Lauren Mann: a Strange Passion for Sound

Odd future Lauren Mann and Company take new album over land and sea

by Christine Leonard


Lauren Mann & The Fairly Odd Folk
Ship & Anchor Pub  April 10, 2013


There are few things more memorable than those childhood summers spent camping and exploring in the great outdoors. This is especially true for singer-songwriter Lauren Mann and her husband Zoltan Szoges, for whom the past few years have seemed like one extended (and occasionally strange) sleepaway vacation. Having polished off her curatorial collection of songs, Stories from Home, in 2010, Lauren took her partner’s encouragements to heart and set out on a coast-to-coast tour that would become a life-altering adventure.

“It was pretty crazy,” Mann recounts. “When I look back now, I can’t believe we actually did it. It was an incredibly big thing for us to see Canada and meet people from across the country. We teamed up with various transient band members along the road to form an ever-evolving troupe that went all the way to Newfoundland.”

Pages of rhyme continued to accumulate as the kilometres whizzed by, as Mann’s keen eye and quick hand captured her impressions along the way. The finger-snapping folk-pop of her piano keys has always reverberated with colour and joy, but now they also benefit from the grassroots gusto of The Fairly Odd Folk.

Besides initiating her manager-husband in the ways of the keyboard, drums and glockenspiel, Mann has recruited guitarist Josh Akin and another talented married duo, drummer/guitarist Jay Christman and bassist/vocalist Jessica Christman, to fill out her musical retinue. Intensified and electrified, the alt-folk ensemble looks forward to debuting Over Land and Sea, Mann’s latest batch of wildly illustrative campfire tales.

“I’ve been writing the songs on Over Land and Sea for a couple of summers; it’s been a long process,” she says. “Zoltan has remained the visionary behind the music; we are each other’s muses. I was very grateful to be able to take the songs down to Florida to record them with him and work with our wonderful producer Aaron Marsh. The band’s current lineup has been going steady since last fall, and now we’re really comfortable feeding off of each others’ ideas. I’m excited about the future — I feel like we’re honing in on our collective creativity.”

Mann’s passionate observations result in some decidedly fresh and unexpected sounds. Self-discovery by way of exploration is a recurring theme as the pitfalls of love and summits of ecstasy are aptly represented in the alt-folk annals of Over Land and Sea.

“Travelling across Canada and volunteering at summer camps gave me a lot of ideas for the new album. It was really fun just having the option of doing anything we wanted. It opened my eyes to what can happen when you write, dream and imagine,” Mann says. “Finding yourself in a different place every night definitely helps you rediscover who you are and where your priorities lie. It’s cool to find your personal normal within crazy.”

CD release parties abound with the coming of spring and Lauren Mann and The Fairly Odd Folk are poised to bring their piano-based and glockenspiel-enhanced rural-rock mash-ups to patios across the nation. Embarking from their erstwhile headquarters in Brooks, Alberta, Mann and her P.T. Barnum-esque entourage look forward to plying their electro-acoustic craft at Regina’s JUNOFest. Next they’ll dip into the United States for what promises to be a rollicking North American tour.

“It’s kind of funny, but we think of ourselves as one big family on a trip. Musically we’re on the brink of folk, indie and pop. Now that we’re a full band, things are getting tighter and are leaning towards alt-pop with some folky elements. It’s hard to say what the next album will sound like…. I love rock and roll, but I fell into folk quite naturally, so it’ll likely be a hybrid of electric guitar and ukulele.”

Matthew Barber : In Name Only

Barber's misery finds company

Songwriter recruits friends to back him on self-titled album

by Christine Leonard
June 9, 2011

Matthew Barber returns with his six full-length album named, get this, Matthew Barber

We’re all familiar with the saying “misery loves company,” and when it comes to traveling and performing on the open road the pressures and politics of being in a band can often push artists past the point of enjoyment into the realms of a professional private hell. Perhaps that’s why Mississauga’s Matthew Barber has been having such a great time as a footloose and fancy-free soloist on the eastern Canadian folk-rock scene.

“I’ve done the solo thing alongside the band thing my whole career,” the versatile singer-songwriter says. “Solo touring has been a big part of my life for the last six, seven and now eight years. Yeah, I’ve been doing more and more of it recently. I love playing with bands, but the pros and cons don’t always balance out.

“It’s a blast being on the road with friends and the dynamic energy a group can bring to the stage is truly exciting, but it’s also prohibitively expensive. Luckily, I happen to be someone who can play solo and still have that much fun. Plus, the fans who come out to my shows seem to prefer seeing me this way, so I can honestly say I don’t feel like I’m shortchanging them. And, as an added bonus, I actually get to pocket some of the proceeds at the end of the day.”

Bringing it on home in the most immediate sense, the talented multi-instrumentalist opted to record his latest album within a decidedly domestic sanctum. Painstakingly piecing together what amounts to his sixth LP in relative isolation, Barber is pleased to have completed his self-titled 10-track opus just in time for an early June release prior to a cross-Canada run of summer- tour dates with friend Oh Susanna (Suzie Ungerleider).


“This latest record represents a departure in that I usually have whole bands join me in the studio,” Barber explains. “This time I worked on my recordings at home in the basement, recorded all the parts myself and layered them on using a half-inch eight-track analog recorder. I did it my way.”


“Obviously, the songs take a different shape on the road. My approach to the instrumentation is either electric or acoustic guitar or piano; I like to use all three interchangeably, so for live interpretation, it’s just a matter of finding out what works. That’s what I’m busy figuring out at the moment.”

Once again dipping into the wellsprings of his hungry heart, Barber touches on some sentimental favourites for his newest offering. Thumbing through his troubadour’s diary of thought for the perfect poetic inspiration, Barber blends gentle twang-tinged ballads and spirited folk-rock shakers for this warm and woody self-titled release which officially drops on June 7.

A fitting follow-up to last year’s True Believer and the Juno Award-nominated Ghost Notes, Barber’s latest record features 10 fresh yet carefully considered tracks that are immeasurably informed by the musician’s current state of romantic security and bliss; he reminds us of this on the charming cut “Ring Upon Your Finger” with the line, “I’m singing ‘cuz I’m a singer, baby; it’s what I do with my life.” Barber’s slow spiritual swing number, filled with austere and honest vows of fidelity and rootsy harmonica lacing, seems to be destined for alternative trip-down-the-aisle bridal processions everywhere.

“My songs are almost always dealing with something personal,” Barber says. “I tend to write in the first person; the trait of showing my intimate side and what I’ve experienced in life continues on this album. To me, art is about taking that personal grain of inspiration and translating it into something that is more universalized.”

“I want people to feel like they can relate and make sense of the emotions being portrayed. I am in love right now. Of course, it’s easier to write when you’re feeling the blues; art of all varieties goes well with melancholia, but just because I’m in a good place doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and sabotage my life for art.”

“Some people succeed in feeding off of that kind of drama for a while, but it’s a bad trade in the end. I may be a romantic, and I may have even tricked some people into thinking I’m an optimist, but my so-called love songs are all tinged with uncertainty. I like to keep people guessing.”

Matthew Barber performs at Palomino