Basia Bulat made a stop at Peterborough’s Market Hall on October 1st as part of a tour in support of her new album The Garden. The record reimagines songs from her previous five studio albums and contains 16 stunning new arrangements by Owen Pallet, Paul Frith, and Zou Zou Robidoux recorded by string quartets over the course of 2020 and 2021. The result is a meditation on the themes of rebirth, regeneration, and personal growth.

The album was recorded during the height of the pandemic in Montreal, where Bulat is now based, and while she was expecting her first daughter. These two contexts, she told me, greatly informed her approach to the recording process by encouraging her to let go of trying too hard to make music in any particular way, and allow the creative process to wash over her and her collaborators and seek refuge from the chaos in the studio. 

Now, Bulat’s daughter is now eighteen months old and, I was told, was eager to explore Little Lake in the afternoon before the show. Because of this, I was even more grateful that Bulat took the time to sit down with Arthur for a quick conversation about the album and how her tour is going so far. 

SJL: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today! I want to start by saying that the album is gorgeous. I was curious about the process of the recording process for The Garden. I've read that it was born out of a time in your life when you had to slow down as I think a lot of us had to slow down over the past few years. But I was wondering if you could talk about the process of recording it and maybe the impetus to produce these reimagined versions of previous songs. 

BB: I was on tour in March of 2020, with a string quartet. I've had some of these arrangements for a very long time. Some of the ones that Owen did, for example, come from as far back as 2010 when I did a performance with Symphony, Nova Scotia. He kind of rearranged some of those big symphonic arrangements for the quartet. We were also reworking newer songs for string quartet. 

I was in Europe when the whole shutdown happened with the quartet over there and, and because of that, I thought, after a few months of everybody being in pretty serious lockdown, and after talking with Justin [West] who runs my label, Secret City, and, and just this kind of idea of this dream, he grew up in the jazz world. And I obviously love jazz and I also love country music, where it's pretty common to do lots of versions of a song. From that, I just realized this actually is good cosmic timing in the sense of, well, you can't get a full orchestra together, given the circumstances of 2020, but you can do a pretty safe haven, kind of recording with the quartet. And it was a really magical escape, to be able to do that, when Montreal was at the time was locked down under curfew, and I was expecting my first baby. It was actually a pretty stressful time. I chose the songs that I felt really spoke to the moment I was in and which really felt like they had more to say about the future, even though they were from my past. It was a really beautiful little sanctuary from everything that was going on in the world.

The other thing that I liked about this idea is that it's kind of a revisiting, but it's also a bit of a rebirth. And so when you because every time you're playing with a different orchestra, or even a different band, or a different group when it's live it just happens that the sound is different. Everybody's individual energy and the spirit of the moment creates a different kind of recording. And so when we recorded it, we did it live to tape to kind of preserve that so that it wouldn't be like okay, we're going to make this thing and each, each player is going to play individually.ind of a modern way of recording is that everything is hyper managed, like very, very good  Which is also that's, that's a perfectly fine way of working on a record, it just it wouldn't have had that live feeling wouldn't have that feeling of newness even with some of the older material.

SJL:  I had been wondering that about that because I've spoken to other artists who were recording during the pandemic, and they’ve spoken about how those circumstances affected the way that they approached writing. And so I was wondering if you can speak to anything specific that you learned about the writing process or your approach to playing and recording? Recognizing that you've been working with a lot of these artists for a while now. 

BB: I think it’s just a confirmation of something that I had heard from so many artists that I admire and love. And I could feel it kind of growing in strength over the years, this confirmation that the best thing you can do when you're writing or recording or doing anything creative is to get out of your own head and get out of your own way. Some of the arrangements are older, but we still played with them a little bit in the studio, obviously, and some of the arrangements were brand new, and they were from different people.

