| As a child in London, Ont., Meaghan Smith loved to sing and perform. Trouble was, she had a serious case of stage fright.
So, her musical dream stayed just that – a dream – while she went off to school to become an animator. Smith’s musical talent was kept to herself. So how is it, in 2008, she is signed to a major label in the U.S. and is distributed across Canada by another? |
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| It all happened pretty fast for the folk-pop singer whose music, steeped in traditional pop and jazz, but with flourishes of current sounds, is now being heard by audiences coast to coast.
When Smith was studying to become an animator a few years back, she began holding small concerts for only two or three people at a time in a stairwell at her school. Eventually, some of her teachers began coming to the shows and soon enough, an audio engineer at the school offered to record some of her songs. When Smith moved to Halifax for an animation job, it was a new chance for her to try her hand at music without a lot of pressure. She had nothing to lose in this new city where no one knew who she was. |
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“And now, four years later, I kind of worked through (the stage fright), and I’m still working through it, but I can get up on stage now and I actually feel really happy to be there,” she says.
Smith and her band mates, including her husband Jason Mingo (who also plays with Steven Bowers and Charlie A’Court), were driving from one show to the next in Ontario when she spoke to East Coast Noise recently.
Smith never expected to be performing for a living, but that’s just what she is doing. After developing her sound in Halifax, she recorded her first EP, Lost With Directions, with CBC in 2004.
In 2007, while attending seminars at the Atlantic Film Festival, she met some film and TV producers from California. She gave them samples of her music, hoping for nothing else but some constructive criticism. Instead, the move helped launch her career.
“I expected nothing, I was just hoping they’d write back and say something like, ‘You should work on this,’ or whatever,” Smith says. “But I heard back from all of them, and across the board, they said, ‘This is fantastic. We want you to come to Los Angeles, and we’ll introduce you to this record label and to this huge guy and this huge producer …’
“I didn’t even have a manager at the time. So I started scrambling to find a manager and setting up meetings.”
From there, Smith began getting offers. She eventually signed with Sire Records in the U.S., which is distributed by Warner Music in Canada.
“I had no idea what to expect, truly. I wasn’t expecting any of it, so I hadn’t been researching it.”
It’s been a learning curve for Smith, but she’s relishing it. Her first release for the label, The Cricket’s Quartet, was recently released. It features four songs and an accompanying video for each one.
While the EP is a great little listen on its own, traditional jazz and pop mixed with some scratching from Montreal DJ Kid Koala and some other more modern flares, Smith promises it’s only a sample of what’s to come.
The full-length follow-up, The Cricket’s Orchestra, will be released early next year. The EP and album were both produced by Les Cooper, known for his work with Jill Barber and others.
Smith has always been attracted to “old-timey” sounds, which she describes as “whimsical.” She says much of today’s music sounds too produced and “sterile.”
“It’s just really real,” she says. “Listening to those old recordings from the ‘20s and the ‘30s and the ‘40s and even the ‘50s, things were really legitimate and real. There was no overdubbing, there was no punching in, there was no pitch correction. It was really pure, a bunch of people in a room, sitting around a microphone just playing their hearts out, and I love that legitimate feel to the music.
“I really like that old-timey sound, but I’ve updated it and added a modern twist.”
In the ever-changing music industry, many musicians are taking a do-it-yourself approach or they’re signing to small independent labels. But that isn’t for Smith.
“For the kind of career that I want to have, you know, having a major label is going to work for me. It’s not going to work for everybody, but for what I want to do, I think it’s going to work really well.
“And so far, it’s been completely up to me. I have a say in everything, so I chose the director of my videos, I chose the direction of my videos, there’s no one telling me what to do at all. It’s absolutely fantastic, it’s a real team effort. They’re just really interested in getting behind me as a person and my music and just bringing that to the world.”
She says the Internet allows bands to do things however they want, whether it’s with the help of a major or indie label or it’s completely independent.
Smith has residencies planned in Canada and the U.S. over the next few months, but she has at least one Atlantic Canadian gig planned for next month.
Smith and singer-songwriter Matthew Barber (older brother Jill) will perform at Moncton’s Capitol Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 22.
“It’s great, I really, really like it,” she says of being on the road. “It suits me really well. My husband is in my band, so I never feel homesick or like I’m missing anything. And I really enjoy just travelling and seeing new places and getting to hang out with my band members.”
There’s a great deal of work ahead for Smith, whose career is beginning to snowball.
“I’m just expecting to be very, very busy and probably not spending much time in the house that I just bought,” she says with a laugh. “But it’s alright, I’d rather be busy.”
