Leaf Rapids is a four-piece band of very talented musicians who are based in Winnipeg, Canada. Over the years, chief songwriter Keri Latimer has crafted superbly structured music and words that represent the unique sound of the group across three albums. The music they make is insightful, inspiring and lovingly layered with a natural grace and elegance. It is also hugely enjoyable and sprinkled with lots of magic dust. Keri is also involved in many other creative projects and Lonesome Highway spent some time with her recently and put these questions to her regarding her career in the music business and the evolution of the band.
Congratulations on the release of your new album VELVET PAINTINGS. Have you been pleased with the response from the media and the public to the new songs?
Thank you! It’s really sweet to hear that something you’ve put much work and love into is resonating with people. The album reviews have been thoughtful and positive, and people have been kind enough to let us know how a certain song maybe comforted them through a tough time, or just to offer encouragement. We even had interest from a couple of labels, so it’s all been super validating and heartwarming.
It’s been five years since the previous release CITIZEN ALIEN and had you been writing during the Covid crisis towards this new release?
Oh boy. I was supposed to be writing during the “Pandy” as my friend likes to call it, but like a lot of folks, my brain and heart were all OVER the place. It got a little dark at times around the ol’ household, with our 2 teenagers ready to spread their wings and taste independence only to be locked down with the very people they are wired to rebel against. I think I used a lot of my creative energy just trying to keep it together, so there wasn’t a lot of poetry. I mean, I tried to write, in fact the song, Starling to a Starling, went through about 14 versions of itself. It just couldn’t land, but it wouldn’t let go either. Thankfully I did finally find my way back to songwriting just in the nick of time.
This time out you co-produced with John Paul Peters. How was that as a new experience?
I can’t say enough good things about JP. He really threw his heart into this project, and kept the whole process inspiring and stress free. He is a wizard in the studio, and can comp tracks, set up a mic, massage your ego and order banh mi sandwiches all at the same time. We had actually booked 2 weeks for tracking and ended up only using 1, since we used a lot of the bed tracks live off the floor. They had such a good relaxed vibe, and the band just seemed to be ‘on.’ A lot of this is due to JP making us feel so comfortable in the studio, which is not always the case. Co-producing with him felt really natural and surprisingly we were able to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. I say surprisingly because we’d often get caught up in conversations about all kinds of things and have to reel ourselves in.
What is your creative process – a little and often, or more like waiting for the spirit to visit you?
A bit of both. I think we all probably have a little gear secretly spinning in the background of our brains, picking up frequencies from the ether, processing, then randomly tossing out little nuggets here and there. The trick is to capture them before they disappear. I have a lot of embarrassing audio clips of melodies with gibberish-temp-lyrics in my iPhone, and texts and scribbles on scraps, which eventually get sifted through when I make the time to write.
Are your songs rooted in personal or observational experience?
I’m having trouble answering this question! I guess I would say both. Most of it is made up, imagining what observations the characters are making, but definitely drawing on personal experiences to keep it real. So, I guess I don’t write songs specifically about my personal experiences, but they are interwoven into the songs for sure.
There is a playfulness in the lyrics of songs such as Fast Romantics and Silver Fillings – they are sprinkled with a gentle sense of fun. I wondered if this was something you were striving towards?
Striving to not strive was kind of the theme of the album. As I mentioned earlier, I was really struggling to find lyrics for the past while, and as the recording deadline loomed (our provincial funding for the album was about to expire) I had to make a conscious effort to just get over myself, and let go of any imagined pressure I was placing on the project. They’re just songs and I have an amazing band, so with them in mind, I reconnected with my love of songwriting. Where it feels more like discovery than creation, and you let the songs go where they will, and try not to get in the way.
In looking back over your career as a songwriter and performer what are the key perspectives that now stay with you?
I think I have always been a slow developer. I didn’t start learning guitar until I was in art college studying graphic design. I didn’t start songwriting in earnest until after college, and I didn’t start understanding how much performing is a give and take experience until recently. I would be so nervous about not screwing up on stage that I wasn’t always aware of the energy coming back. I wish I could go back and point that out to my younger self, but maybe that just comes from experience. It feels much less about me these days, and more about tapping into that beautiful energy with my band and the audience. I have to keep reminding myself of it, though.
