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Music

Justin Rutledge

JUSTIN RUTLEDGE plays the CMF Americana Music Association Showcase: Outlaws & Gunslingers tonight (Wednesday March 20) at the Horseshoe Tavern doors 9 pm, $15, limited wristbands accepted cmw.net.


I met Justin Rutledge in a Canadian poetry class at U of T, while he was still gigging around town with the Junction Quartet and working at the Victory Cafe to support his music.

Fast-forward more than a decade, and the Juno-nominated songwriter is pursuing not only music but also a concurrent acting career – he wrote and performed songs for Michael Ondaatje’s stage adaptation of his novel Divisadero and was recently the musical director and composer for Canadian Stage’s production of The Arsonists.

His self-produced fifth album, Valleyheart, marks a move from Six Shooter (where he was for eight years and his first four albums) to Outside. He says Outside director Evan Newman was an early supporter of his work.

Over beers at The Wallflower (in the former location of Naco) Rutledge spoke of his reticence to tour extensively and his desire to leave behind a cannon of work. He seemed proud of his new album, which is a step forward but also a return: some of the sweetest tunes – Kapuskasing Coffee, Downtown and Heather In The Pines – are about a decade old.

Though sixteen musicians appear on the album, Rutledge and engineer Tim Vesely have managed to make it sound effortless, spacious and light. It’s also only nine songs long, which Rutledge says was inspired by Doug Paisley’s preference for short albums (Paisley also appears on the record).

Rutledge spoke enthusiastically about Neil Halstead and Mojave 3, who gave his career a great boost early on (he also does a pretty good Halstead singing impression). After I turned my tape recorder off he told me about Early Winters, his collaborative project out of L.A. that managed to crank out an entire album in two weeks.

I noticed on your website that you have a contact for acting inquiries, and I know you’ve been in a few different plays recently. Are you actively pursuing an acting career?

Yeah, I’ve got an acting agent at the Gary Goddard agency. I love [that] agency because they are similar to a company like Outside or Six Shooter because they are in development they don’t think about what you’re doing next week, they think about what you’re doing twenty years from now.

Acting requires going to a lot of auditions, right?

So many auditions and it’s really, really hard. This month I was 99.8 percent supposed to get this [acting] gig for three weeks and it fell through. I was sort of banking on this and I’d moved my schedule around. Now I’m sitting around here at The Wallflower for the next six weeks …

Did you make a conscious decision to explore theatre?

It was [through working] with Michael Ondaatje. Ondaatje asked me if I would write music for Divisadero, and it became a three-year process. When we remounted it a second time I [realized] acting was something I was really interested in. So I took a couple courses and talked to a couple friends of mine who are established in the theatre community. Tom McCamus said, “I’m with Gary Goddard” and I just kinda called them up and said, “I’m a friend of Tom’s, and I hear you’re a reputable agency and I want to have a meeting. This is something I’m interested in. I’m not good at this, but I’d like to be.”

It’s just like being in the music business: that’s what you do. I’m not afraid of rejection anymore.

Do you think your theatre work has had an impact on your songwriting and recording?

Well, that’s why I took so much time off between my last record [2010’s The Early Widows] and Valleyheart, because I was involved in a few theatre projects.

I just found it really healthy for me to get away from music for a while. I know what I do and what I do is a very slow burn. And I’m at the point in my life where I just turned 34 and I can’t sacrifice a lot – I don’t want to sacrifice a lot. I have a house that I love in Toronto and I have a dog that I love and I’ve got a really cool network of people. Being a star isn’t my goal I don’t want to conquer the world.

What do you mean by sacrifice?

I don’t want to be away from home for eight months of the year. To be honest with you, I can’t afford to do that financially. I’m a little more realistic about what I can or can’t do. But I’m really up for building a cannon of work.

I feel like Valleyheart is the first record — aside from my first record – where I really said what I wanted to say. [For the others] I still did what I wanted to do but there was always this sense that I should do [things] because that’s what people want to hear.

