Roots music fulfils so many purposes, perhaps its greatest is storytelling. Whether or not that is a unanimous view, it is certainly one championed by Canadian singer/ songwriter Tia McGraff, who I had the pleasure of interviewing just before she began her second tour of the UK this year.
Do you make a conscious effort to tell a story in every song?
It doesn’t necessarily start out that way but most of my songs are based on some kind of story, whether it’s about people from long ago or now, places we’ve been or how we feel about things. That goes right back throughout my recording career.
Looking at storytelling in more detail, history appears to feature quite frequently? How did that come about?
I live on the shores of Lake Erie, which is steeped in history so full of potential material. Two songs in particular come to mind; the first, ‘Abigail’, is a song from my album Break These Chains that I wrote about a local woman, Abigail Becker, living here in the 1800s who rescued several sailors from a shipwrecked vessel earning her the name, “Angel of Long Point”. Another comes from Crazy Beautiful, also featuring the lake, is ‘Whiskey Ship’. This is about a ship during the Prohibition Years that ran aground discharging its load of whiskey barrels that floated ashore to be “rescued” by eager locals.
An older song, ‘Lake Erie Fisherman’, about a day in the hard life of those making their living from the water also comes from around here.
My husband, Tommy Parham, is from Colorado and a song from our earlier album, Diversity, ‘Two Wolves’, is based on a Cherokee legend.
How would you say this historical theme has been received by audiences?
I’ve seen people relate to stories and history in many different ways but ‘Abigail’ got a reception in England that I certainly hadn’t anticipated. It was part of the set we played when we toured the UK last year. One of our shows was at the Low Light Museum in North Shields, near Newcastle. After we’d finished, the venue’s Community, Heritage and Events Manager, Pearl Saddington, came up to us very excitedly saying what an amazing parallel ‘Abigail’ had with their local heroine, Grace Darling, who’d performed a similar feat of heroism not far away around the same time. That led to a collaboration earlier this year when she gathered together a group of local school children to write a song and I did the same here in Port Dover, Ontario. Then each group performed their song to each other over a Skype link. We hope that might lead to a closer bond between the two historic places with perhaps an exchange for the two groups to visit each other. How about that for bringing people together? Technology helped obviously but at the root of it all was the age-old tradition of storytelling.
Do you put this storytelling to other uses?
We don’t set out to tick off a list of subjects; it’s just the way we’ve always written songs. I’d say we lean more towards folk now than country although labels are notoriously deceptive. Writing is what we love to do and we have to be true to ourselves. There is also a spiritual side too; some of our more recent songs have a common strand of hope. That’s even more important right now.
Do I detect a political element here? Have recent events prompted any new songs?
Partly but again this wasn’t an overt objective. We’ve just released a limited edition EP for this UK tour containing seven new songs. ‘Faithful Ones’ and ‘Change a Comin’ are about hope; ‘Rocks That You Can’t Move’ is about civil rights. These are timely additions, not least because we’ve been asked to submit material for a civil rights movie later this year.
We are deeply concerned about what’s going on in the US at the moment. I don’t want to think people have become “normalised” by the new regime. At least people were speaking up at first but now they seem to have returned to their normal lives. We mustn’t just accept the lies as missiles fly, we must try to hold these politicians to account so they know they can’t just do whatever they like.
What should musicians be doing?
Musicians are in a difficult place. Look at those being denied entry to the US. If that happens you don’t get back in. We must stand up to these injustices but at the same time, we must take great care we aren’t completely shut out.
And you and Tommy in particular?
We take the hope approach as in the new songs. Keep on keeping on, marching, walking and saying what we believe in. Interestingly, an old song along these lines, ‘Hope is Everything’, used to be a regular on our setlist but we took it off. Now people coming to our shows want it back because they tell us it’s so right for these times.
Could you see a 1960s protest movement revival?
It’s brewing up but I don’t think we’ll return to protest on that scale. Country artists tend to be less politically minded, folk artists are more so. Either way, I hope artists of whatever flavour do protest as they did then.
What are your recording and touring plans?
In reverse order we have a full tour of the UK where we shall be performing our new EP. As well as the songs I mentioned earlier, the first of these new ones, ‘Dartmoor’, is set in England, on Dartmoor where we met the wild ponies last year. We can tell stories about horses too.
When we get home we’ll add to the EP by recording further new material for an album release early next year.
Do you record in the same places with the same people?
Most we do at home but we are going to Star City Studios coinciding with a show in El Paso, and we’ll also record in Nashville. We tend to play with people we know well who in turn know what we are about, such as fiddle player Wanda Vicks.
Is there anything you haven’t done that you’d really like to?
I’d love to visit where my grandparents came from in Transylvania. We’re taking a short break from this UK tour to do just that. And there’s my childrens’ book, ‘Jake the Road Dog’ which I must finish. It’s about life on the road from the perspective of our dog, Jake, who we rescued in Nashville. I’m on chapter 7.
That probably brings this sweep of Tia’s storytelling to a close but I have to finish by saying how much I’m looking forward to Tia and Tommy’s show in London and hearing the new EP.