In 1996 you released an album with Christine Fellows as a duo, Special Fancy. What was that like as a first experience of the music industry and the release of KING ME?
This was a hugely formative time for me musically, and I was really lucky to be playing music with the calibre of musicians that were in Special Fancy at that early stage in my songwriting trajectory. I kept moving around from city to city back then, looking for my people, I guess. I was completely smitten by Christine’s singing and writing, and still am, she is brilliant. When she suggested we start a band together, I moved to Winnipeg for keeps. She kind of took me under her wing, and Special Fancy was my introduction to the interconnected music community here, which is a beautiful thing that I’m grateful to be a part of.
In 1999 you form the band Nathan and over the next eight years, you release three albums. What are your strongest memories of that time?
The Nathan days feel a bit like a fairy tale. We recorded our first album, STRANGER, in a studio used for teaching audio courses, with a friend who gave us a great deal. We’d go in after work a couple times a week and fool around until we had an album. It landed in the hands of Nettwerk Records who called us up and said they wanted to come to Winnipeg and hear our nerdy little band live. That’s probably the strongest and most cherished memory. We couldn’t believe it, and the show was jam packed with our music community rallying around us in a tizzy. Those were exciting times, as signing with a label was the dream back then. We were super fortunate to catch the tail end of the record label heydays.
Is this a time when you first met your future husband, bass player Devin Latimer?
I had met Devin in the Special Fancy days, but he wasn’t a bass player then. He was and still is a chemistry prof, and had cool scientific looking thingamabobs for a music video we were making at the time. As we spent more time together, he started learning the bass so we could jam. By the time Nathan was forming, he was getting pretty good and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he be a part of the band. My parents would often caution me not to lure him away from his teaching position at the university, which is pretty funny, but it’s so romantic, right?
In 2012 you released a solo album, CROWSFEET & GREYSKULL, and did you see your career at this point going in a new direction, with Nathan starting to slow down activity?
Yes, I think we were all realizing that being a full-time touring musician was not all it was cracked up to be in terms of maintaining good mental health and balance, especially with children. Devin and I were fortunate in that we could tour together and even bring our family with us, but for most musicians, this is not the case, and leaving your loved ones to go on tour is stressful for everyone. Our bandmate Shelley went back to school and got her doctorate in nursing, and is doing incredible things for under-served people in Winnipeg. I was looking for ways to be musical without having to go on the road, and was dabbling a bit with composing for film and television. And since the songwriting bug was still biting, I also thought I’d try my hand at engineering and producing a solo album.
When Nathan decided to break up in 2015, you had won a Juno Award in Canada (2008), in addition to other industry recognition. Can you recall the key pressures that resulted in the decision to part ways?
Devin and I didn’t even attend the Juno Award ceremonies where we won the award because I had just given birth to our second child a few days before. That’s pretty telling in terms of how our lives were changing. In the music world it seems like you work hard and hustle while you’re young and ambitious, and if you’re lucky enough to have finally built a sustainable music career, you’re most likely touring constantly by the age you might be ready to start a family, and something has to be sacrificed. I know so many musicians at this crossroads and it’s tough.
Your label at the time was Nettwerk and had they been supportive of your career to that point?
Nettwerk was really a great label to be on. They gave us creative control, a feeling of legitimacy, and amplified our music in ways we never would have been able to. When we started having babies, it was also the time that labels were struggling and fizzling out, so not a good time for us to be slowing down the machine. It was a mutual parting of ways and I have only good things to say about the experience.
You form Leaf Rapids with Devin and release a debut album as a duo in 2015, LUCKY STARS. It includes a cover of Bowie’s iconic song The Man Who Sold The World. As a song that questions the price of fame, I wondered why you included this choice - was it a reflection on your personal experiences within the music business at that stage?
Oh, I didn’t know that was what that song was about! And even more embarrassingly I initially thought it was a Nirvana song until Devin set me straight. I just have always loved the brilliant lyrics and composition of it, and it feels more relevant than ever during these cut throat times. I love how it’s surreal but you get a sense of the greed and consequential loss without really knowing what it’s about.