But with Valleyheart I’m comfortable with and recognize what I really want to do with my music, and so I think spending some time away from my own music career influenced that. I feel like it’s a very complete record it’s a very calm record. I feel like it’s very centred – and maybe that had a lot to do with [taking a break].

As you know, it’s like beating your fucking head against the wall these days trying to be a songwriter.

You self-produced Valleyheart. How did that come about?

I started this album after listening to Doug Paisley’s Constant Companion and him and I started working on this record together. And then I sort of took a step back and said, “you know what, I could probably do this on my own.” But it was only going through the process with Doug that I understood that I could do it on my own.

Was this your first time producing yourself?

It was my second time. I self-produced on my third album Man Descending — but this was the first time that I got it right. I haven’t listened to [Man Descending] in a long time but I know that I didn’t do a good job. But I feel as though with this album I did a really good job, just personally speaking.

You also recently re-issued your debut album, No Never Alone. Why now?

Outside contacted me before we started working together last year and they said, “hey it’s coming up on the 10th anniversary of No Never Alone, and we’d love to do a vinyl reissue of it with some bonus stuff” – because I did an album after No Never Alone that was never released.

I didn’t know that.

No one knows that. It was called In The Fall and I shelved that to do the Stanley Park album. So the reissue includes four songs that were on In The Fall, which I did when I was 23 or 24, I guess.

When we were very young.

Yes, when we were very young. It’s hard to believe I started No Never Alone when I was 21, finished it when I was 23 because I was working at a bar — I was working at the Victory Cafe – trying to fund it.

I remember there being a few different release dates for No Never Alone.

The official Six Shooter release date is 2005 but it was 2003 (I think) when I pressed it, maybe 2004. You know what, it’s because Neil Halstead of Mojave 3 picked it up for his Shady Lane label.

How did you meet Neil Halstead?

When I was working at the Victory I met this English guy [Julian Mash] who was starting up a label with Neil Halstead and I said, “I’m working on a record, here are some demos,” which were the demos for No Never Alone, and a month later Julian sent them to Neil, Neil really liked them and said, “yeah we want to put out your record on Shady Lane.”

It got all these great reviews in the UK. NME gave it eight out of ten [and there was a nice review in Uncut too] then I went over to the UK and Mojave 3 backed me up on this little tour I did [minus Rachel Goswell, who was pregnant at the time]. They are kind of one of my favourite bands. Excuses For Travellers, you know? What an amazing album.

So Neil Halstead played a huge part in launching your career?

Yeah, he was integral. If it wasn’t for Neil I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. Or we’d be talking about my teaching career …

What do you think was special about No Never Alone?

It was all about one person. It was for one person, the intention of it was for one person. If I could have, I would have made just one copy of it [for that person] that’s it, that’s all I wanted to do.

What is your song Four Lean Hounds about?

The title is taken from one of my favourite poems by e.e. cummings. He never had any titles for his poems but the first line was “All in green went my love riding.” These four lean hounds keep coming up in the poem, then it switches to four fleet does and four tall stags … it’s about hunting. I’m reluctant [to talk about the meaning of the song] but it’s about memory: a boy looking at pictures of his father when he was his age looking at a picture of someone you used to know. It’s about how people change.

There are a lot of musicians on your new album, but there’s also a lot of space. Was that intentional?

That was very intentional. Not playing is really essential to this record. There’s a lot of whole notes, there are a lot of diamonds, there is a lot of turning people off.

You mean you recorded them then shut them off?

Yeah. I told them, “only play in this part of the song” and then they do stuff and I go, “okay, if you do that, I’m just going to turn you off. I told you not to play, so I’m just going to turn you off.” Some people were touchy after. I tried to get people to play off the floor so if I did turn them off it was because they didn’t need to be there.

Did you play any of the piano?

The piano was all Steve O’Connor. Amazing. He’s so good. He really understood [that I wanted] smart chords, like I want the tone and the sound of the piano. It’s really important in grounding the songs. He played it all live.

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