SPILL FEATURE: A MOMENT TO REFLECT ON THE PAST FOUR YEARS – A CONVERSATION WITH AYSANABEE

A MOMENT TO REFLECT ON THE PAST FOUR YEARS

A CONVERSATION WITH AYSANABEE

Aysanabee has come a very long way since he made his recording debut in 2022 with his debut release, Watin in 2022. Watin awarded him his first JUNO nomination (Contemporary Indigenous Artist of the Year). He has gone on to win two Juno awards in 2024 for Here and Now (Alternative Album of the Year and Songwriter of the Year). He was also nominated for the Polaris Music Prize in 2023. He won two Junos this year (Alternative Album Of The Year & Contemporary Indigenous Artist Or Group Of The Year) and he is also up for Indigenous Songwriter of the Year and Single of the Year for the Edge of the Earth title track in this year’s Canadian Folk Music Awards.

As I stated, he has accomplished a great deal in a short time. His three albums have won him critical and commercial success. Aysanabee is an Oji-Cree singer-songwriter and a member of the Sandy Lake First Nation. He is taking time to pause, reflect and look back a bit at his career with his new EP, Timelines, where he has reimagined songs from his previous albums.  I had the chance to talk with him recently about Timelines.

“I’m excited to get out there and play some shows there [Calgary]. Me and AHI will be sharing some stages.  We have been talking about doing something together for a minute, so I am really looking forward to it. It is going to be really sweet to get out that way. I am going to try to sneak some time in the mountains.”

He is also excited about heading to Hamilton for the Junos. “It’s nice because it is close to home. I’m just excited to be part of it. Every one of those events are just like, I am quite new to it, but it is nice to see people you haven’t seen for a year and catch up. I thought, because I wasn’t being on the broadcast, I can go, relax and just hang out and say hello to people. But they are keeping me busy that weekend, which I am grateful for too.”

Like many great artists, Aysanabee’s early exposure to a variety of music informed and influenced his writing and performing style. It really is no surprise that his music tastes are much more diverse than just folk music. “I think when I started playing shows in Thunder Bay, that is where I found my community. There’s a small but mighty music scene there, people make all kinds of interesting music. The group I was hanging with loved a lot of different singer/songwriter, folk music. I was listening to Shakey Graves, Ben Howard and got into the tones and textures of the songwriting. We are all products of the things you ingest. So, definitely, I imagine those have influenced me. When I first started listening to music, I would kind of rob my brother of his music collection and listen to it. He had a wide range of music; Aphex Twin to MF DOOM to Radiohead and all these different artists. I loved folk music.”

Which is perhaps the reason he is very proud to be nominated in the alternative category as well. “At first I wasn’t sure if I liked that category, but I have come to really enjoy it. Alternative, I think, is like a catch all. I feel like you are less on a straight line, and allow you to experiment, I might go here and try this…It is a nice wide spectrum. I used to love performing a lot more than being in the studio, but I think that working with a bunch of producers who have become my friends, I just really enjoy the process of experimenting with a bunch of different soundscapes and textures. I love the simplicity of playing the guitar and writing songs, but I also love the production of making these big, massive anthemic sound walls.” 

TIMELINES ALBUM REVIEW

Timelines is a reimagining of songs, not simply an “unplugged” album. A lot of intricate arrangements went into these new versions of much-loved songs. “We were trying to keep it as sparse as we could, and we don’t want to be like ‘we are putting out an acoustic record’ and it is this massive production,” laughed Aysanabee. “I love building arcs and having the sound get bigger. There are elements we never had in there before, we have banjo on two of the songs, it is a nice texture.”

Re-recording these songs for Timelines allowed Aysanabee a chance to reflect on his music, his career and his life. “There are two things I love about this EP. One is that it gave me a moment to reflect on the past four years. Going back and revisiting each album and who I was back then, and how far I have come. These moments of reflection I have talked about needing for a minute, making this record made me have to do that. But also, whoever came to the shows were introduced to me with just me playing acoustic guitar and all my pedals because when I started my career, I could not afford to bring a band with me, so I would just go around playing the songs solo. So, the audience would not have anything to go back to that. All of the albums are produced with a big band. So, this is the first album that people can have something to take that brings them back to how they were first introduced to me.”

And stripping the songs back and presenting them in a bit more of a sparse arrangement brought some surprises to Aysanabee. “When you strip a song back, there are certain points where you feel a little bit more naked. ‘I really miss the synth bass here, it kind of leaves you with the bare bone songs. That was a pleasant surprise. ‘Oh, the song is still pretty good!’ You are revisiting them, and I think it is interesting too, because so much has happened in the last four years. I feel like a new person after whatever happens, so much lived experience in those moments. So, it is interesting to go back and revisit where you were when you wrote those songs and see how far you have come and how much you have grown. I think it was good to take space and time and reflect.”

He recently appeared and performed at Your Roots Are Showing conference in Belfast. He was well received and even had an interesting adventure. “It was my first time performing in Ireland, and I can’t wait to get back. I made a bunch of incredible friends there. We went to the Giant’s Causeway. We had finished all the shows, so we had a day, so me and my manager got up at 5:30 in the morning to have breakfast so we could head out to the causeway, and this folk singer, a pretty well-known folk singer, and he was there for breakfast. ‘What are you up to?’ and I told him we were going to the causeway. ‘I should come with you!’ and I said, ‘if you want to, sure.’ I pretty sure hadn’t slept at that moment. So, he came with us, a lovely human, I met him in Denmark two and half years ago. We get to the causeway, and we get to where those hexagonal rocks are and Jen’s exploring  and then he says, ‘You know what, I think I have to do it.’ I said ‘do what?’ He strips down and he is going to go skinny dipping, so this older Irish folk singer hops into the ocean. It is like 12 degrees outside, and busloads of tourists are trying to take photos and this naked Irishman is swimming in the background,” he laughed. Well, we both laughed.

Aysanabee has a busy year ahead, and he continues to grow as an artist. His new EP, Timelines, lets us all join him and reflect on his career and music up to this point. And he does hope that people enjoy what they are hearing. “I am just happy they are listening. If I did well enough, it will become a little soundtrack of their life. ‘I love this song because it relaxes me so I will listen to it while I am on the dock’ or ‘I like the beat of this song and put it on when I go for a run.’ I think that is the beauty of music, it gives people a soundtrack. I would be flattered if it became part of their life in that way.”

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Photo Credits: Lindsay Duncan