Toronto synth-pop artist Ralph (also known as Raffaela Weyman) is touring her new album A Good Girl across Canada, and her cooler bags are packed with Tupperwares full of salad and homemade turkey meatballs. An array of audiences awaits her on her journey, and she is working hard to make sure she brings her best to every stage.
Eating healthy, exercising, and taking those little opportunities to relax are Ralph’s keys to success while on tour.
“You know when you’re touring it’s already hard enough because every day you’re in a new city, you’re in a new bedroom,” she says. “It’s nice to have your little comforts that you know keep you on a routine. For me, that’s a huge thing. I think that if you don’t feel good on the inside then you’re not gonna feel good on the outside, and then you’re just not gonna feel good, period. You know, I think it really shows on stage if I’ve had junk food or if I just feel off of my normal routine, so I try to maintain a semblance of how I eat at home, and even working out and just stretching and doing yoga in my room if I can.”
From folk music to synth-pop, Ralph’s style has grown and developed through her musical career, but she has always found it important to be authentic.
“I’ve always felt like if you kind of create a contrived image it does become a bit transparent, and I think it must be hard to kind of keep up, too,” says Ralph. “So I’ve always been very true to who I am. When I was doing folk music, the stuff that I was wearing on stage and in the photos, that was me at the time. Now with this sort of fun glam pop stuff, like, that is me. I wear all that stuff because it’s me. It’s evolved, for sure, but it’s always felt very genuine.”
Early in her musical career, Ralph learned to be grateful for every opportunity to make an impression on an audience, no matter the size.
“When I was younger, I remember being in a band and performing for small audiences,” she says. “I think those experiences are actually super important because they’re humbling. And you realize that you have a choice to either feel bummed that there’s nine people in the audience and do a shitty job on stage, or you go, ‘You know what? I’m gonna play the best fucking show that these nine people have ever seen, and they’re gonna walk away and tell all their friends.’ Now, me and my band will sometimes joke, like, ‘Oh my god, is that show gonna be tonight? Are there gonna be nine people in the audience?’ But you’re kinda ready and you’re okay emotionally if it is a smaller audience and then pleasantly surprised when it’s a huge audience.”
These early lessons that she learned help Ralph to appreciate some of the more extreme experiences of her career.
“I remember we did this show this summer,” she says. “We opened for Charlotte Cardin in Quebec for this festival called FestiVoix and we thought maybe it would be like 500 people, and we get there and it’s like 10,000 people, maybe more, and it was just us and Charlotte that night, and it was so cool. For my drummer and my keys player, it was one of the first shows they did with me, and it was really cool to be like, ‘Okay, here, guys; not every show is gonna be like this but we get to do cool stuff.’ You just never know with shows what you’re gonna get, which makes them exciting and terrifying at the same time.”
Ralph
7:30 pm Thursday, November 29
$10, The Copper Owl
copperowl.ca