In 1986, the Canadian children’s book writer Robert Munsch published Love You Forever. For many, the story captures perfectly the cycle of life. It is the story of a mother and her exasperating boy who pulls food off shelves, never wants to come to dinner, and always says bad words in front of his grandmother. As the boy gets older, “he had strange friends and he wore strange clothes and he listened to strange music.” That boy drove his mother crazy. But every night she crept into his room and sang to him a lullabye:
I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
As long as I’m living,
My baby you’ll be
When the mother grows old and feeble and can no longer sing the song, he sings it to her. And, when she is gone, he sings the song to his newborn child. It’s a sad story for grown-ups without knowing anything about its composition. You see, the story was never meant to be a story — at least at first. It was always just a lullabye. It was the lullabye that Munsch would sing, to comfort his wife and himself, to the two stillborn children the couple had lost.
Spiral Road is the debut album by Suzanne Jarvie and it tells a similar story. If Spiral Road were a children’s book, it would be about an all-grown-up mom and her growing-up family, and how everything goes topsy turvy one day when her son tumbles down, down, down a spiral staircase at his granddaddy’s farm. And that boy got a knock on his head.
It helps to know the story before you hear the album, but the album grabs you in that sad place even if you haven’t. It also helps that Jarvie’s voice is seraphim-pure, reaching out and lifting your spirit often without permission. With the assistance of Hugh Christopher Brown, who produced the record and assembled a cast of stellar musicians, Jarvie has created a lasting statement for anyone — particularly a mother — who has ever suffered a loss. As she explained in our recent interview, “songs are like children. They have their own DNA.” Her songs, on this record at least, are about what happens after counting ten healthy fingers and ten healthy toes. It’s about the rattles and traps that life has set for us but it’s about walking that path just the same.
DNA is known symbolically by the depiction of a double spiral with bonded pairs, but you’ll never see that image looking down through a microscope at a scramble of chromosomes. The tidy image of a spiral staircase also inspired Crick and Watson when they “discovered” DNA. The spiral appears so often in nature writ large and small. In Native American iconography the spiral speaks to the labyrinthine journey of life and death carrying with it the possibility of rebirth. The spiral has its origin with birth (or its end with death) and, with each peregrination, like a falcon in a gyre, we soar higher yet always return to the source. Suzanne Jarvie is not playing with these ideas — she and her family have lived them. We’re all blessed to have this music as testament to their trip down this road together.
Luke C. Bowden: I understand you’re a criminal defence lawyer by trade and that, not only is this your debut record, but prior to the release of this record you were neither a recording nor gigging musician of any sort. Do I have that correct, counsellor?
Suzanne Jarvie: Almost correct, Your Honour. I was a criminal defence lawyer for about seven years. But since then I have been a prosecutor for the governing body that regulates lawyers in Ontario — the Law Society of Upper Canada. I prosecute lawyers for professional misconduct. And yes … whatever you’re thinking about that is probably correct.
Prior to the release of this record, I had never recorded anything before. I wasn’t gigging either, in any meaningful sense of the word. I did a few gigs here and there many years ago with different musician friends, but so few that it almost doesn’t count. I wrote poetry but not songs. Well, one song. In my whole life.
Can you speak to your earliest musical experiences and how music has been a part of your life? What sort of artists are played around your household? What artists do you relate to? Is yours a musical household?
According to my mum, I was singing complete nursery rhymes in perfect pitch around 18 months old! I took classical piano lessons for three years as a kid. Loved playing but hated practicing. I also had really bad stage fright. In grade school, a teacher persuaded me to sing “Silent Night” solo at a Christmas concert. I still remember that fear and my voice closing up. In early high school, I wanted to sing and perform, but my stage fright got the better of me most of the time and I usually flunked the auditions. My parents split when I was 14 and it was rough. My dad left and my mum was really shaken, she had no career or money of her own. My dad paid child support, but it was a key event. I was determined to have a career and my own income so that no man would ever have the power to do that to me, regardless of what else I had to give up. Beware the cause of the road not taken!
In grade 11, we moved to LA for a year. I fell hard for a guy out there who was a guitar player. He was so cool and aloof that I decided to take some guitar lessons hoping he would find that (me) attractive. Quite sad when you think about it, but in the end, it was great, because while he wasn’t interested in me, I loved playing guitar. I was really into Joni Mitchell and CSNY and The Doors etc. I was all about mimicry for a long while, slaving to sound just like Joni. I did not yet understand the psychic/emotional relationship between music, creativity and originality. I also realized around that time that as a singer I had strong harmony skills. I could actually hear harmonies in my head as I listened to melodies – right there in the overtones – like my ear went to the 3rd or the 5th as naturally as to the melody. Back in Toronto there was a pretty hot high school music scene. I met Eric Schenkman (later founded Spin Doctors and plays on my record) and dated him for a couple of years. I met Gregor around that time as well and dated mostly musicians in those days, and I see now how I was always trying to put myself in context – to be always in the company of those who were doing what I longed to do most.
