I’ve been warned in the past not to scoff at voodoo, and so I approached The Jessica Stuart Few with gentle steps.
Stuart has toured Australia before – indeed, she has developed a true affinity for the place – and she seems like a lovely person. But prior to our originally scheduled conversation, the Canadian artist completely lost her voice. Last time I spoke with a singer who had recovered from a lost voice, I lost my own voice the very next day. Still, Stuart assures me her black magic skills are negligible.
“It was the very first time I ever lost my voice,” she chuckles. “I’m in a position that many other independent artists are in, where I’m doing a lot of the business side of my profession as well. So I’ve been burning the candle at both ends, to be honest, leading up to this tour. In Asia we have people who take care of the whole hard thing, but most English-speaking countries I do it, and that’s probably part of why I lost my voice. Part of the reason as well is that I had a two-set gig in a loud venue last Saturday night, and that’s what blasted it out. I gave it my all! I had a great time, but turns out that was all there was, there was nothing left afterwards. I got home and muttered some things in baritone, and woke up totally silent.”
Her Asian observation might seem an odd aside, until you watch Stuart play. Having spent a year in rural Japan as a youngster, and with her mother considered a master of the instrument, Stuart is renowned for playing the koto. Japan’s national instrument is a huge and beautiful stringed device, the length of an average person and shaped like the tooth of some unlikely wooden shark.
“The koto is tuned to a scale, as opposed to a guitar where if you strum the strings without putting your fingers down anywhere, it doesn’t really sound like anything in particular,” Stuart explains. “No matter how you strum it, the koto will sound good. But there aren’t that many koto players around, and there’s no-one writing original music for koto in a non-traditional style. There is a kind of wonderment, this magic sound to it – I don’t know how better to explain it. The koto has a kind of mystery about it, and it inspires me in a different way than playing the guitar does.”
For the release of her latest album, The Passage, Stuart is about to undertake a comprehensive tour of Australia. It’s a lifestyle she has always been drawn to, and one that directly translates back home, once she finally settles down and returns to the serious business of being an undefeated champion of Boggle (and yes, she is open to challengers).
“I’m a travelling soul and grew up in a travelling family. I mean, we weren’t nomadic or gypsy in any way, [but] to be honest, when I’m in one place for too long, I start to feel stagnant. It’s not that Toronto lacks creative and exciting things, it’s more that you start looking at them in the same way. When you’re travelling, your eyes are opened a little wider. I think a little of that goes away when you’re living in a place for a long time. So when you do travel, that sparks up again, and I always find when I get back from travelling I enjoy home more. I’ll notice more things about it. So I do love being on the road. I love seeing new things, meeting new people.”
The Passage is out now independently and The Jessica Stuart Fewplay at Foundry616 on Monday March 14.
