The Toronto singer/songwriter recalls the DIY days of her youth and how far she’s come on her new album, Terribly Good.
Skye Wallace comes out with guns a-blazin’ on the title track of her new album, Terribly Good. The song, “Tooth and Nail,” marks the Toronto singer/songwriter’s hardest-rocking effort to date, following three previous albums of moving towards a tougher, grittier sound. I talked to the one-time folkie about the new album, childhood goals and fairy tales. Tour dates below.
Q: At what point in writing the new album did you come up with “Tooth and Nail”?
A: It came later. An album takes so much time and you can really get in your head about it. It’s just a reminder to myself to look at your accomplishments through the eyes of your younger self. It’s easy to lose sight of your progress and all the things you’ve done and fought for to get to where you are now.
Q: Did you have a particular age in mind?
A: I guess I started busking and playing original music when I was about 15 or 16. I was on the Sunshine Coast in BC at that time. It was pretty ballsy, if I do say so myself. I’m pretty proud of myself. If I were in those shoes at that age, kind of late teens, I would be so in shock and awe at the fact that I’m doing music full-time and putting out records and have label support. It’s a cool thing. Touring is cool. Remember to get out of your head and appreciate what’s around you.
Skye Wallace on Neutral Milk Hotel and the Weakerthans
Q: At that age, were you writing down your goals? Were you like Courtney Love with her list, “Make friends with Michael Stipe”?
A: At that age my goal was to play a show in a venue. It’s one of those catch-22 things. To get booked anywhere you need to have played elsewhere. So, I started making my own shows happen. I’d go to this coffee shop all the time and I made friends with people there. And one time I broached the idea of putting on a show there. And I did a tour actually. I was about 19 or 20. I couldn’t drive so I trained and bused across Canada and played wherever I could.
Q: When you were a teen, were you thinking in terms of hard-rock production like this?
A: No. I started out writing folk music. Then I started adding distortion to my acoustic guitar, like a Neutral Milk Hotel thing. Then I was playing with strings, we added cello, and then cello became bass and we added drums and it slowly morphed into this thing. I wanted to feel it in my chest when playing it. The frequency of the rock ‘n’ roll really hit for me. I like the connection you can have with an audience. It’s a frequency that lets people let loose and break down their own walls.
Q: Neutral Milk Hotel seems to come up a lot. They’re like one of the best unknown bands.
A: I feel like so many people know the words to [the 1998 NMH album] In the Aeroplane Over the Sea it’s wild.
Q: What were you listening to in your late teens?
A: A lot of Neil Young, for sure. I was into Death Cab for Cutie. I was into a lot of emo music. I started getting into the Neutral Milk Hotel stuff. The Weakerthans were my big band. It was kind of punk-influenced, with John’s playing in Propagandhi, but there was a storytelling element that really did it for me. It really influenced where my path has gone. And still does. Those Weakerthans records are huge for me still.
Fairy tales in Germany
Q: You’re about to start a tour. Is this a band you’ve been playing with for a long time?
A: Yeah. I’m playing with my five-piece band. We’ve been playing together for awhile. I love them all dearly. I think there are about 19 dates, starting Friday [Oct. 28]. We just got back from Germany and we feel like a well-oiled machine. It’s nice to go into tour feeling like you have space to play and not worry so much about the intricacies of the music.
Q: Were there any landmarks in Germany you wanted to hit?
A: We didn’t have a lot of time. There was a lot of driving. There were a lot of places that I was quite charmed by. This one place we played a festival in, it’s called Flensburg, which is close to the border of Denmark. I hadn’t been that far north in Europe before. It was really beautiful. We went to Marburg in the Black Forest. The Grimm fairy tales were all based in the Black Forest. The guy who initially drew all of the pictures for the fairy tales lived in Marburg and based a lot of the illustrations on places around the city. There’s a tower that people said was the inspiration for the Rapunzel Tower.
Q: What was your favourite fairy tale growing up?
A: I had a weird Scandinavian fairy tale book. I think there was one called “Per Gynt.” I remember there being such wild drawings. I read that one a lot when I was a kid. I do love the dark tones of the Grimm fairy tales.
Skye Wallace Tooth and Nail tour dates
Oct 28 – Orillia, ON – Creative Nomad Studios
Oct 29 – St Joseph’s Island, ON – Richard’s Landing Hall
Nov 1– La Place Rendez Vous, ON – Fort Frances
Nov 2 – Dryden, ON – Unifor Hall
Nov 3 – Winnipeg, MB – West End Cultural Centre
Nov 4 – Saskatoon, SK– Capitol
Nov 5 – Edmonton, AB – Station On Jasper
Nov 9 – Vancouver, BC – Fox Cabaret
Nov 10 – Kelowna, BC – Red Bird Brewing
Nov 11 – Golden, BC – The Rockwater
Nov 12 – Calgary, AB – Dickens
Nov 13 – Regina, SK – The Cure
Nov 17 – St Catharines, ON – Warehouse
Nov 18 – Kingston, ON – Broom Factory
Nov 20 – London, ON – Rum Runners
Nov 24 – Hamilton, ON – Mills Hardware
Nov 25 – Oshawa, ON – Biltmore Theatre
Nov 26 – Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace
Tickets on sale here.