WHERE DID YOU GO
A CONVERSATION WITH BARBARA LYNCH
Barbara Lynch is a Canadian musical treasure. With three full-length albums, she has established herself as one of Canada’s foremost storytelling folk artists. Perhaps calling her folk is doing her a disservice. She has created incredible music on her own terms, and that includes her most recent album, where did you go, her first album since 2008’s In The Nickelodeon. I had a chance to talk to her recently and asked the question, where had she gone for almost 15 years?
“There was a long time,” Lynch agreed. “I had the Duke Street album in 1997, that was a very good album, but basically, I went broke. I had to start working full-time. I put so much into it, so much time and energy and risk in it and it did not pan out. I got a job and started working full time. I got a job for 16 years, then I wrote In The Nickelodeon. That was meant as a fun last effort. I paid for it myself from my salary from my job. I thought I was done. But then … all of a sudden, I had this time and when it finally occurred to me that I would have six months to myself in my apartment. I thought, “why not go out and do what you always wanted to do and buy a little parlour guitar?
“So, I got one, and started fooling around and I thought, ‘no one is ever going to hear these songs,’ so write about whatever I want. I felt so free, to my surprise I wrote all the songs while I was learning the guitar. I am a piano player. I had such a great time… Because I had gotten a good review one time from Michael Timmins for In The Nickelodeon, I sent him a couple of songs.” She asked him if he would do an album for her. “He emailed me back and said he would. This album was sent from the universe, I would wake up in the morning and I would be writing a song.”
Lynch is very honest, that she is very shocked from the positive response the album has received.
“I’m just so excited about the reception this album has been getting. I am just blown away, because I believe in it so much, myself, and to hear it acknowledged…we got a review in The Rocking Magpie in the U.K. and Americana Highways, and they are long beautiful reviews. One of the reviews said it could be the album of the year. It’s just hitting people the way I had dreamed it would. It is hitting them the way it hits me.”
The songs were actually performed to an audience long before they were recorded. But Lynch did not always get a positive response to her new direction with her music. “A friend of mine and I got a residency at the Tranzac Club in Toronto, and I started performing these songs live. But that was hard, because fans of mine from my piano days did not like the change. I wasn’t very good, but I was trying. One woman said, ‘You used to be so good.’ It is really hard when you try something new and get absolutely no support from anybody.”
However, such feedback encouraged her to continue you in her direction. Lynch said, “But you have to trust your own intuition and own musical sense, so now I have this album that I am very proud of.”
WHERE DID YOU GO ALBUM REVIEW
“The album meant a great deal to me, because it was like my life story. I had a terrible time thinking of a cover and a concept. I always wanted to write a book of short stories, and these are musical short stories. I was driving myself crazy with album covers and titles. One day I was cleaning out my closet and I found an old photograph album, and in that album was that picture, the picture of the elderly lady and the Santa Claus figure or Father Time, if you will, in the nursing home and it was a picture taken by my uncle. Here’s this picture by Uncle Peter, and it is Grandma, and I thought ‘holy shit I like this picture’. There is so much in it. If you look at her face, her eyes are bewildered, puzzled about her life…what happened, you might say. Look at how she feels. And all these stories are about these people who lived through life.”
“We need to make the most of the time we have, so I put in small letters, where did you go, in small letters. Where did the time go, where did the people go, where did the people go? Where did I go? I sent the picture to Michael Timmins and asked him if he thought I was insane to use this picture that I find really interesting on the cover of the album. He loved it, so I said, ‘ok, we are using it.’
Lynch’s grandmother had a huge influence on her musical career. “Grandma, when we lived on the farm, I would spend time in her house. It was fun to go into town. She was very important to me, and very kind. She went to the local priest, this is small town, and asked if I could play the organ there. She wanted me to get a little profile in the town. My mother played and I played.”
Lynch’s songs are short stories, snapshots if you will, of people who are trying their best and sometimes they don’t have the best of luck. But it is the trying that appeals to Lynch. And she loves these people. I do, I really do,” said Lynch.’ The key to this and it took me a while to figure it out. It is one thing to write the song, it is another to talk about in a simple and honest way. Each of these songs is a portrayal or story about people and different parts of their lives. They are all good people, just like we are all good people, and I believe that. We all try and we are all a work in progress, but as time goes on, you make mistakes and things happen, and damage is done and a loss of innocence.”
Since finishing this album, Lynch has been writing new songs and hopes to release a series of singles in the future. These new songs will be extensions of where have you been. In the meantime, she will continue her shows at Tranzac and will be performing other shows.
“From the comments people are making, and they are saying that the album makes them feel better. It is because, in these stories these people are good people, they are just like us, they keep trying and keep moving, and we do feel empathy for them. It hits the good parts of people and makes them feel hope again. People are good, they just have a lot of shit that happens. If you can feel empathy for people, look at them and think what it is like being them, there is an understanding that happens. There’s a sharing of humanity and this is what we need.
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