>>PREVIEW
ANNE LOREE
Saturday, November 19
Ironwood Stage and Grill
Calgary singer-songwriter Anne Loree lives in a surreal world. As she picks through carrots and broccoli in most any large grocery store, she is as likely as not to hear her own words echoing across the massive ceilings as her song, "Insensitive," receives yet another moment on the golden turntable of eternity. The ditty, a massive hit for Jann Arden about a decade ago, will earn Loree a special honour from SOCAN later this month in Toronto for becoming a Canadian Classic.
"It’s very surreal when you hear it in Safeway because everyone seems to be in slow motion, looking at cans of beans, and I want to say, ‘Hello!’ But you can’t; why would you do that?" Loree says between sips of water.
Her humour and lively demeanour are echoed on her new album, Leaving Shadowland, which features a dozen songs tracing her journey from "Insensitive" to the present. And while the hit’s royalties have bought her a home in Lakeview and the gift of time to continue recording and writing, it has also spiked her pathway with Dali-esque scenes.
"I have the luxury of watching because no one knows to put my face to the song, I’m the writer of it. I went to the beer store and I was in line – this wasn’t long ago – and "Insensitive" came on and the young girl behind the cashier, the bag person, she started singing the song really loud. And the guy was joining in and I was standing there. That happened, it really happened. It’s very dreamlike and bizarre."
The only problem with writing a song like "Insensitive" is deciding what to do afterwards. Loree’s 2003 album, Roar, gave her a sense of artistic satisfaction, but it wasn’t until this past year that the songwriter began to acknowledge that "Insensitive" might always be the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about, but nobody can ignore.
"I haven’t been all that inspired in the last year – I’ve been more internal. I was kind of living a bit in the shadow of "Insensitive." I have been trying to go into that whole songwriting thing and maybe I’ll get another song like it. I kind of think people have been looking at me as if I was that type of songwriter, maybe writing another hit. But I don’t think that’s who I am.
"People were looking at me differently, even my mom. ‘Well, you’ll get another hit.’ She didn’t understand why I wasn’t writing another hit. ‘Why don’t you just write another hit and sell another song?’ I thought ‘What am I doing? Am I a songwriter? Am I a performer?’ And I thought maybe this wasn’t going to work for me, and this was quite frightening."
The catalyst for Loree’s inspiration was an incident as surreal as hearing her own song in Safeway. Last year, a young Calgary woman died in a fire as she tried to rescue her dogs. Loree’s gently haunting song, "You’re Still Here," graces Leaving Shadowland in her honour. "When that episode happened it just inspired me, her passion, and I went down in my basement and wrote it. I didn’t know her personally, but I was very good friends with her very good friend. After that, I started feeling like I wanted to do more stuff. It was a very strong episode. It was a weird story, so strong, but my heart just went. After the song, I became elated and just kept writing."
More than 25 songs flowed out of Loree’s pen and guitar. The best of them are whimsically reminiscent, like "When I Hear the Who," which captures that pure feeling of being in love for the first time, and "Radical Hair," which evokes the optimistic energy of the music scene in Calgary in the 1980s. Then, Loree waitressed a 17th Avenue music scene staple called Marty’s. Her friend Joni Brent, now Joni Clarke, waitressed there, too.
The Mullet Years, a companion CD celebrating that era by gathering together Loree’s older songs, is also being released this month. When Loree recorded her tracks for Leaving Shadowland, Clarke came on board. She was followed by people like Chantal Vitalis, Kris Demeanor and Janine Bracewell.
But first, Loree spent some frustrating months recording in her basement – months that had her questioning her judgment on every vocal and guitar lick. "The very first little poem, it sounds so simple. But I was thinking, ‘My God, I’m making an album people are going to hear and it has to be perfect!’ Then you get burnt out, then you don’t know anymore, then you forget that guitar part is going to be in the mix with everything else." The fun returned when her friends came to help. "It went faster, and I was more forgiving of mistakes."
Loree tends to take things day by day, but she is aware that the royalties for "Insensitive" will not last forever. "I’m 46, but I’m in good shape, and I think my voice is getting better, my performance is getting better. I’m not looking way into the future right now. I did an album, I’m going to put it out, I’m going to perform. I have a house and I like to go in my basement and learn this craft of recording, and I’m not going to worry about later.
"But I think I’ll always write songs, I really do. And in the last couple of years there did come a point where I wasn’t sure I could do that. I didn’t think I had anything to say."
And if Loree is not tired of the royalties from "Insensitive," and the grocery clerks are not yet tired of singing along, perhaps there is one person who has every right to be sick of the thing by now. Loree says she e-mailed Jann Arden a few months back to ask some publishing questions.
"She said she never gets tired of singing that song. God knows she sings it like every night; I can only imagine how many times. But I’m sure she got tired of it a few times!" |
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