On learning while you create

After touring extensively opening for acts like Jeff Tweedy, Devendra Banhart, and Men I Trust, Le Ren returned to Canada to record her forthcoming album Don’t Be Funny Without Me. DBFWM is both tender and sharply observant, balancing sincerity with a quiet, self-protective humour.

Can you describe an early music memory that turned your head and made you realize this was something that interested you?

I have two older identical twin sisters who were both learning classical guitar and taking lessons from a phenomenal musician on Bowen Island named Teun Schut, who has sadly since passed away but was a total legend. They were learning “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan and asked if I wanted to sing on it. I said, “Yeah, I’ll give it a shot.”

I was probably nine years old, and I remember being very vain about my voice, thinking, “I sound insanely good…” [Laughs]. There’s a recording of it somewhere, and when I hear it now, I just sound so tiny with my little baby voice.

And right now or in general, can you tell me a little bit about the things that color your creative landscape, specifically things you read?

Last year was a big reading year for me. I finally learned the lesson: don’t read a book you don’t like. I was reading books and it started to feel like I was doing chores, and then I thought, “Who am I doing this for?” Once I started reading things I actually wanted to read, I was ripping through them.

Madeline Miller’s two books were standouts for me: Circe and The Song of Achilles. They really took me where I needed to go. She’s studied Latin and Greek and just really knows her stuff. I loved going back in time with her and taking a peek around.

Right now, I’m reading the biography of Robyn Crawford called A Song For You. Robyn was Whitney Houston’s lover, friend, and coworker. They had a secret relationship, and I’m deep into it right now and am absolutely loving.

All three of those references suit the corners of your mind because you love celebrity secrets and you love historical re-imagining.

It’s true, I do. Those are my special interests.

With writing Don’t Be Funny Without Me, did you find any differences in your approach or differences that felt automatic as we age and change?

Yes, definitely. With my first record, I was writing within the traditional country music form, where the song title is the thesis and the chorus. I found it helpful to have that structure, and I really leaned on it and relied on that way of storytelling.

This record, I was trying to break out of that. I’m thinking of the song “Otherwise, I’m Fine” as an example, which doesn’t have a chorus; it’s all verse. That song was an interesting writing exercise for me because one line leads into another. I wanted to play with different forms, as well as pick up different instruments. I wrote a bit with a keyboard that had a built-in drum beat for this record, which was helpful because I write mostly on acoustic guitar. I also got an electric guitar and played some bar chords for the first time in my life.

Did you start with an intention of wanting to break down a more traditional structure or does that arrive after you’ve been fooling around?

Oh, I love to fool around. I am a fool. I think of my mind as having an arts and crafts room with a pair of jagged scissors, a pile of paper and some paints. I never know what I’m going to use for what, so when I enter that space and am writing a song, I’m like, “I’ve always wanted to use this little piece of ribbon, and now it finally makes sense.”

And does the structure of the song arrive from how you want to tell a story or how you want to structure the music?

I think the story is always at the center of all my songs. No matter what is happening structurally, I’m always asking myself, “What am I trying to say? What is the point of this song?” The structure usually reveals itself from there. If a song doesn’t have a traditional chorus, I need to find another element that can act as an anchor, like a strong narrative. For me, the form of the song is always in service of what I’m trying to communicate.

And jumping off that, you have a very specific vulnerability in your writing where you strike a balance between speaking about yourself and matching it with how you observe sensitivity in others or how you relate to or love others. Not just romantic others, but friendships and your mom. The intentionality in how you approach writing music revolves around who you take care of and who takes care of you–both in the sense of when it works and when it breaks down. Can you speak about how you find a way to write music that tries to encapsulate relationships that have a depth that is complicated to articulate?

I heard this record recently called Life Is People by Bill Fay, which I love. That title resonated so deeply with me because I feel like my version of that would be “Music Is People.” My music is the people in my life and how I see them. I know everyone has such a different way of writing music, but for me, it’s how I process and understand whatever is happening in my life. I think the vulnerability comes afterward, when I’m dissecting what I wrote and realizing who I am, how I see things, and what my flaws are through that process.

There are a couple of songs on this record where I think, “Ooh, that’s not the most flattering version of me that I’m putting forward,” where I can see myself being selfish or delusional. The people I write about are, for the most part, real people in my life, and I feel vulnerable bringing those people into my work without their consent. I write about a friend, I write about an ex-partner, and they don’t really have any say in that. I sometimes feel conflicted about it.

