April 14, 2005
Publication title: Reno Gazette Journal, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: Neil Baron
Ma McLachlan
Singer-songwriter’s No. 1-priority is young daughter.
Sarah McLachlan has never shied away from hard work and she’s not about to start now. But McLachlan, a multi-Grammy Award winner who has sold more than 22 million albums, admits her job isn’t getting any easier.
“We just got back from touring Australia and New Zealand and my little girl’s birthday is tomorrow,” McLachlan said by phone from off Vancouver Island in Canada. “These are my four days of vacation. So we (husband Ashwin Sood and daughter India, 3) came up here to this remote place to hide away for a couple of days before we start the next leg of our tour.”
McLachlan’s current tour, which began last July in Seattle, is her first North American performances in five years. The tour is in support of “Afterglow” McLachlan’s late 2003 release that came five years after her previous studio album, “Mirrorball”.
During that recording hiatus she organized Lilith Fair. Starting in 1997, the all-female tour was one of the highest-grossing tours of that time. The three-year tour featured a star-studded lineup, including the Dixie Chicks, Jewel, the Pretenders, Sheryl Crow, Hole, Bonnie Raitt and Liz Phair.
McLachlan, 37, also rejoiced in the birth of her daughter, India, and mourned the death of her mother. So when she returned with “Afterglow”, which has now sold more than 2 million copies, fans were somewhat surprised by the CD’s slightly somber sound.
The CD doesn’t even have a song about her daughter. But that’s because the experience of being a new mom is still too close to write about, she said. However, it’s almost certain that McLachlan will write in the future about the struggles of balancing a career and motherhood. For now, she’s focusing on the tour, which includes a stop April 20 at the Lawlor Events Center. But India’s never far away.
“Oh yea, she comes everywhere with us,” McLachlan said. “I’m very lucky, my husband is my drummer, so we’ve got a great setup. Thank goodness my little girl is such a road dog.”
Still, McLachlan doesn’t want her daughter living the gypsy life.
“I can see the end of it (the tour later this fall),” she said. “I’m looking forward to the break of just being home because, while India is an incredible traveller, my number-one priority is her well-being and happiness.”
McLachlan, who cancelled two Canadian shows earlier this week because of laryngitis, doesn’t have any further tours booked for the next couple of years.
“Music isn’t the all-important thing now. It used to be what defined me. Now I have a lot of other really important roles, things that define me, with the most important being motherhood. I know I’m not as good a mother on the road as I am when I’m at home. That’s really frustrating to me sometimes. I try to find a balance, but some days it’s very difficult.”
Paradoxically, while McLachlan feels her career encumbers her as a parent, it’s that same career that fills her with the passion she needs to be a good mother.
I still (perform) because I love doing it and I honestly believe that I need to do it for my own happiness and sanity,” she said. “Because it fulfills such a huge part of me emotionally and spiritually.”
“But as I said, every decision is based on how it’s going to affect (India). I went into this with the understanding that if she didn’t take to it or struggled with it, then I wouldn’t be doing it.”
McLachlan said it was her parents who taught her about unconditional love.
“My parents were really encouraging for myself and both my brothers in the arts,” she said. “They (her parents) didn’t have a musical bone between the two of them, although they had an appreciation for it. But we all took guitar lessons and art lessons and I took piano lessons. We lived out in the sticks and they would haul all three of us in the station wagon every weekend to take all these classes. That showed me real dedication to us as children, to really encourage us in our creative side, which I really want to give to India as well.”
McLachlan has often said that music helped her through difficult times as a child. So it saddens her to see art and music education cut from public schools.
“I think that’s going to be devastating to the next generation,” she said. “It’s been proven over and over that art education, music or otherwise, makes children do better overall in school. On top of that, for a child to have no creative outlet is a real travesty. It’s so important for children to be able to create something, whether that’s a collage with paper or looking at a page of music and being able to play it or just being able to strum a guitar and sing a song to themselves. I think there’s such a sense of pride when you reach inside yourself and bring something out that no one else has done.”
Which is what McLachlan tries to do every time she takes the stage.
“I know I’m having a great time when I’m out there,” she said, laughing. “I hope the audience is having one too.”
