Mallory Chipman on Place, Time and a Constellation of Sounds

Last week, I got the chance to speak with Canadian singer songwriter Mallory Chipman ahead of her UK and Ireland tour. We discussed her upcoming gigs, her new EP the time, and what inspires her sound.

How are you feeling about your UK and Ireland tour?

I'm so excited. I live in Canada and being here this time of year is beautiful, it's like a winter wonderland but it's also about minus 20 degrees Celsius all the time, if not colder. I'm really looking forward to an escape to warmer climates and then also getting to share my music overseas is a huge privilege and something that I unfortunately get to do probably only once every couple of years. I love Ireland and the UK. I've played a bit there in the past and there's such a great culture of listening rooms and a really deep love for folk music so it's such a pleasure to return anytime I get the chance.

Do you find it different performing to a Canadian audience compared to a British or Irish audience?

Honestly, every place I've played has quite a different culture of listening. I find that in Ireland and in the UK, there is a really kind of polite listening culture. I also find that in my experience the folks up there have been really keen to sing along, I've had such good sing along experiences. I don't know if that's as a result of the rich history of folk songs or even football chants. One thing I do find is that in Canada and in the States as well, we've kind of lost a bit of the art of group singing within some communities. I toured in Japan a couple years ago and I found the listening culture there to be very different as well. There were lots of folks who would come to see shows on their own, regardless if they had a friend to come with, which I think's a lovely thing. I mean if you have a night off, go see a music event right? You start to observe these different trends and all of them offer something different and special in their own way. I'm hoping I can get some folks singing along this time around too!

Is there a particular song that you're especially excited to play live?

There's some that I'm excited to share in that they are really inspired by Canadian landscapes. I always get excited to be able to share those but further away I am. They are special to share here more in that we all kind of have this point of connection, but I feel like Canada is one of those countries that not a lot of people know a whole lot about. It gets lumped in with the US quite often and it is fairly different so it's nice to be able to share a glimpse into what it is. I think every night will probably play a little bit of a different set list which is also kind of exciting, and the beauty of live music, you know?

How much does where you're from shape you as a musician? Would you say that where you are from and where you grew up is one of the main inspirations for your music?

I would definitely say that place in general has a big part in my writing. I live in a city called Edmonton, which is in the Northern Prairies, but I grew up in the Rocky Mountains. These are two very different kinds of areas of the province I live in: where I live now it's totally flat, and where I lived before it was these towering mountains. I find as a result, it really shaped me, especially at that time living there was a bit unusual. It was a town in a national park and I think gave me a strong sense of what it means to be kind of one of the locals in a place that's constantly being bombarded by tourists, and also that's what is supporting the economy of the town. So at an early age, it made me reflect on what it means to relate to a place and how that shapes us. I've continued holding fast to that ever since then and you'll hear a lot of that in my tunes.

Did you start writing songs and making music from quite a young age then?

I took piano lessons and cello lessons probably from around age five and seven respectively. I never took a private voice lesson or anything like that, I was really playing kind of mostly instrumental music. But as I got older, I started doing a little bit of acting and joined the drama club at my school and started to feel like the stage was somewhere special where I could express myself in different ways and step into a bit of a different energy. That's when I sort of started pondering the idea of being a front person or singing my own songs and writing music. So when I was a teenager I started writing tunes and playing them for people and singing my own songs. All those skills were still worthwhile because I was accompanying myself on piano or whatever. It's one of those things that looking back now it seems so obvious that there was this common thread of music throughout my whole life. It's funny because I think if you asked me in 11th grade or something like that I probably would have told you I'd become an optometrist or something really glad I didn't! 

Were there any specific artists who inspired you to get into the folk genre?

I really love Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez, and some more contemporary folk artists too - I love Rhiannon Giddens. There are so many people within the folk genre. I produce what I write as well and when I'm writing the arrangements for the band or the strings or whatever I find that I'm also drawing on non-folk influences too. I think that's what really makes my sound what it is. It's a little bit of jazz: I grew up listening to a lot of Pat Metheny Group and 80s and 90s jazz. And also rock tunes: my dad was a massive Stones fan and even some 80s like Van Halen and stuff like that. I always kind of loved the loose improvisational nature of jazz with the grit of rock and then really lyric focussed narrative style of folk music. So while it is all distilled through the folk lens, I feel like it's all kind of in there somewhere.

I can definitely hit like a big mix of genres, with the quite powerful electric guitars and also the sax weaving through, I really enjoyed that. Do you think that your latest EP is different from your other previous projects at all? 

I think so. My new EP the time is a six song EP, so it sits at this unique mid-length. It’s the first album in a long time that I've put out that isn't a concept album. I was really writing within these greater themes. Prior to this record, every album I'd put out for the last maybe three albums had been one central idea, and each song was a different limb exploring the theme. As much as I love that and it allows for a lot of depth, I’ve also written songs that didn't have relation to a singular concept and these songs needed a home too. I don't want to hold myself back from recording them just because they aren't part of some greater central idea. I wrote all of these songs within a specific two-year period over the pandemic where I think we were all grappling a lot. We lost so much time to what felt like a bit of a black hole and I wrote a lot of songs where I addressed time passing. In a way, I was trying to make sense of what comes with that: relationships change, people leave your life - whether by choice or maybe they've passed away. 

When I noticed there is still this common thread, I wondered if despite a little bit of variety from song to song in terms of genre and arrangement, there’s enough to still anchor them, and I think it is. It allowed me to just surrender to the variety and the constellation of different sounds. I like that because honestly if I think about it a lot of my favorite records are really diverse in their sonic landscape. When I think about it, David Bowie has records where there was a rock tune, then the next tune was a full orchestra, the next two there's saxophone and I never batted an eye. Sometimes you just need that little push from the musical giants that came before to remember, if they can do it so can I. 

One final question, are there some songs or artists that defined your time as a student?  

I was listening to a lot of Bloc Party, LCD Soundsystem and The Strokes. I was also listening to Edmonton College radio - love college radio!

Mallory will be playing alongside Cassidy Zahar and Maddisun at To the Moon on Friday 23rd January. 

Tune in at 4pm Sunday 18th January on BURST to hear the full interview with Mallory Chipman.