Caroline Wiles: Just being herself

The Ancaster singer-songwriter has just released her sixth album, Just Be You, but don’t ask her what genre it is. HINT: It’s a bit of everything. 

Just Be You, the sixth album by Ancaster-based folk-pop singer-songwriter Caroline Wiles, was released on April 24, and it is another impressive addition to a discography that has earned her award nominations and wins, honours in songwriting competitions, and praise from Canadian songwriting icon Gordon Lightfoot.

To learn more about Wiles and her new record, HCM recently trekked to her home for an extensive interview. There, we learned that she is reluctant to stylistically define her work. “All the songs on my record are in different styles. I hate when people ask what ‘style is your music?’” she stresses. “‘Just Be You’ is R&B, ‘Crush On You’ is poppy, there are folkie songs, ‘Cherry Blossoms’ is kinda Canadiana bluesy. I just say ‘singer-songwriter.’”

Whereas many solo folk-oriented artists rely on a sparse guitar and voice mandate, Wiles makes use of full and varied instrumentation on her albums. Thanks to the recording and instrumental prowess of her partner and key collaborator Bob Doidge, a veteran producer, musician, and former owner of the acclaimed Grant Avenue recording studio, varied textures and tones on her material increase their listenability.

The multi-talented Doidge has a large arsenal of instruments in the couple’s Ancaster home, and they were put to good use on Just Be You. He is credited with contributing bass, acoustic guitar, keyboards, drum programming, percussion, dobro, cello, accordion, and backup vocals on the album, as well as handling all the recording and mixing duties, and co-producing with Wiles. Doidge also took the striking album image featuring Wiles with a photogenic, 1,000-year-old tree on the Bruce Trail.

Complementing Wiles’ pure vocals on the new record are her fluent acoustic guitar stylings, influenced by the open tunings of Joni Mitchell on a couple of songs, “Sweet Marie” and “Crush On You.”

Others assisting on the record include B3 organist Vince Rinaldo, mandolinist/guitarist Mike McCurlie (he performs locally in the trio McCurlie, Doidge and Wiles), and Toronto guitar ace Bill Bell (Tom Cochrane), and they were all onstage with Wiles and Doidge at the album launch of Just Be You at Shawn & Ed Brewing in Dundas in late April.

Wiles and Doidge connected with Bell at a celebration of life concert for Lightfoot in May 2024, leading to Bell contributing to five songs on Just Be You. “He’s a great player and also a very nice man,” praises Wiles. “I love the song ’Kaleidoscope’ and Bill’s really atmospheric guitar on it. Bob played bongos on it, so even though it’s a calm song, it makes you want to move.”

All of Wiles’ albums have been recorded by Doidge, a man who has played a huge role in Hamilton music at Grant Avenue Studio, which he co-founded with brothers Daniel and Bob Lanois in 1976. He  then assumed full ownership from 1985 until selling it in 2023.

He now records in the basement studio he has set up in the home he shares with Wiles. Doidge showed HCM his recently acquired TASCAM 24, a 24-track digital recorder that was used to record Just Be You. “We recorded all of Caroline’s earlier albums at Grant, but this time we wanted to do something totally different, that didn’t feel like the control room I used for 37 years,” he explains. Wiles notes that having the luxury of recording at home meant that “we did it in a really leisurely fashion. If it was a shitty weather day, we’d say, ‘Let’s go do a song!’”

Wiles has always featured predominantly original compositions on her albums, but Just Be You features one cover and two co-written tunes. The cover is a tune by Hamilton friend John Lewis. “He came over here 18 months ago and played us some demos,” says Wiles. “I loved ‘Blind Faith,’ a song that was different from one I’d have written and one that reminded me of Traveling Wilburys.” 

One co-composition, “Wondering,” was written with Karen Thornton, a local jazz singer-songwriter, and “The Wild And Free” is a co-write with Viviane Briand.

“Viviane is a childhood friend, living in Quebec, but we’d been out of touch since I was 12. She recently shared a poem she wrote for her deceased brother, who I had known and liked very much, and I found it very touching. I asked her if I could make some format changes and turn her words into a song, and I’m really happy with the result. It’s a true but very sad story about her brother, a drug addict murdered, possibly by drug dealers, at only 25.”

Wiles observes that the personal stories of others often fuels her own emotionally eloquent songwriting. ”I love writing songs for people I know, like ‘Sweet Marie,’ written for a friend who was going through a hard time. ‘Just Be You’ is written for my 17-year-old daughter,” she says.

“I think having a song written about you is quite special. If I write for somebody, it just makes me feel good ’cause it makes them feel good. That is a payoff right away. You don’t want to write love songs all the time, especially after you’ve made a few albums, so their stories provide good subject matter.”

Releasing six full-length solo albums is an impressive feat given that music has long needed to take a back seat. “I’ve raised a family of three children and worked as a dental hygienist, but I never really gave music up,” she notes. “I’m just so glad I stuck with it. It shows you can have another career and still be a good songwriter.”

Wiles started singing professionally in an Ottawa band at age 17. They did covers of popular rock and dance songs, worked with an agent, and booked lots of gigs.

After that band split, she moved to Toronto and studied songwriting seriously. “I learned a lot at SAC (Songwriters Association of Canada) workshops and from books on songwriting, especially by Sheila Davis,” Wiles says. “Songwriting is my favourite thing to do, as it is like therapy and it is fun to be creative. I don’t actually love performing, which I do because if I don’t, who is going to hear my songs?”

She earned a positive response to her first two albums, 2000’s Caroline Wiles and 2006’s I’d Like To Know, earning a Songs from the Heart Award from the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals for her amusing song “Little Boobs,” and gaining honourable mentions for the songs “Taken,” “I Believe,” “The Man That I Love,” and “The One” from the prestigious Billboard, John Lennon, and Unisong songwriting competitions.

After a decade-long hiatus, she returned with Lovers Lane in 2016, earning nominations for Best Female Artist and Best Contemporary Folk Recording at the Hamilton Music Awards. But for Wiles, the best recognition of her talent came from Lightfoot, her songwriting hero and Canada’s treasure.

The conduit there was Doidge, who had a long and prolific relationship with Lightfoot as his producer and recording engineer. Doidge tells HCM  that “six months before Gord passed, I sent him Caroline's fifth CD [2021’s Grateful] as one of the songs was [Lightfoot classic] ‘Talking in Your Sleep’ and I wanted his approval.”

Wiles adds that “Gord listened to the entire CD and made notes on the songs, praising the lyrics and material. I felt so validated by that: Gord thinks I’m a good songwriter!”

When a star-studded lineup was put together for the Lightfoot tribute concert at Massey Hall, Wiles was the first artist invited to perform. Doidge notes that “I recorded Gord 26 times in that building but I never performed there until that night, in Caroline’s band. What a buzz.”

This was also a career highlight for Wiles. 

“After that, it was like, ’OK I can die happy now,’” she recalls with a laugh. “Bob and I were the first performers on, doing Gord’s ‘Talking In Your Sleep.’ I was nervous as hell. I took deep breaths, so the song was really slow, but we didn’t screw up.”