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Melanie Doane a Multi-Talent on the Marquee
Melanie Doane wants to teach us all a lesson in ambidexterity. And she’s not the only one.
Playing her guitar, bass, piano, mandolin, and, of course, her violin, will all make up part of the Juno Award–winning multi-instrumentalist’s set at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts (55 Mill Street), on November 1 at 4:15 p.m. The gig is just one highlight of the second annual Canwest Cabaret festival going on from October 29 to November 1, where Doane will join more than 150 CanCon luminaries of theatre, dance, and literature on the marquee—among them, jazz and blues fuse Molly Johnson, Tony Award winner Brent Carver, and author/playwright Tomson Highway.
You could call her appearance a favour for longtime friend Albert Schultz, director of the Young Centre and one of the festival’s organizers, but the close-knit atmosphere, combined with the eclectic collection of artists on the bill, appealed to Doane when she played the fest last year, and they are the major reasons she’s coming back.
“I’ll be excited to be playing some new material, and I’ll be playing some of the oldies too,” Doane said during a phone interview shortly after her Sirens of Song tour that swung through Western Canada recently. “I’ve got the kind of show where it is very intimate and I can talk about why I wrote the songs that I wrote. And I get to play a lot of different instruments, which is really fun for me…the idea of the festival was that we have this city full of great actors and musicians—why are we not performing together more often? Are we not creative people who love what we’re doing? So this event is about diversity. It’s got everything.”
Along with the opportunity to reach into her arsenal of instruments, Doane says the show won’t be too far from her Toronto home and family. Raising a six- and eight-year-old has shaped her career logistically and artistically, she notes, adding that her tours aren’t as extensive as they were before motherhood. The kids have fuelled Doane’s creative spirit, however, providing inspiration for 2008 release A Thousand Nights, her first album in five years (fans of CBC primetime show Being Erica may have heard track “Every Little Thing” off of the album once or twice).
“I was working at a pretty frenetic pace, and I just took time off,” she said. “It was really important for me to do that because I have two small kids. People were saying to me, ‘Oh, you must feel so creative and want to write songs about your children.’ And I was like, ‘No I don’t. Who has time? Are you joking? But then I realized that I did have creativity; it was just being used in more practical terms. It’s a luxury to do it, but then be able to come back, do what I love, and find an audience that loves what I do.”
Do expect the new material to be a bit louder than the previous album, says Doane. Planning a release for early next year (no album title yet, but fans can preview prospective single “Back to L.A.”), Doane will return to the edgier sound that brought her Top 40 success and the Juno Award for Best New Artist with 1999’s Adam’s Rib. She has since abandoned major-label support to record on independent Actorboy Records, helmed by her husband, actor-musician Ted Dykstra, and film star Gary Sinise.
“The last one was really a tribute to my kids and other parents; mellow bedtime music,” she said. “But I’m back to rocking it, a bit more reminiscent of what I’ve done before and playing bass, which I love to do live. It’s very exciting to come out of the tunnel of motherhood and still have a lot to say.”
No more big-label profile, to be sure, but Doane is where she wants to be: writing the songs she wants to write and evolving her career on her own terms.
“I’ve had a lot of years now doing it by myself. It’s really gratifying,” she said. “For the most part, I enjoy being in charge of what I’m doing. I don’t have to call someone and ask, ‘Can I do this? Is that okay with you?’ There’s no committee of people who have to figure out whether or not it’s good for your career. It’s all up to me.”
Images courtesy of The Young Centre for The Performing Arts.