After six weeks of solo touring across Canada, Vancouver Island-based musician Oliver Swain is making a stop at Cranberry Community Hall to launch his new album, Never More Together.
Formerly with the five-piece folk group Outlaw Social, Swain said he planned on going solo even before the group broke up in 2011.
“What do you do when the banjo player wants to have a baby, or the fiddle player is going on tour with his other band?” he said. “I wanted to work for something that I could build and grow.”
According to Swain, the new album is about the compromises people make for love and how the outcomes are not always pretty.
“It’s really personal,” said Swain. “Songs like ‘Apple Suckling Tree’ have a lot of frustrated sensuality.”
Swain said he drew a lot of inspiration for his album by going alone into the wilderness on Vancouver Island; travelling as far as the abandoned village of Opinaht in MaQuinna Marine Provincial Park.
“Nature is the closest thing I have to a religion,” he said. “I’d look at the chaos and emptiness of giant trees and the Pacific Ocean and think about the ancient first nations cultures that are still alive and well.”
Travelling for creative inspiration is not new for Swain, who went down to North Carolina, the Appalachians and Louisiana to learn about blues and cajun music.
Swain said he found and restored his prized 125-year-old goat skin banjo in the Appalachians when he was in his 20s.
“I found this banjo and tried to bring it back,” he said. “We put goat skin on it and I probably would have used cat-gut-type stings, but I had a little kitty at the time and that seemed a bit too much.”
Beyond vintage instruments, Swain said wherever he is he tries to learn the history of the music played there.
“I am attracted to the sound and the story of people who have come before,” said Swain. “Folk music tells the story behind written history.”
One song on his new album called “Roll and Go” is based on a work song sung by slaves and chain gangs, he said.
“It’s a simple blues melody with raw, emotionally charged lyrics,” he said. “It gets right to the heart of how people tell stories with sound.”
Although Swain collaborated with many artists on his new album, including co-writing one song with Winnipeg singer-songwriter Ridley Bent, he will be performing in Powell River alone. His latest album, recorded at Risque Disque Studio in Yellow Point on Vancouver Island, also features contributions by musicians Adam Dobres, Emily Braden, Matthew Pease, Danuel Tate, James Whittall and Ben Sollee.
“On the one hand the album was all about collaboration,” he said, “but I really wanted to go it alone in the performance.”
Swain said he tries to open up about himself at each show in order to make it the experience more intimate for listeners.
“I try to do a little bit more storytelling in the show,” said Swain. “I love the intimacy that I have when I’m alone with the audience.”
Swain will plays songs from Never More Together and his other albums on Saturday, November 28, at Cranberry Community Hall.
For more information on the show, readers can go to starbuckna.com.
