Winnipeg singer-songwriter found kindred musical souls in southern town

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This article was published 03/12/2015 (3589 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the small town of Silverhill, Ala., Winnipeg-based blues-folk artist Scott Nolan made some musical magic.

He travelled to the southern spot, which has a population of just barely 700, while on tour with fellow troubadour Mary Gauthier to perform at the Frog Pond at Blue Moon Farm, a “finely curated festival” that’s a kind of outdoor house concert in the vein of Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble Sessions.

It was there he met up with Willie Sugarcapps, a supergroup of musicians — some whom were old friends and others new acquaintances — whose combined musical prowess was enough to lure Nolan back down south to record his new album, the aptly titled Silverhill, with them.

“I see it as, like, a thousand years of ancient musicality when you put the five of them together,” he says, with a degree of reverence in his voice.

The band includes Anthony Crawford, Savanna Lee, Will Kimbrough, Corky Hughes and Grayson Capps, and Nolan cannot speak highly enough of them. He throws out words such as “amazing,” “magical,” “remarkable” and “accomplished” often, which is why he went to Alabama, just songs and guitar in hand, knowing everything would turn out all right.

“I’ve been travelling a lot and it’s been a really interesting year, out of the ordinary for me, and I thought, ‘I wanna make that trip,’ ” says Nolan. “I just took a guitar that belonged to my late road manager, Ernie Blackburn… just took that, no harmonicas, no amps. I was really determined to just occupy one chair.”

In just two days, they laid down the 13 tracks that make up Silverhill. As Nolan describes it, he tried to leave the songs as “raw as I thought was passible.”

“I would walk around to each of their little stations, and I’d lay out a sheet of lyrics and I’d say, ‘Y’know, whatever your process is, I’ll play the song once,’ ” says Nolan. “They had no demos, no charts, and all five of them would do their own process for learning the song as I did it, and then we could cut one to three takes only.”

For many artists, a two-day timeline would be a Herculean task, but Nolan had the opposite experience.

“I felt more free, actually,” he says with a laugh. “With the exception of two songs, the record sequence is how it happened. The first six songs in the first day — and you can hear it in my voice by song six, something’s changed. And then song seven starts back the next day. Strangely, it wasn’t daunting.”

Getting Silverhill finished wasn’t Nolan’s only focus this year — he turned 40 last December, and while he was skeptical of those who warned him it would be a profound experience, it turned out to be exactly that.

After smoking for many years, he decided to quit and, to fill the void, started walking seven kilometres every day, no matter the weather. Almost a year later, he’s still doing it and has found the walks, coupled with his newfound interest in writing poetry (he had two pieces published in online quarterly journal The Puritan this fall), have changed his outlook, not only on his art, but on his life.

“Within the first couple days (of walking), I started writing poetry and my head got clearer. It just seems strangely too good to be true that I’d take these walks and I’d get more writing (done) and of an even higher quality,” says Nolan.

“I’ve smartened up and I’ve realized that it’s not the records I sell or the gigs I do, this is what keeps me alive and healthy in my spirit.”

 

Erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @NireRabel