Yes, but I think that there is a shared sense of care for who is being implicated or brought into your work (whether it is you or another person you’re writing about). But this could segue into the next question, which is who you bring in to actually making, recording and performing your music. Can you talk a little bit about your collaborations and the people who you trust to tease out this vulnerability?

For this record, I only worked with people who are really close to me. All of my friends are present in every piece of this release: the videos, the layout, the artwork, everything, but also the recording itself and the people who played on it. There was a point where I felt like I needed the co-sign of an established professional in the industry to make people listen to this record, but I decided not to do that. Instead, I chose to work with people who made me feel like myself.

I’m really glad I made that decision because the recording experience was so life-altering. I don’t want to be dramatic, but that’s genuinely how it felt. It was a really life-affirming experience.

Name names.

We recorded in Mountain Grove, Ontario, at a place called Port William Sound, where I’ve made a couple of records now. It was Halloween, and we went trick-or-treating with my friend’s kid, ate a lot of candy, and drank a lot of wine that Jonas, one of my co-producers, made.

It was a revolving door of my best friends and people who are really close to me: Fez Gielen, Loris Kecaj, Cedric Noel, Raiden Louie, Jonas Bonetta, Caylie Runciman, Ella Korth, Emily Allan, Eliza Niemi, Trent Freeman. Kacy Lee Anderson and Georgia Harmer couldn’t be there in person, but they also contributed to the record.

As a solo artist, I really relish the moments when I get to be surrounded by other musicians.

Go on.

Doing a solo project can feel lonely, and I can feel like such a loser sometimes. I’ve invested so much time and energy into something that is so focused around me, my own image, and my own name, that I can start to feel existential and selfish for having chosen this path.

Fez Gielen, who was at the center of this project for me, always makes everything better. He’s the person I’ve toured with extensively over the last seven years, and I feel like I can go anywhere with him. He plays on every track and makes me feel like I’m part of something bigger. I love songwriting, and I love doing that alone, but I think I’m entering a new phase where I really want a band.

Yeah, I hear you. But isn’t that kind of like Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings?

Yeah, true.

It’s her name but it’s–

It should just be “Le Fez.”

So it was you, Fez Gielen and Jonas Bonetta co-producing? Can you talk about Jonas?

Yes, it was the three of us at the helm. Jonas put so much into this record. He’s such an energizer bunny. Every session I’ve ever been in with him, he brings so much light and care. I just made a record with him and my dad, my dad’s first album, and he gave 130 percent to that project too. He treats every session with the same level of commitment.

He was so invested in creating a good atmosphere that, for the opening and closing tracks, he lit a candle, closed all the blinds, and was very conscientious about how feelings can seep into the actual music and your surroundings.

I feel like that really gets to the heart of the type of artist you are and want to be, in creating of a sense of safety and warmth, both in the studio and in how you perform. What part of the process feels purest: writing alone? Recording in a space you’ve just described? Playing live?

They’re all so different, each stage, and I have favorite moments within each realm, but above anything else, I love playing live, and I feel like that’s the point. Folk music has such a rich history of songs being passed down, and I feel like that exchange is something I’m meant to be a part of. It’s like passing a bucket of water from one person to the next. The world is a terrifying place, and live music is one of the spaces where I still have a lot of hope for the future and the human condition. Gathering and sharing music can be so healing. It feels really good to laugh or cry or just listen with a big group of strangers in the dark.

When I’m playing live, there are so many things going on in my head when I’m on stage: “Am I in tune? What’s the next song? Am I going to forget the lyrics?” But I think the moments when all of those things disappear and I can actually feel present, when I can look somebody in the eyes or see people out there holding each other, swaying, it feels like a conversation.

So how did the concept for this album arrive to you?

The title Don’t Be Funny Without Me was taken from one of the songs on the album. It’s about the end of a romantic relationship and the death of the language that you created with them. Losing humour is so sad to me because it just disappears.

Did starting there get you thinking about humour in other iterations in writing the album?

Humour is a strong rope that I hold with all my people and it’s not something that I’ve talked about in music before. It’s hard to translate humor into music, I find.

Unless you write in a way that’s extraordinarily literal, which I feel like you tow a line between.

I remember doing an interview with somebody after I released my first record, and the person interviewing me said, “Oh, you’re so sad. These songs are so heavy. You’re so serious.” And I was like, “???”

