Meaghan Smith played St. Paul's Anglican Church on Saturday, August 20, at 6:30pm. The show was presented by The Guardian. She was joined by Matthew May on keyboards, Austin Nicholson on bass, and Jason Mingo on guitar. That last name is worth noting. Jason is her husband, and he co-wrote a song on her debut record.
The animator with stage fright
Smith started out as an animator in Halifax. She wanted to sing, but the idea of standing in front of a crowd terrified her. So she did the thing that people who are serious about getting over a fear do. She started going to open mics. Deliberately. Repeatedly. She has said it took four years of playing those rooms before she could get through a set without her hands shaking .
While she was doing that, she was also writing and saving money. The result was The Cricket's Orchestra, a self-financed record that she made with producer Les Cooper. They built the sound out of a string quartet, an eight-piece horn section, guitars, upright bass, clarinet, flutes, and an Omnichord. They used Mellotron samples instead of a modern band because they liked the quirky, vintage feel . The record got her signed to Sire Records and released in 2010.
The awards
By the time she got to Charlottetown in August 2011, she had just won two of the biggest awards in Canadian music. In April she took the JUNO for New Artist of the Year . A few days before that she won the ECMA for Pop Recording of the Year for The Cricket's Orchestra . The festival bio mentioned both. It also mentioned the Lilith Fair and the tour with k.d. lang, which by then had become a regular part of her story .
The stage fright was gone. She told NPR around that time that playing in front of a crowd had become her favorite part of the day . That is a long way from sobbing at an open mic.
The sound
Smith calls her style "modern vintage." The festival bio quoted her explaining it: she loves music from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, but she is not interested in just recreating it. She also loves modern music, samples, and electronic elements. So she combined them, working to keep the result sounding organic .
You can hear it on the record. "I Know" sounds like a jazz standard from the 40s, but it is a brand new song. "A Little Love" has Kid Koala scratching records over a string quartet. It should not work. It does. NPR described the album as sounding "both old-fashioned and timeless" .
That night
St. Paul's has the best acoustics of any room the festival uses. A voice like Smith's, with a small band and a string of songs built for close listening, would have filled it easily. A Saturday evening church show, a crowd that had been at the festival all week, a singer who had just won a JUNO. It was the right room, the right night, the right person.
Since then
Smith kept going. She contributed a cover of the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man" to the (500) Days of Summer soundtrack, which is how a lot of people first heard her . She released more music, did more touring, and kept animating on the side. She is still writing, still performing, still one of the most distinctive voices to come out of the East Coast in the last twenty years.
For the current festival, head to the schedule page or the main lineup page. This archive is kept for looking back.