A little later, I got introduced by a musician friend (female) to what would become my favorite music – Gram Parsons, Emmy Lou, Stanley Brothers, Clarence White, Bill Monroe, Lucinda Williams and old time country/so called outlaw country. Even more than folk music, I found my simple equivalent of the blues in Americana. Eventually I went to university and fulfilled my imperative – law school, a job, babies, break up, new partner, more babies etc….and music went dormant for a long while. I was all about the hard, left brain, analytical thing. I tried to tell myself it was ok, you can’t have it all, and besides, a career in music is impractical and likely won’t pay the bills. I think some things in life won’t be denied though – if they are in your nature. They will try to push their way out to the forefront. Music is like that for me I guess.
We play a ton of different stuff around the house — local Toronto talent as well as the Decemberists, Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin, Vivaldi, Duke Ellington, Dixie Chicks, a ton of songs from theTV show Nashville (my daughter and I sing duets), Johnny Cash’ American series, Rakim, Tom Petty, Jimmie Rodgers, the Stones! … Two of my four kids play violin — very well, if I can say — [plus] piano, guitar and sing. My teenage son is obsessed with gangster rap and my youngest is a lovely singer. I am a slave driver about lessons and practicing — isn’t that the biggest joke?
Circumstances in your life undoubtedly turned over your expectations for what life would be for you and your family. Do you mind explaining the journey that your family has been on for the past few years?
It’s hard. Telepathy would work better than words. My younger son was diagnosed at five with a serious heart condition and has had two open heart surgeries and now has an ICD. Adjusting to that reality took years for me, learning how to manage the fear. Then I guess you know that in 2011 my older son almost died from a freak accident. Fell down a spiral staircase at his grandfather’s farm. When your kids are born healthy and you live a comfortable life you think you’re safe but really anything can happen anytime and there’s no such thing as being in the clear. When my son fell, everything fell with him. Like in a dream, where you are falling and there’s no bottom and reality isn’t recognizable. Also, you get alienated from your loved ones because everyone grieves differently. I was in my own world for a long time. Months in hospitals. Seeing the other people, families, parents ruined by grief. I don’t know what is worse, suffering yourself or seeing others suffer, especially people you love. Some of the songs are about that kind of torture. The other kids were so stunned by it – their anxiety comes out in unexpected and challenging ways. My son is a twin too – so it’s been really hard for his sister. The first few weeks after his accident were intense. We were told he would likely die. Next best was long term coma or severely disabled. So when he woke up eight days later and began the long recovery process, we were blown away by the joy. Everyday the prognosis improved by leaps. The extremity of that on the heels of despair was a crazy emotional experience. His recovery was miraculous – even his neurosurgeon said that. He re-learned everything, talking, walking, running, being. It’s not like things are perfect – his life is changed forever and his personality is different and he gets very very sad sometimes. But he has an incredible will to live. He is finishing high school right now, playing pick up basketball, thinking about getting a new hockey stick … there’s such beauty in that. And I am never complacent anymore. I am so much more present with my kids and my life.
As I understand it, you started to experience a catharsis around, initially, clusters of melodies which became songs. Is that a fair way to put it? On what became your debut release Spiral Road, which were the songs which arrived first and what meaning did they have for you?
That’s fair. Being in my own world — and kind of sucked into the present moment — in shock but strangely alive. The first melodies drifted into my mind independently. “Before and After” was first — “there’s and old road, beside the highway” just appeared. The road as an archetypal metaphor. And the question, what do you think your life is? Do you think it’s this series of routines you control and plan and execute? It’s not. It’s the unexpected things which shatter your complacency and strip away everything extraneous to remind you that very few things matter. Love, compassion, justice, forgiving weakness and surrender. The real road is the sum total of experiences which connect you with those states. Also, since we are prisoners of time, the road is an easy linear symbol. The night my son fell I had this conversation with god, I think (I am pretty spiritual, though not religious) and I was apologizing for forgetting about love, which I think I had in a way. I was on emotional autopilot. No more.
“2458” and “Shrieking Shack” came next – though I never knew what to do with SS until Chris got his genius hands on it. I wrote that in the rehab hospital one afternoon with Prizoner of Azkaban mixed in. The rehab hospital freaked me out and triggered a lot of creative thinking. “2458” I wrote at Sick Kids Hospital. All the floors we spent so much time on. I think “Spiral Road” came next, then “Tears of Love“. After that I can’t remember. But I do recall the catharsis of the songs and how soothing it was to write and play them.