So some are written by Owen [Pallett] and some are written by my friend, Paul Suarez, who I had just seen right before we flew home from England in March 2020. He's a brilliant arranger, and he's played in, in my band and he has toured with me for many years whenever I tour in Europe, and he's just a wonderful musician.

And then also, my friend Zou Zou Robidoux, who is an up and coming composer and cellist based in Montreal. She's just a wonderful musician, a wonderful collaborator, and just realizing there is so much in a song that I had written many years ago. A song like “I Was a Daughter” even if I've performed that arrangement, it's still kind of a new arrangement to me, because the only times I've had a chance to perform it would be with a symphony or philharmonic - which is not not that often. And so to be able to revisit that, while I was expecting my daughter, it really was very surreal to realize that these lyrics that I wrote when I was twenty-one are very naive. And I thought I was writing something about naivete, about innocence and youth and now I'm singing it from this perspective years later realizing actually it came from a well deeper than I could have ever realized and all needed to do is get out of my own way to reveal that.

SJL: I had read that you were expecting your daughter while you were working on this and I’m sure I don't have to tell you that the symbolism just abounds in terms of rebirth, renewal and everything else, it works really, really well. And I think it just speaks to how art works. If you force it too much, like you say, then it's going to come out contrived and weird. But it sounds like you just just rolled with it and it was just unfettered creativity working together with friends. 

BB: I didn't plan it that way. It just sort of happened. I also spent a lot of time these last couple years writing and recording new stuff. But I think overthinking it or just just realizing there's a bigger, easier way to like go with the flow. And not to overthink it too much. It just slows everything down if you overthink it. So in terms of the timing of it, or just like you were saying all these kinds of levels of metaphor that were completely unplanned, but just happened that way. Yeah. I just thought, you know what, let's not overthink too much. It's happening the way it's happening. And let's roll with it. 

And I have to say, because of the time that we were in, it was an extremely stressful time for everyone. A lot of grief, a lot of very confusing energy. And so this was kind of the one place where we didn't have to overthink it too much, where we could just go with the flow. We didn't have to try to calculate or think too far ahead or really think at all. And so I think that's why it became like such a respite from everything else that was going on. And maybe the next record won't be like that at all. But I hope I can carry that on to the next time I get into the studio.

SJL: I hope so, too! So you were working on new material as well over the over this time?

BB: Yeah, it's very cool. It was kind of the first time that I got to sit around with a lot of time on my hands. After you've watched every Netflix show in existence, then you're like, “Alright, let's get back to work.”

SJL: Yeah. I feel that. Staring at the screen for far too long and there's nothing new so I better get back to doing something productive! Speaking of which, how's the tour treating you so far?

BB: It has been really, really fun. The shows have been so much fun. And we're playing with different, local, string players, in each venue. So last night in Kingston, we got to play with a violinist from the Kingston symphony, which was so much fun. You get a little bit of this kind of magic energy, where you're wondering “what's the chemistry going to be like tonight?” You revisit that feeling when we first got in the room at the studio with a group of people that hadn't played together before, or that hadn't played in a few months. We kind of have a bit of this fun kinetic energy of like, getting to know somebody, and also at the same time, it just flows. I think that's that spirit of not overthinking too much.

And I think just that spirit of like, each night, having the arrangements come alive in a different way. Like each night’s a little bit of a new bloom on a tree. It's evolving every day, which is really cool.

SJL: That's awesome. Again, with  the floral imagery, right? It never ends! I love it. I noticed you don't have a show for the next few days. Have you had any time to explore Peterborough or do you plan on doing anything in Peterborough during your time here? Or are you taking off ?

BB: After this I'm going to go with my mom and my daughter and we're gonna walk along the water right now. My daughter's 18 months old now, so she really likes to roam around and explore. She gets me close down to the ground, checking out all the little worms and all the little bugs.

SJL: That's amazing. It's a beautiful day to do that. I should probably let you go and spend time with your mom and your daughter!

BB: Well, thanks for making room for me in the paper this week. We’ll see you tonight!