SM: And that’s especially true in immigrant families….where the parents have sacrificed so much for the kids and the kids feel this responsibility to outdo themselves.
Smitty: Yes.
SM: Outperform themselves in everything and that doesn’t always stop in the relationship with the parents. It continues in school, it continues in professional relationships. You always wanna be at the top and that’s really hard. It takes a real emotional toll and it throws you kind of from highs to lows very quickly and that’s what I found my life becoming, and so the record is really kind of an honest portrait of me over the past three years.
Smitty: Well, I think everything you’ve said thus far, as we began to talk here.
SM: Mm-hmm.
Smitty: You can feel that in the music. It’s not only great music, but it’s a wonderful and emotional conversation with your audience, with your fans.
SM: Thank you.
Smitty: Yes, and I think that’s the beauty of the attraction to your music, which is a beautiful thing.
SM: Hmm, well, that was the point. The point was to make a much more personal record than the first one, to make a record that was more revealing of me.
Smitty: Yeah.
SM: And that’s gonna really not just, you know, “Here’s a girl that sings her favorite songs,” but was really “Here’s a girl with demons and happiness and fears and satisfaction and let’s get to know her.” So I think this record reveals a lot about me and hopefully people connect.
Smitty: Yes, and your live performances are such a wonderful evening and I think that’s a title that you can’t take away from your live performances, that it’s just a wonderful evening with Sophie Milman, which is fantastic.
SM: Yeah.
Smitty: So, now, you pulled off this record amidst touring, going to school…how did you do it?
SM: I don’t know. Honestly, people ask me as if like I can give them a formula to overexertion and I don’t actually recommend it. (Both laugh.) I think I need to slow down at some point, but this past year has been truly insane, I was touring around the States in the first semester, then I went on a trip, then I toured a lot of Canada, then I went on a trip to Europe, then I came back in time for final exams. Right after final exams, the following day, the day after I wrote my last exam, I was on a plane to Tokyo to play ten shows in five days, and in January we came back, I was touring again in the States and then started school again. In February we were in the studio, right? So it was really intense and crazy, but I was just so ready to make a record.
Smitty: Yeah, yeah.
SM: You know what I mean? When you’re on a label, they have an interest of putting out a record and exploiting it as long as possible.
Smitty: Right.
SM: As long as they can make some of the money back, you know?
Smitty: Right.
SM: Where as an artist, I was ready. I mean, honestly, it’s been—I recorded that first album in 2004. That is a long time. My sound has evolved, my live show has evolved, and I was just ready to connect with those feelings and to make another record, and so the choice would have been to do it in February with all the craziness and madness or to do it in the summer, but then I wouldn’t have a record right now, I wouldn’t be on the festival circuit, and I would’ve had to be performing the same stuff from the first record. And don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed that first record and it comes through great live—but I don’t know if it’s me anymore so much.
Smitty: Yeah, it was just time to do it.
SM: Some of the songs we still perform and we still really enjoy, but I’ve moved on, I’ve grown up.
Smitty: Yes, you have.
SM: So, really, I took the hit and we were in and out of the studio in a week, and as soon as the week was over I had to write midterms that had been deferred. And I just had to bite the bullet and do it.
Smitty: Very cool. Now, I’m sure that your producer, Steve MacKinnon, has been a wonderful help to you and just a serious plus for your career. Talk about working with him.
SM: Well, Steve…I first met him right before I made the first record, we were supposed to work together and something didn’t work out, and then I totally just—I forgot the whole thing, and right before we were starting to think about the second record, I heard a record by Molly Johnson. Do you know her?
Smitty: Yes, absolutely.
SM: Yeah, she’s a great Canadian singer.
Smitty: Yes.
SM: And a record that he had just finished working on and had just come out, and I was just blown away by it. I mean, this guy knows how to work with a singer. He has an unbelievable amount of respect for singers and that’s not necessarily true for a lot of producers. So I needed to find somebody who I felt respected by, because I felt like I had so much more to say on this second record and I would not be put down and told “Just shut up and sing.” I wanted somebody who would get performances out of me that I didn’t even think were possible.
With Steve it became just that. We agreed that we need to take this record to a quite different place than the first one and we had to create a different sound to reflect the fact that my sound has changed and we can’t just pander to the same stuff. The recording experience was just amazing. It was truly unbelievable because he definitely pushed us and he worked us hard because you don’t get 15 tracks in seven days without really working a lot. He was pushing us and getting us to get out of our comfort zone a little bit, but it was really a very organic, respectful process between me, Steve, Cameron, who arranged most of the tunes, and the engineer and the rest of the band. Everybody just really we came together in this creative atmosphere. It was fantastic and I think all that love, you can hear that on the record.
