Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland were on the Lonesome Highway radar even before they joined forces and Whitehorse came into being in 2010, a move that made perfect sense for the Canadian husband and wife duo. It was a decision that has yielded eight full-length albums and four EPs. In a particularly creative purple patch during Covid, they recorded three of those full-length records, MODERN LOVE, STRIKE ME DOWN and I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING, the latter due for release in January 2023. Despite the daunting and uncertain times that motivated the new album, it’s possibly their strongest recording to date, combining classic country ballads and 70s’ influenced roots tunes. We spoke recently with Luke and Melissa about the stimulus to record a full-on country album, the writing and recording process for the record, and Luke’s tip for the perfect Bolognese sauce.
I recently read an interview with Jeff Tweedy where he described writing country songs for Wilco’s latest album as being like ‘comfort food.’ Does that resonate with you given the musical direction of I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING?
Luke – I love that metaphor about comfort food, there is something comforting about understanding what the rules of engagement are when writing songs. When it comes to art forms that have a long history, we tend to know the rules. It’s not that they are enforced in a draconian way, but we don’t stray too far, because there is comfort in the writing, just like food. It also liberates you to focus on nuances because some of the big questions are already answered. What’s going to happen next musically? We know what’s going to happen next because it’s country music and we know what comes next. That frees you to focus on other things like the minutiae of the storytelling. Whereas, with us, going back to roots or country music there was comfort in going back to a place where there are guard rails that you are familiar with and that allows you to focus on the minutiae.
Melissa – It definitely gives you a licence to be a little more sentimental and liberating in the song writing. It allows me to be a little sappy without being cheesy, which is not an approach I usually take.
The lyrics are certainly anything but cheesy. When I listen to songs such as Six Feet Away, I think of the lockdown when people could only visit their elderly parents by looking through a window at them from a distance. Was the pandemic the primary influence for much of the album?
Melissa – Yes, you’re absolutely right. We wrote this record during the first six months of the initial lockdown and when, like the whole world, we were in shock at what was happening and how we were all going to move through this. John Prine died from Covid and it was a very intense time, so that is very much the theme of this record. People are probably sick of talking about Covid but there were so many real emotions that still reverberate to this day, we’re still climbing out of it and returning to some kind of normality, still feeling its effects and trying to navigate the future.
I really enjoyed your live streams during that period of lockdown
Melissa – The technical side of it was hilarious as neither of us is good at that. We didn’t have a proper set-up, we’d have the iPhone balanced on a stack of books. We initially set it up wrong so the opening part of our first performance was upside down. I think people were just laughing along with us. It was very telling of that time and place, and what everyone was going through. We had our fancy performance clothes on but had our slippers on off-camera, and our son was bouncing on the couch behind us.
The two previous albums that you released last year, MODERN LOVE and STRIKE ME DOWN, incorporated a range of genres from power pop to rock and indie to disco. What directed you down the country route forI’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING?
Luke – It was almost like an accident. Melissa makes the point about John Prine passing away and that kind of set us off. My recollection is us sequestering ourselves into corners of this not enormous house in Toronto – no one has large houses in Toronto. Melissa had managed to claim the bedroom with the big TV, I was relegated to the kitchen, which made sense because I am a kitchen-pottering type of guy anyway. We are both night owls, but I do tend to stay up later, so we established this routine, because we were locked in our home for so long. We would both put our son to bed, he was staying up late also. I would have a nap for an hour, wake up at midnight, put on a podcast for an hour, maybe open a bottle of wine and listen to country music, artists like John Prine and Kris Kristofferson. It wasn’t deliberate or a conscious thing but for some reason, I just gravitated towards those songs and then started writing songs. All of a sudden, I had a pile of songs.
Melissa - It was a very prolific time for Luke He kept sending me demos of these beautiful country songs that he was writing, so at some point, I said: ‘Ok, I gotta get on it.’ So, I picked up the guitar and started writing some country songs, too. I could see where Luke was going grammatically, very much of the moment and inspired at that time. There are moments with an artist where it just flows and pours out of you, and Luke was in that creative headspace. At that point, I started to write some songs that fitted what he was doing.
Luke - I’m flattered when Melissa says I was prolific. What she really means is that in order to get six good songs I have to write twenty-five. For her to write six great songs, she writes seven.
Were the songs co-writes or written individually?
Melissa – We typically write separately and then edit each other’s work to compile the songs. We co-wrote all the songs from the ground up on the MODERN LOVE record from last year, which was the first time we had ever done that. Otherwise, it’s a solitary and personal process for each of us. We both need to feel connected to the songs, so we are at ease picking and choosing the ones that work, and the bottom line is that we both need to feel good about the song. We’re quite good at not letting our egos get involved. We may need to rework certain songs to get to the place and that’s what we often do.
