The essence of Oh Susanna is Ungerleider’s voice and her guitar, and any attempt to bring in other sonic elements would be a tricky business. Finding that balance between Ungerleider alone and bringing in appropriate supporting sounds for her first full-length release fell to producer Peter Moore, who helmed the Cowboy Junkies’ early records.
The resulting album, 1999’s Johnstown, was a tentative step forward. The record contained some strong writing and impassioned singing, particularly the gorgeous “Alabaster” and the yearning “Old Kate”. But the tracks suffered in comparison to the guitar-and-voice versions contained on “A Shot Of Oh Susanna”, a four-song cassette she sold from the stage at shows.
Donovan points out the songs were recorded in overdubbed layers, rather than as live performances. “Some of the stuff on Johnstown was played way after I was gone, so I didn’t really know what was going down,” he says. “When I heard it, I still like that record, but I felt like, ahh, that wasn’t how I imagined we were going to do it.”
“I don’t know if it was the record I expected to make, when I started it, but I was quite thrilled with it,” reflects Ungerleider. “I affiliated myself with folk-roots music, but I had this notion that the Rolling Stones really made electrified folk music, and that is exactly what I wanted to do.”
Reverting back to girl-with-guitar exclusively was not an option. Despite Ungerleider’s obvious talent within the idiom of traditional music, it had the potential of becoming a trap — to make her, in her words, “like a museum piece or an imitation, rather than a living, growing, expressive writer.”
Donovan concurs. “I happen to love that dusty old feel that she started with, drawing from Robert Johnson, Hank Williams’ world with these haunting country-blues things,” he says. “But I think it is important for her to try other things, as opposed to just stay in the safe spot of here’s-me-and-my-guitar.”
To help her find a balance between the essence of her music and more contemporary styles, Ungerleider turned to producer Colin Cripps, formerly of the Canadian groups Crash Vegas and Junkhouse, and a guitarist in Blue Rodeo singer Jim Cuddy’s solo group. A core band — Donovan, former Sarah McLachlan guitarist Luke Doucet and Skydiggers drummer Joel Anderson — relocated with Ungerleider and Cripps to the Bathhouse, the clubhouse/studio built by Canadian superstars The Tragically Hip in rural Ontario. The acoustically accommodating house allowed the musicians to set up in one room and play as a unit, while Ungerleider sang in the hall, separated from her combo by a set of glass doors.
“It was always about her voice, and obviously there is a connection between her voice and her guitar,” Cripps said. “I really believed that the sound of her as an artist was those two things together.” Ungerleider more than stood up to the test. Cripps says every vocal on Sleepy Little Sailor is a complete take, without anything to cover up flaws. A painless ten days later, they had completed the album, with the instrumentation fortifying her voice and guitar while moving away from the narrow, rustic sound of her early work.
Both Donovan and Cripps say their favorite moment is “Ride On”, the album’s closing ten-minute widescreen epic, which touches on the settlement of the Old West, familial obligation, blood feuds, money and death. “I just think it is magical,” says Cripps. “It is dark. There are moments of levity. There is pushing and pulling in terms of the feel. From where I sit, I am totally engaged by it.”
Donovan says he initially worried the song needed to be shortened, but changed his mind one night when he arrived outside the studio and heard “Ride On” echoing from the house. “That song is like a long postcard. What pleased me the most is when I listened to it at the end, I was glad I didn’t shorten it.”
Ungerleider acknowledges “Ride On” was partly inspired by John Steinbeck’s East Of Eden and partly by a trip to Las Vegas. The rootlessness at its core may relate to her life now, as a traveling musician — “the tension between family and adventure and responsibility and finding yourself,” she says. “‘Ride On’ is sort of an old story: What is freedom? Are you free when you are on the road all the time, or is it actually…”
Another word for nothing left to lose?
“Exactly,” she smiles. “It’s kind of a ‘Wizard Of Oz’ all-I-ever-wanted-was-in-my-own-back-yard kind of thing. A lot of the album, and a lot of my music, talks about: Is this the thing that hurts you or heals you? What do you do with the tension between these things? One path does not necessarily mean you are not on the other path.”
There’s a pause as she considers the last sentence.
“Music really saved my life,” she says, then laughs, “even though it might ultimately drive me insane.”
Paul Cantin is senior reporter at www.jamshowbiz.com. Like Otis Redding and Oh Susanna, he too has dreams to remember.