At some point, Hugh Christopher (Chris) Brown — who hails from a part of Toronto known as Lawrence Park but splits his time between New York and Wolfe Island — became aware of your songwriting through a former bandmate of his Gregor Beresford. How did that relationship come to pass? At what point was it clear that you actually had an album on your hands, or was it Chris who realized that?
I had been playing my songs with a group of friends I jammed with and I felt a compulsion to explore recording. There was this nagging thing — “gee maybe I should make a record”. My partner James was massively encouraging. I contacted Gregor and asked him for advice. He said Chris was the perfect choice and so we just met in my kitchen — I wrote “Enola Gay” the day before they came, in the garden — and I played all the tunes for them. He set up a speaker and got it all raw. They told me later that after they left my place they were pumped, thinking right away the tunes were already great! I always have tons of self doubt so I didn’t know, but I was going on faith at that point. We were like, let’s book a date to lay down the bedtracks, so we did!
The album itself was recorded in a few settings with a cast of musicians Chris has worked with frequently over the years. What can you say about Chris’ role as a musical or even spiritual director?
Chris is a very unusual wizard. I think of him as a kind of funk Jesuit. I had the songs and the skeleton of everything and some pretty clear ideas about some of the sonics, but nothing more. I had no band. So it was a blank slate really. We booked four days at Chris’ studio at the old Post Office on Wolfe Island. Four of the best days of my life. Man we had some great moments in the zone. Gregor was amazing – had a ton of great input. Chris put some gorgeous early texture in too with the Hammond and piano and then he just got really inspired. He just started calling in all these folks he works with Tony Scherr, the Abrams Brothers, the Holmes Brothers just to name some. I wanted Eric on some stuff and Rob Bertola. And so the parts just started flowing in — with Chris guiding and building the arrangements. In a late day brilliant move he called Micky Raphael who was coming in to town to play Massey Hall with Willie. Invited him to play on Before and After (Redux) and Spiral Road. So we met at a studio in Toronto and he laid it down. So beautiful! And yes there’s a spiritual component to it because music is a core mystical gateway in my opinion.
What’s the idea being expressed in the title track, “Spiral Road”?
I am connected to an elder Navajo shaman down in the four corners area, where we shot the video — that’s him. He is the real deal and worked on my son in his coma. Several long traditional medicine ceremonies. He saw things. The spiral road is a Navajo metaphor for the path leading to the land of the dead. Once at the centre there is no return. Sometimes a powerful shaman can intercept the soul on the path and bring it back. The staircase was a spiral, coincidentally.
This album is the sort that doesn’t give itself up to the listener quickly, perhaps because of the thematic, traumatic, redemptive quality of the material. Some songs like “Never Gonna Stop”, “Tears of Love”, and “Shrieking Shack” are bone sad. Do you see them that way? Did you have to achieve a sort of ballast with this record?
I do see the songs that way. Sometimes when I hear them now I see myself more objectively and I feel so sad for me, like self compassion (not self pity) or something. Songs are like children, they have their own DNA. They are very sad, but I can’t help it. I hoped that there would be some balance, with “Love is Now” and a couple of the other songs. But, regardless, I think there is a coherent arc there in that it’s a music memoir with a personal narrative.
The middle trio of the album — “Enola Gay”, “Angel of Light”, and “Love Is Now” seem to be the high tide on the record in terms of emotion and even tempo. What were you trying to accomplish with those songs, realizing they function individually and came together separately.
Consciously, I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything. All three songs came out fast and furious. “Love is Now” is an uplifting tune and I love that, ’cause the love got us through everything in the end. My friend has it on her yoga class playlist! “Enola Gay”, I was in the garden, and I was just thinking ‘what’s a song for anyways’ and then I heard a melody and then there it was. That was fun cause I heard all the harmonies too. “Angel of Light” — that’s a personal favorite of mine — it came out so fast, it was quite formed when it appeared to me and it’s a real piece of my sorrow from that time. But in the sequencing, which is so important, I think I did group those three together for the reasons you suggest actually.
Are you back to depositions? Are you going to give this music thing a go? I’m pretty sure people will want to hear these songs performed in their home towns.
I am still working full time. And the four kids. Man would I love to tour though. I have this crazy hippie romanticism about that! Chris and Gregor just roll their eyes when I talk about life in a van! I think it’s just got to happen — I can feel the pull, just like the tug to make the record. But that’s scary! I don’t want to leave my job! The 14 year-old is still there with the old baggage. I will have to figure it out and I think somehow I will, soon. This spring ideally. More than anything I want to get out there and connect with people through these songs.
* The author publishes his work at Northern Heads