Tell me about the recording process for I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING?
Luke – We recorded this whole suite of songs off the floor, just like a band would. Melissa would be singing; I would be playing guitar and we had drums and pedal steel. We just played the songs until they sounded right. It was recorded close to home in a studio in Toronto. There’s no percussion added, no piano or keyboards, the production is very much what you would expect from a four-piece band on stage.
Melissa – That was about it and after that, we just put a lot of focus on Luke’s guitar and my vocal. I don’t think we spent as much time on any other record making sure those elements were as good as they could be. It was still very much lockdown mode in Toronto, a pretty intense time and we were getting our temperature taken going into the studio, filling out forms, and wearing masks. It felt very tentative and we really had not done anything up to that point in a studio, literally sitting at home, so actually going into that studio, taking off our masks and picking up our instruments, playing music with other humans, it felt so intense.
Luke - Yes, there was and is a feeling of ‘this might be the last time,’ which might sound fatalistic and apocalyptic, but there was a feeling of needing to savour this. I was playing country licks, drawing from Albert Lee, James Burton or Pete Anderson from Dwight Yoakam’s band. You kind of have to get it right and I spent a lot of time just doing that. We were trying to get closer to the genuine article stylistically. When something has that amount of history it’s important that you pay tribute to the past. As an aside and in a similar way, I made a big pot of Bolognese yesterday. It’s been my fixation since the pandemic and every time I do that, I’m also trying to get closer to the genuine article.
A chef friend of mine gave me a tip passed on to him from an Italian grandmother for Bolognese sauce; never use red wine, always white wine.
Luke – Wow, that’s great. I love that. An Italian friend told me that at the very end, add a clove or two.
What triggered holding back the release date until January 2023?
Luke - We’ve been kicking things around for a while now and we had entire tours planned that we had to cancel and then try to gauge whether audiences are ready to come back to shows again. We made four albums during the pandemic. Our label Six Shooter know that we don’t idle very well and, as you pointed out, there is a combination of a lot of music on MODERN LOVE and STRIKE ME DOWN. Both ourselves and Six Shooter felt it was right to conclude that recording period with those two albums, as it would have been too jarring to put those two records out and follow them with this album. It remains to be seen but if people enjoy this record we may follow it with the covers compilation, and stay in that place musically for a while, we may spend the next few years staying in that lane.
Melissa - Country has always been a part of what we do. If you listen to our first self-titled record, there is a lot of it in there. This may be the first time we have fully stepped into country but, stylistically, there are a lot of roots and Americana right through our catalogue, so it’s not totally out of character with us. It will be interesting to see what people think of it and if it clicks, because it would be nice to stay here for a while. It’s an inspiring headspace to be in, to write songs in this genre and style. Singing and playing a beautiful country ballad is wonderful. We’ve just finished a tour playing a bunch of songs from this album and it did feel very exciting.
You included a couple of killer cover versions of Summer Wine and We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in The Morning in your showcase at Americana Fest earlier this year. Were you tempted to include covers on the album?
Luke – It’s a funny thing about covers. When I was growing up in Winnipeg it was always ‘are you a covers band or are you a real artist?’ I say that tongue in cheek because great artists like Elvis Presley never wrote songs. After I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING comes out and if people seem to enjoy it, we do have the option of releasing a compilation of mid-70s inspired Americana covers that we’ve recorded.
Melissa – It was very intimidating approaching some of those cover songs, because artists like Tammy Wynette and George Jones, Emmylou and Gram were classic voices. Well, maybe not Gram (laughs).
Luke – Gram wasn’t a great singer so can you imagine how emboldening it was for someone in my position? ‘If Gram can sing with Emmylou, I can sing with Melissa and get away with it with my croaking toad of a voice (laughs), and we can get something together as a collective.’ I get a lot of solace from Gram and Emmylou that way.
I remember the last time you both played Ireland at Kilkenny Roots Festival prior to forming Whitehorse. You were telling us how excited you were to visit Kilkenny Castle, given that there were no castles in Canada.
Luke – I remember that well. Actually, I didn’t realise until that weekend that my family roots go back to Kilkenny. I’m Doucet, which is French, but my mother’s side of the family are Ormonde. I learned that the castle in Kilkenny that we visited was previously in the ownership of The Earl of Ormonde, which is an interesting family connection.
Interview by Declan Culliton