CITIZEN ALIEN followed in 2019 and dealt with topics such as the shame of Canada’s Second World War-era Japanese internment camps and the shocking fallout that saw the confiscation of homes and land from innocent people. Where did the ideas for the songs on the album come from?
Most of the songs on this album stem from the stories passed down from Devin’s and my Canadian settler ancestors. Smallpox quarantines, Japanese Internment, sexual harassment by frisky lumberjacks. It’s incredible the challenges they had to endure to survive in this harsh country. I wanted to try to write from their perspectives and document some of the stories in a way that would highlight their love and resilience.
Your maiden name is McTighe which suggests some family roots in Irish/Scottish heritage. Is this the case as I thought that your roots reach back to Japanese immigrant ancestors?
My mom is Japanese and my dad is an Irish/Scottish/British/German/French blend. I’ve only been to Ireland once a long time ago, and I kept seeing versions of my dad everywhere, it was freaky, so there must be a very strong Irish contingent. Apparently the McTighe name originated in Galway, and means poet which is kind of neat. Though from the family stories, I come from a line of crooks and cheats.
I believe that your great grandmother was a mail-order bride who travelled to Canada?
Yes, she was a picture bride who didn’t meet her husband until she emigrated to Canada. She travelled from Kyoto to Victoria, BC as a young woman and began working in a barbershop with her new husband. She was only about 4 feet tall, but incredibly feisty and didn’t take crap from anyone. She really did stab a lumberjack in the leg after being groped while cutting his hair.
I wanted to ask about your current extra-curricular activities. I believe that Devin is a chemist and still works in this field. You are involved in ongoing creative projects, in addition to raising a family, and can I also presume that the other band members have day jobs?
That is a very accurate assumption, as it is a tough slog to make a career of music these days. Devin still teaches chemistry for the U of W, Chris takes on sub-contracting work, Joanna is in high demand for her drum skills so she supports herself with her craft, and I sing backup vocals and compose music for film in my home studio, take part in music workshops and mentoring, and last year I was asked to coordinate an after-school free music program for at-risk youth, which was quite the experience!
Getting paid is increasingly difficult in the music industry. Download platforms and streaming services continue to reduce the revenue flow to original artists. Spotify does help you reach audiences that were never accessible in the past, but the poor rate they pay artists is a basic source of frustration. Where do you stand on this whole debate?
Yeah. Wow. Hmm. That’s kind of a massive question, haha! I can talk myself into seeing how having access to such a huge audience is an incredible opportunity, but you can’t ignore that a few fat cats are reaping the benefits from the blood, sweat and tears of the dreamers, who are not being fairly rewarded. This used to be shocking and now seems par for the course. We’re all chasing an illusion. It seems to me, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but you have to invest in ads leading to your Spotify profile to keep your numbers up, which ends up costing more than what an artist actually makes on the platform. Hopefully the larger profile translates into touring revenue, but that is also an expensive venture. I also wonder what toll it takes on a person to keep feeding the social media monster’s endless hunger for fresh content. It’s really hard to get over yourself and sell yourself at the same time. We actually took our last album off of Spotify in solidarity with Neil Young a few years ago, after hearing about the large sums of money they pay to conspiracy theorist podcasters like Joe Rogan. Then all the festivals we played at who made playlists of the artists weren’t able to include us, and we realized we were just shooting ourselves in the foot. After all this, I still did a happy dance when I saw that Velvet Paintings was almost at 35,000 streams, which is a record for us. I just did the math and that translates to about 140 Canadian loonies.
You are now a four-piece with the addition of both Joanna Miller and Chris Dunn. Does this change the band dynamic from a benevolent dictatorship to more of a democracy?
I love the phrase benevolent dictatorship. Honestly, I think we are all a bit older and have given up on any aspirations to ‘make it’ in the music industry. So, it feels like 4 good friends that have found a nice groove and are genuinely happy to be making music together. I do most of the business stuff, so I guess I am the benevolent dictator! If we make business cards, I’m going to use that, thanks.