The way I write, or the things I write about, don’t represent every part of my life. When you sit down to journal, you’re probably writing about the things that are weighing on your mind, and I do the same thing with music. I’m asking myself, “What’s bothering me? What’s making me sad? How do I work through this?” I’m rarely writing about spoofs and goofs, but I started thinking about how I could bring humour into my practice and explore it as a point of connection in my relationships.

When I think about the title of the record now, it feels less about one specific relationship and more about the way humour can be a form of love for me.

Tell me about another song on the record.

There’s a song called “Die Inside,” which I thought was a total throwaway. I sang it to my friend Ali, and she was like, “No, you have to keep this,” which was so nice to hear. I think I don’t always know which songs are better than others, so I often go to my friends for perspective.

This song confronted me with a version of myself that I didn’t like. It felt pathetic to talk about being undesirable and not being chosen by someone, and I think it was hard for me to admit that. It was easy to write, but then hard to sing.

The song “I Can’t Make You Love Me” by Bonnie Raitt comes to mind. That was the first time I heard somebody sing about not being chosen in a way that felt so vulnerable and relatable. My song is not on the same level as that in any way, but I think it’s my version of that feeling. The moment when you know something isn’t going to work out with someone, but you’re still holding onto it.

In my songwriting, it’s really easy to fall into the instinct of saying, “Your loss. I could have been the best thing that ever happened to you!!!” But this was the first time I felt like I was being honest about what it feels like when someone doesn’t want you.

Where do you feel the closest to your practice? What does the environment look like?

I feel closest to myself when I’m songwriting in my bed or just alone in my living room. When I’m back home on Bowen Island, my parents play music and have a bunch of people over, and everyone is playing together. I think that’s another moment where I’m like, “Oh, this is the point too.”

My friend Sarah Jane Scouten recently sent me a song she’s working on about playing in a bluegrass band and then having someone ask her to dance. In it, she says something like, “I almost forgot that’s what music is for.” That really resonated with me because when music becomes your job, sometimes you forget to dance to it.

I think this record was also about that realization. It was about going through my twenties, stepping into the music industry, experiencing the highs and lows, and then remembering what I was doing, why I was doing it, and the way I wanted to do it.

I was also going to ask what you believe in, but I think you already answered that too.

I believe in people still listening to music and still caring. Even though it’s really hard on the brain to get gobbled up by the industry and looking at statistics, I believe people actually still do care, and I believe you aren’t always going to see it.

What I have to remember is that when I look at how many monthly listeners I have, I don’t get to see the one person who might love cleaning their house while listening to the record, or someone who might have shared a song with their parent and had it bring them closer. I believe those things are happening because people tell me they happen, and I have to just hold onto that because all the other stuff can be really disheartening.

Maybe you could talk about another hard thing about working in the music industry right now.

An easy thing right now is trusting myself to do what I want to do. I think in the past, I’ve been scared of being really decisive and picky, but it’s getting easier to trust my own taste. It’s still hard to put my blinders on and not compare myself to everyone. I think this industry always pushes you to want more, more, more.

If you sell out one room and it’s the first time you’ve ever sold out a show, your promoters will be like, “Great, now next time we’ll play the bigger room.” You don’t really get a chance to celebrate the little wins along the way.

I think it’s hard to remember that you’re still trying to run a small business. I don’t think I’ve always been the best business person because I didn’t realize that was such a big part of this job, but it is. Accounting is hard for me. Being a brand ambassador is hard for me. Running a merch store every night is hard for me.

Yeah, you have to wear many hats.

My hat collection is getting extremely big.

Tell me about a lyric from the album.

The opening lyric on the record is, “He said a song could love you back,” and then it goes, “So I keep singing his.” That idea, that a song can love you back, came from Jeff Tweedy’s book How to Write One Song, which he gifted me on my 30th birthday after we played a show together. In the book, he wrote something like, “You don’t need this, but I’m happy that you have it.” Turns out I really did need it. I made so many notes throughout that book, but I remember highlighting that one line, and it really resonated with me because I think that’s another thing I’ve learned in making this album: if you put work into your craft, it’s going to hold you for the rest of your life.

That idea bookends the record. At the beginning, it’s about another person. It’s about wanting someone to love you back through music, but by the end, it’s like the music itself is the thing that is caring for me. I feel like that’s also a main theme of this record: the idea that my relationship with music is something I can have forever, and that it will take care of me forever if I take care of it.

So yeah, I think it’s true that a song can love you back. Jeff Tweedy, if you’re reading, you were right.