Interview: Basia Bulat Finds a Place of Her Own

Leah Collins, Dose.ca
January 12, 2010

During the making of her second album, Heart of My Own, singer-songwriter Basia Bulat learned a life-changing lesson: wherever she has songs in her pocket, she'll feel at home.

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Photo by: Basiabulat.com

Packed with her auto-harp, her band and a pocketful of blithe, indie-folk songs, Basia Bulat’s played just about everywhere. London, Madrid, Warsaw: and that’s just a chunk of her winter ‘09 tour’s itinerary.

Bulat’s second album, Heart of My Own (out Jan. 16), owes a certain debt to one of the Canadian singer-songwriter’s many points of destination – but one that didn’t require a passport: The Yukon. According to Bulat, she dreamed of roaming to the Arctic ever since she was a child growing up in southern Ontario.

While some may struggle to see the romance in permafrost and tundra, Bulat just giggles when asked to explain her fascination. “Why does anyone do anything sometimes?” she posits. “It’s love at first sight, I guess. I must have seen a calendar or postcard or something when I was a kid and ever since – I’ve been a little bit obsessed.”

So when Bulat and her band were booked to play the Dawson City Music Festival in the summer of 2008 – the same year her spirited debut, Oh My Darling, was recognized on the Polaris Music Prize shortlist – she and her brother/bandmate Bobby Bulat, viola player Allison Stewart and backing vocalist Holly Coish finagled a mini-vacation out of the gig. They stayed on in Dawson for an extra week, bunking with locals who graciously billeted the crew and showed them the Great North’s sights -- sights which have been scrapbooked in her new album’s artwork, courtesy of her brother’s photography. Dawson’s Palace Grand Theatre – where Bulat played a festival set with local roots musicians the Done Gone String Band – is splashed in black and white on the album’s interior. (“That was a highlight for me,” Bulat says of her show there.) Another shot, which Bulat identifies as the Tombstone Mountains, adorns the back of the sleeve. The album’s cover -- which sees Bulat walking a gravel road, her blond hair being curled by a gust of wind as shadowy clouds dramatically reach towards the horizon – captures another of her favourite moments, a drive on the Top of the World highway, just as a malevolent storm approached. “I was totally inspired by it!” Bulat enthuses. “My brother was going mad with the camera; we just thought it was the most beautiful thing we’d ever seen.”

Which leads to how Dawson staked a claim on Bulat’s new album. “After we were there, I started writing all my songs,” she says, explaining that work on the album more or less spanned from the following autumn and into early 2009. “I wanted to put those photographs in because it was a time for me where everything started to make sense.

“I think being away from home and touring a lot is a really amazing opportunity. It’s something that I don’t take for granted or take lightly. But it’s easy after a long time to feel really homesick, or lonely.

“I think I was really made to feel at home up there, even though I didn’t really know anyone,” says Bulat. “And it made me realize that the things I do need to feel at home are my songs – and my autoharp and my guitar.”

Like her previous record, Bulat recorded the 12 songs on Heart of My Own live off the floor with producer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Godspeed You! Black Emperor) at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango studio. “It’s kind of hard to say what I did differently [with this album]. Maybe I stressed about it a lot more,” says Bulat, breaking into laughter.

Like her previous disc, Bulat’s effortless vocals and the rollicking and sophisticated rhythms carrying each song are the disc’s hallmarks. But there are grander sounds on offer here. Bulat’s vocals are more confident and vivacious (she reportedly lost her voice during the recording of Oh My Darling, which arguably lent a touch of fragility to some of the songs), and the tunes are backed by lush instrumentation and the occasional choir. The songs themselves point more towards classic pop than their folksy acoustic instrumentation would suggest; the breathless “Run” and album closer “If It Rains” suggest ‘60s soul – just played on autoharp.

“Playing live – I think that was a big influence on these new songs,” says Bulat of the new set’s added heft. “I hope it doesn’t sound like Oh My Darling part two,” she laughs.

Bulat will try her new songs’ mettle on the road again this winter. After an album pre-release party in Toronto on Jan. 16, she’ll tour across Canada through February and March. Unfortunately, she couldn’t manage to include Dawson City on her itinerary this time around.

“I only wish it were more easy to get back there. Every couple months I’m looking online on Airnorth.com for something, for plane tickets, but it’s really difficult to go. It’s prohibiting financially if you’re playing the autoharp in a folk ensemble of sorts,” she half-jokes.

Bulat says that during her inspiring 2008 trip, her new local friends did what they could to get her to stay. “I was offered a job by two different people while I was there,” she says – and she admits the offer, even though it was a position as a school secretary, was tempting. “I kept thinking ‘That could be me.’”

And maybe one day it will be. “They have the Internet in Dawson; you can release records from anywhere,” she says. “I think I know now that anywhere I have some songs in my pocket, is going to feel like home.”

Basia Bulat’s Heart of My Own is in stores Jan. 26.

Basia Bulat’s Canadian tour dates:

Toronto, Jan. 16

Kingston, Feb. 2

Peterborough, Feb. 3

London, Feb. 4

Orillia, Feb. 5

Guelph, Feb. 6

Hamilton, Feb. 7

Halifax, Feb. 10-11

Montreal, Feb. 12

Ottawa, Feb. 13