Photo credit: Jacquelin Justice
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
Generally we fly into an area and rent a van. I’d love to fly less, for environmental reasons, but given the size of this continent, it’s hard to avoid. I used to own a touring vehicle though! My first band, Scrüj MacDuhk, owned a big brown Dodge 15 passenger van and we drove it around North America for three years. We called her Brownie. We put a lot of money into repairs over that time – I remember a particularly traumatic event in downtown Montreal when the transmission blew – but she only cost about two thousand dollars, so when all was said and done we came out ok.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
I travel with a little portable kettle and it is a game-changer. I make oatmeal in the mornings, and I make my tea for the day and put it in a thermos. It’s particularly helpful when I fly in somewhere late and there’s nothing open for dinner or I don’t want to go out in search of food at 10 pm – I travel with little packets of miso soup or noodles and have dinner in my hotel room in five minutes.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
I don’t break strings very often. I just knocked on wood though, because it isn’t fun to break them on stage – and that is usually where they break! Guitar strings are about $15.00 a pack, banjo strings are about the same.
Where do you rehearse?
I usually practice in my living room, or on my front porch. So nothing too crazy to report. I think I would practice more if I had a dedicated space, and I’m currently working on that dream.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
I can’t actually remember what my first song was. I started writing songs around the year 2000 when I bought my brother’s guitar and started teaching myself how to play. One of them was a song called “The Mermaid Lounge”. It was inspired by my first trip down to Louisiana with Scrüj MacDuhk, when we played Festival International de Louisiane. We drove for five days from Vancouver, just to play at that festival. I ate a lot of crawfish and learned how to two-step…it was an epic trip. The chorus is ‘Oh sweet Lafayette, I’ll be back someday, and we’ll go down to the Mermaid Lounge and we’ll dance the night away.’
Describe your first gig.
That is also hazy, because I grew up performing with my family. My first ‘professional’ gig would have been with Scrüj – I think it was a St. Patrick’s Day show at the Legion in Winnipeg. People were smoking in there, and it was really hard on my voice, and I remember thinking ‘I don’t think this is going to work’. Luckily the smoking laws changed soon after that.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
My last day job was at an organic grocery store called ‘Organic Planet’ in Winnipeg. I loved working there. The owner played awesome music in the store. I remember being excited to go to work just so I could hear Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions – this was long before the days of streaming. Also, that’s where I learned how to revive droopy vegetables by cutting their stems and giving them a warm bath, a tip that has served me surprisingly well over the years.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
Well obviously things have changed in that a lot of people stream these days rather than buying physical records, and we all know that the amount of money artists make per stream is minuscule. I think streaming is a great and convenient way for people to be able to listen to music, but the artists should get paid fairly for it from the streaming platforms. That said, The Jennys are lucky enough to make a living from touring, and we have amazing fans, and I feel so grateful to be able to play music for people who listen and support us and who do buy our CDs and records. I don’t know what the next ten years will bring, but I love performing and recording and am very grateful to call it my job. I hope to be able to do it for a long time.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
I wish I had known how important it is not to care too much about what others think. Women receive such harmful messaging early on. I think this is changing for the better – there is a lot more support and discussion around this now. I also wish I had realized that the brain becomes less of a sponge as you get older. I think if I could go back in time I’d take more lessons, and experiment more with different instruments and different styles of music.