From the moment you hit “play” on Frazey Ford’s 2010 solo debut, Obediah, “Firecracker” showcases the Vancouver singer’s unmistakable voice being carried by an acoustic strum and a banjo slowly plucking a soulful melody. Obediah has all of the folk/Americana sounds associated with Ford’s time with The Be Good Tanyas, but it has the listener’s foot tapping as if it were guided by an early-’70s Temptations record. It was clear that she had taken a creative turn, but Ford says that she has always loved that southern soul sound.
“I always played a lot of different stuff,” says Ford. “One of my first bands was an Al Green cover band, back when I was a student living in Nelson. It’s interesting that, after many bands, my career took off in the country, acoustic folk zone. My parents were hippies, so I grew up around the folk thing. But the soul thing has always been there too, it’s just more recently that I’ve put it out as solo material.”
And the world was listening. Ford says that writer and filmmaker Robert Gordon heard her on the radio down in Tennessee and was so moved that he reached out with hopes of bringing her down to Royal Studios in Memphis.
“Basically, this guy looked me up and emailed me,” says Ford. “He had heard a song of mine on the radio down in Memphis. He knew those guys [at Royal Studios], and knew they were still active. He asked me out of the blue if I was interested in working with them. I had always been obsessed with [the Royal Studios’ session musicians band] and everything they played. It was just a bizarre sort of miracle to me that someone who knew them eventually reached out to me.”
The Royal Studios’ session band played on most of Al Green’s recordings; Ford says that playing with her heroes was actually really scary at first.
“You never really expect your dreams to come true,” says Ford. “In the moment I was quite intimidated to direct them, and then eventually I got nervous about how to make a soul record. I had to just let go and write the way I write. It was a real journey. Sometimes the press reported it like we walked into the room and just started recording, but there was a long process and a journey to figure out what that sound was going to be.”
The result was Ford’s critically acclaimed album Indian Ocean, which had her headlining shows across North America, Europe, and Australia. Now, Ford is coming back to Victoria to promote her latest album, U Kin B the Sun.
“The last album was so lush and layered that it was a beautiful experience,” says Ford. “I loved Indian Ocean, and I loved that sound, so I could go and make that album again, but I already did that, so I figured I’d see where else I can go now. We just explored with how groovy we could be with the simplest instrumentation. In the studio we wanted to keep the jam vibe, which was both funky and acoustic.”
There is a quality to Ford’s songs that seems to speak universally to her listeners.
“Someone recently pointed out that there is something about reckoning in my songs,” she says. “It’s like I’m trying to make peace with something. Like something difficult has happened between me and the subject and through the writing of the song I’m sort of making sense of it myself.”
Ford says that she never aims to write about anything in particular, adding that she just starts playing and follows her intuition.
“I don’t often set out to tell a story,” says Ford. “It’s about a feeling until I weave a story in around it. There is a story that wants to be told and I’m trying to figure out what it is.”
Frazey Ford
8 pm Thursday, March 5
$26.50, Capital Ballroom
thecapitalballroom.com