But aside from business, I am so in love with my band right now. Joanna Miller is not only a brilliant drummer, singer, songwriter and whistler, but a hilarious and stellar human to boot. The song Night Shift on our new album is the first song she has written, recorded and released. We are massively proud of her, and also gloating a bit selfishly that it is on our record, it’s so good.
Chris Dunn is the real deal. When he plays guitar, you get that he has been in touring bands forever, has experienced the extreme ups and downs that go along with that lifestyle, and has landed in the arms of his true love. My husband Devin is our in-the-pocket and ever-so-sturdy base on the bass, and we lean on him hard because we know he can handle it and look handsome at the same time. We all have a really good chemistry together.
Many bands state that they gain more revenue from touring these days but I’m sure that travelling as four musicians is not cheap, with all the overheads of accommodation, flights, meals etc. How do you make it all pay?
We’ve always considered music as a kind of subsidized travel. Being welcomed into incredibly generous music communities across the world is the kind of payment that means the most to us, though it also means we’re in debt, so I am the wrong person to ask about how to make it pay. I fear that touring musicians may become a thing of the past. We are lucky, because Winnipeg has some of the best arts funding in the country, and a relatively low cost of living, so it’s possible for a musician to own a house and to eek out a living here. Without the album, marketing and tour funding, though? I don’t think we could swing it. Of course, we still dream of breaking even and, dare we say it ... maybe even squirrelling away a few dollars someday.
The songs on the new album concern themselves with many issues of our times but there appears to be an overriding sense of empathy that threads through the songs, especially Starling To A Starling and Paramjit’s Sonnet. Is this the predominant theme - the need for love as our guiding force, even if it can be hard to find in these divided times?
Oh, absolutely. Many people have commented throughout my career on how surprisingly dark my songs are, and yes, I definitely explore that, but hello, the world is dark! For the most part I’ve always tried to highlight the bits of beauty and strength within the bleakness, though, and not just wallow in the mud. I think you’re right though, this last album does tend to follow the threads of love and connection more than ever, and I’m more cognizant of how and what I want to sing for people. I have a song from our last album about a love letter being written from a smallpox quarantine, and then found that I have trouble singing it live, because it’s a total Debbie Downer. Maybe when the world evolves into rainbows and lollipops, I’ll bring that out to remind us of the tough times.
Your vocal has such a warm tone and is a signature sound that highlights the unique sound of Leaf Rapids. Did you take voice lessons as a younger artist and have you changed you approach to singing over the years?
Thank you, one thing I love about the internet is that I don’t have to call up clubs pitching for gigs anymore. Cold calling already made me nervous, but my voice also sounded like a 12-year-old, “Hi, I have this band …” It didn’t go well. Like most musicians I don’t listen to my own music, but I did hear a song on the local campus radio the other day, from an earlier album of ours, and I really noticed how differently I sing now. I will say I like my aging pipes better. I didn’t take voice lessons, but apparently, I never shut up and was always singing as a child. I still find myself experimenting with where in my throat certain tones can be found and I think I’m still trying to figure it out, maybe because our bodies are always changing.
You have been based in Winnipeg for many years now. What is the local community support like for your music?
I was just at the Winnipeg Folk Festival this weekend and was appreciating once again how lucky I am to be a part of this community. It’s a really tight knit and collaborative scene from an artist perspective, and there are many music supporters who you will see at every show, and not just your show, but everyone else’s! It is truly special and I can’t imagine being anywhere else, despite the freezing winters and plethora of mosquitos in the summer.
Are there any plans to bring your music to Europe in the near future?
Funny you should mention that, as the next item on my agenda is applying for a couple of showcases in Ireland and the UK that take place in January, and laying some groundwork for a spring tour in the UK, Germany and Netherlands. It would be so lovely to grow a touring route there and be able to keep coming back.
Any final thoughts that you would like to leave our readers with?
Just a hearty thank you for this interview! I love that your magazine exists when many are falling by the wayside, and I can tell that it comes from a genuine love of music and wanting to connect music to listeners. We appreciate the support, and hope to meet you in January!
Interview by Paul McGee