August 20, 2010
Publication title: perthnow.com.au, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Perth
Writer: Jay Hanna
Sarah’s silver lining
SARAH McLachlan is sitting in her kitchen, looking out as the fog settles over her home in Tofino on Vancouver Island.
“I imagine it is summer everywhere in the northern hemisphere, but here it’s foggy and 14C. It’s a cold August,” she says.
But despite her gloomy surrounds, McLachlan is feeling decidedly upbeat. The Canadian songstress admits she is revelling in her return to music following the release of Laws of Illusion, her first studio album in seven years.
“I remember like a month and a half ago I got up onstage for the first show and I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’,” she says. “I felt like a deer in the headlights. It took me three or four shows to stop feeling like an idiot. I was totally rusty, but then I was like, ‘OK. I remember how to do this. This is fun’.”
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The album follows an extended hiatus during which McLachlan concentrated on her two children, eight-year-old India and three-year-old Taja, before going through the heartache of divorce from her husband of 11 years, Ashwin Sood.
Her personal circumstances translate into a deeply moving album featuring songs that speak from the heart. There’s deep sadness, but also, surprisingly, an abundance of hope.
“I really did go through the gamut of emotions, from betrayal and sadness and anger and rage and self-loathing,” McLachlan says of the breakdown of her marriage. “Then there’s reprieves of hope and then despair again and then you start to heal and move forward and pick up the pieces. It took me two years and then I started coming out of the fog and started feeling like I knew where I was going. At that point the songs started coming.
“I’m a big optimist and I’m the person who is trying to find the silver lining in every cloud, so there is a lot of hope on the album. There’s got to be something good that comes from the bad.”
McLachlan has also been kept busy reviving the acclaimed Lilith Fair touring music festival that she and her business partners established in 1997 and ran until 1999. The festival was created to showcase female talent – it featured only female solo artists or female-fronted bands. Profits from the festivals were donated to various charities and in the first three years Lilith raised more than $US10 million.
“Initially we had a three-year plan for Lilith and we put it to bed at the end of the three years,” she says. “We were done with it. It was just such a huge undertaking. All of us went on to have kids and life happened and we got busy and years passed and then a couple of years ago we got back together and we were like, ‘You know, we could do it again. We’re all older. We have a bit more time on our hands’.
“It’s like giving birth – you forget what a hard job it is. Time heals all wounds. You just think, ‘Ah, you know, that would be good – we could do that again’. And what do we do? We revive it in the toughest economic times in a long time. So you live and learn, but we had a great time. Ticket sales were tough – but they were across the board for everybody. We put on a great show and the people who came really loved it and we had a great time.”
In October McLachlan will bring a sample of Lilith Fair to Australia on the A Taste of Lilith tour. The event will feature McLachlan, Court Yard Hounds (two-thirds of the Dixie Chicks) and Kate Miller-Heidke. In Perth the three acts will perform as part of One Movement for Music, by Twilight, a new component of the multifaceted event.
One Movement, by Twilight, will also feature Todd Rundgren’s Robert Johnson tribute, Paul Kelly, Pink Martini, Lil’ Band O’ Gold, Mama Kin and Kadangyan. There are plans to expand the Lilith sampler into a bigger festival with the aim of touring Australia at the end of summer 2011.
Lilith Fair’s US revival was met with enthusiasm from the music community and McLachlan says she is proud they were able to pull together a strong line-up that included the likes of Gossip, Emmylou Harris, Erykah Badu, Sheryl Crow, Suzanne Vega, Tegan & Sara, The Bangles, Missy Higgins and Sia to name just a few of the many artists who played the various festival dates from early July to early August.
“It was incredible,” McLachlan says. “I don’t think I had any idea of how much fun it would be. I’ve been mommy for so long now, to get up onstage with a full band and headline a festival, it was thrilling. It allowed me to let myself go and be an adult and just be a musician. And it was just liberating. This is where my heart is, this is what I am good at, you know. I felt profound joy this summer being up there.”
McLachlan also enjoyed some amazing performances by her fellow musicians. “You know what, I fell in love with Sugarland and I wasn’t that keen on their music beforehand, but they are just the sweetest people ever and I kind of fell in love with them and I fell in love with their music because I fell in love with them,” she says. “And Cat Power was incredible. Just so fragile and it’s like she’s just going to tear in two in any second, but just so beautiful. And Mary J. Blige was incredible – wow, she’s fierce.”
She admits she didn’t have to do too much to convince most artists to sign up for the festival and that many even came to her.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that people never stopped talking about it,” she says, “and most of the artists who were there last time, as soon as they got wind of it, were calling us and saying, ‘Can we be part of it again?’.”
Considering the 11-year gap, there was also a plethora of younger artists who were keen to be part of the tour including 24-year-old star-on-the-rise Janelle Monae and music alumnus Colbie Caillat, who had attended the festival with her music-producer father as a child.
McLachlan’s passion for Lilith Fair means she also has an extensive wish list of artists she would like to see take part – and she sets the bar high.
“Oh, I’ve got a list,” she laughs. “Alicia Keys was first on my list, but of course she is pregnant – we knew that going in. I kind of would have loved to have Lady Gaga, but she was doing her own tour, but she’s just so damn entertaining. And Annie Lennox, but Annie doesn’t like to play live unless she absolutely has to, so it’s probably never going to happen.”
McLachlan admits that part of her motivation for doing the event is to help raise money for the various charities she supports. The proceeds from Lilith Fair have helped fund, among other things, an outreach program in Vancouver that provides music education for inner-city children.
“I couldn’t imagine my life without (music) and kids these days don’t necessarily have the opportunities I had. When budgets are cut, music is the first thing to go in school programs and I think it is so imperative to have something to channel your emotions through.
“It’s tough being a kid these days. I think it’s never been tougher and if you don’t have something to hold on to, something that you are good at, or something that provides a creative outlet, it can be very dangerous. Sports, music, art – these things are all really needed to get kids out of their heads and into something that is positive and emotionally fulfilling.”
