A musical marriage

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This article was published 25/05/2017 (3358 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the past few years, Jeremy Eisenhauer and Sheree Plett have been living a life of extremes.

The married duo of roots musicians decided to uproot themselves from metropolitan life in Vancouver in favour of a country lifestyle in the lakeside town of Kaslo, B.C., about an hour north of Nelson. Plett’s mother, who was fighting cancer at the time, made the move with them, but due to over treatment, developed cirrhosis of the liver and died just a few months later. Two weeks after her mother’s passing, Plett gave birth to her and Eisenhauer’s third child, Anna.

It was these drastic life changes that became the driving force behind their new record, The Road We Once Knew, the first project released under the name the Eisenhauers.

“Your physical environment changes everything for you — it’s not just a physical change, it’s an emotional, spiritual change and all those things… we found that once our lives slowed down, we just felt like we had the openness to explore different areas and try something new and try something that’s just more simple,” says Eisenhauer.

“A handful of those songs are lyrics about that process of moving out to the middle of nowhere and feeling that sense of safety and comfort with (Sheree’s) mom around and then losing her mom and all the stuff that came along with that.”

Previously, both Plett and Eisenhauer had bustling solo careers but, while they performed together constantly, the idea of being a formalized duo hadn’t really taken shape until Eisenhauer was loaned a guitar — made by famed Canadian builder William (Grit) Laskin — which he took on their annual Christmas tour. It prompted a more stripped down, bluegrass style performance that resulted in the use of just one microphone between the two singers.

“That tour really kind of opened things up because we found that we could play as a duo but still had that feeling of having to be dynamic and raise and lower our volumes, but it still sounded like one cohesive, full sound, which we were missing when you go from playing as a band to playing as a duo,” Eisenhauer explains.

“It all comes back to that Grit Laskin guitar. After we got back from that tour… it really inspired us to be able to write music together.”

As anyone who works with family knows, collaboration can be difficult at times, but Eisenhauer and Plett figured out a system to keep tempers from flaring up and creative juices flowing.

“Before, most of the time when we would co-write, we would end up getting in some kind of an argument,” Eisenhauer says with a laugh. “When you’re sitting there it’s such a vulnerable thing and if you’re not really careful and gentle with how you correct or suggest or whatever, it can just turn into a fight. But this time, we wouldn’t do a whole song sitting in a room, I would write part of a song and then leave it and Sheree would pick it up and she’d finish it off, but then I’d be able to edit her work on my song.”

Despite the uneven start to their time in Kaslo, the Eisenhauers have grown fond of the little town they now call home. Eisenhauer describes it as “hearty” with a population that is extremely appreciative of music and art.

“It’s so unbelievably unpretentious, which is a breath of fresh air,” he says.

The stunning closer to The Road We Once Knew, Wilderness, is, in a way, an ode to Kaslo — not so much the people, but the actual space itself and the restorative impact the pristine patch of nearby nature had on the couple.

“That song really summed up our whole life, really… we were just having these serious times of depression and darkness as a couple. Usually it’s one or the other person is down but we were both like, ‘What are we doing? What have we done? We’ve moved so far away, why have we done that? We have no support network,’ ” Eisenhauer says.

“That song came out of a realization for us that every time we felt this real sense of sadness we would go for a walk. Kaslo is situated right on the Kootenay Lake… it’s just absolutely stunning. And so that song is about recognizing our connection; basically we had this deep friendship that we found — it sounds so cheesy and I don’t want to sound cheesy — but we found this sort of friendship and relationship with the mountains and the lake going for walks through the woods, that was our support network.

“Every time we were feeling this sense of ‘What have we done? Where have we come? Why did we do all this?’ we would go down and all of our darkness was changed into this sense of total gratitude for being in this place.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel