Embracing her own story
Hamilton is still in Terra Lightfoot’s veins and deeply embedded in her music career, even though she now shares a home with husband Jon Auer in cottage country. Her sixth studio album, Home Front, came out Oct. 17.
Everything on the home front for Terra Lightfoot is just fine.
The JUNO-nominated roots-rock singer-songwriter, a crucial member of the Hamilton music community for the past 17 years, is now readying the release of Home Front, her sixth studio album and follow-up to 2023’s Healing Power.
It is set to come out on local label Sonic Unyon Records on Oct. 17, and, a day after a show at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Lightfoot sat down with HAMILTON CITY Magazine over coffee on King William Street to discuss the new record in depth.
Lightfoot revealed that this was the first interview she has given to discuss Home Front, and the enthusiasm with which she tackled the topic reflected her justified pride in it. The album title is fitting, for it is a collection of songs rooted in Lightfoot’s life. “It is my story or the stories of my friends,” she explains. “It is like a family record, a history book of all the people I love.”
The title also reflects the fact that the record was recorded in the house in Ontario cottage country (near Haliburton) Lightfoot now shares with her husband, noted American musician, songwriter and recording engineer Jon Auer.
“The house felt magical as soon as we saw it, like it was made for us, a place for our love to grow … and we now consider it a gift from a stranger, our fortress of love, a safe place to retreat to and make music in. The name Home Front represents all of that for me,” says Lightfoot.
The rustic recording locale helped shape the sound and ambience of Home Front, an album reflecting a dramatically different side of Lightfoot’s multi-faceted musical personality. Via her previous albums and a strong work and touring ethic, Lightfoot has earned a JUNO nomination, critical acclaim, peer respect and a national audience as a triple threat: a powerful and soulful vocalist, a full-blooded and fluent guitarist, and a lyrically eloquent songwriter.
Her style has always been eclectic and hard to define, but is oft-placed in the roots-rock camp. That tag does not apply to Home Front, which Lightfoot calls “my acoustic album.” Her rack of electric guitars was temporarily placed in storage for this new collection of songs built around Lightfoot’s crisp and resonant acoustic guitar stylings (she plays classical guitar on two cuts) and recorded in a spontaneous and stripped-down fashion.
Fiddle, piano, trumpet, strings and background vocals are inserted judiciously into some of the songs, but the core template of acoustic guitar and voice holds court on Home Front.
Lightfoot explains that this approach emerged organically. “We started out with sessions at (Blue Rodeo guitarist) Jimmy Bowskill’s place. We spent a weekend there, with two drummers, working through all the songs we had.” Some songs suited a stripped-down approach.
“That is something I hadn’t really done. Before, I was literally doing a rock band with two drummers thing, full on, but the luck of the draw in marrying Jon Auer is that he has also been a recording engineer and mixer since he was a teenager. Then it just made a lot of sense to do a record at home, and Jon was into the idea.”
Lightfoot notes that “I’ve always had lots of songs in my career that could be presented this (stripped-down) way, so this was a good holding space for all that music, and some new tunes, too.”
Thanks to a mobile recording setup installed by James McKenty (Greg Keelor, Natalie MacMaster), sessions in the Lightfoot/Auer home went smoothly, with the married couple sharing production duties.
Lightfoot is no slouch in the studio, having produced records for other artists, but this was her first production experience on an album of her own. Auer has a wealth of studio experience, having worked in acclaimed U.S. rock group The Posies, releasing solo albums and, since 1993, being a key member in the reformed Big Star, the cult favourite band that initially featured the late Alex Chilton.
The home recording experience was one in which Lightfoot thrived. “Jon and I would be sitting in our house in the country, having dinner together, and then we’d pull the piano out from the wall, set up a few microphones and try to track everything live. A lot of the vocals are live and one take. I’ve often done more processing in the past, using editing and studio magic, but I specifically tried to stay away from that here. Jon would go, ‘Do you want to massage this?,’ and I’d go, ‘No, just leave it as it is.’”
Lightfoot explains that “the first and last songs you hear on Home Front, ‘A Good Sign’ and ‘Hummingbirds Hum,’ were tracked one night, live with one microphone, when I went out to our back porch with a view of the pond.”
Three songs emerged from Bowskill’s studio, with the remainder recorded at Lightfoot’s home. “In this day and age it is a great luxury to set up in your own space and with your own energy,” she says. ”There is also a sound to our house that is very special. It is a very peaceful place and I think that is captured on the record. The way I have changed since I’ve moved to that house is also really big. Looking out from the porch to this body of water does something to you.”
The Waterdown-raised Lightfoot calls the decision to move from her beloved Hamilton to cottage country five years ago “a measure to combat Hamilton housing prices,” but she has found this new locale creatively inspiring.
“Our house was a hunting camp in the 1960s, and it was bought in the ’80s by an artist. He painted murals on the wall and did massive renovations, including building a granite fireplace that looks like it is from the 1800s. It is such a cool vibe there.”
The 11-song collection that is Home Front is a mix of new and old material. One cut, “Sleepyhead,” was released by Lightfoot back in 2022 and covered by Sarah Blackwood, of Walk Off The Earth, but is given a stripped-down treatment here.
Two drastically different covers here will likely grab attention. The Joni Mitchell classic “A Case Of You” thrives in this setting, and, as a love letter to Canada, it is highly timely in this fraught era.
The other cover is “Red,” the bona fide Canadian indie rock classic first released by Treble Charger back in 1994, and there’s a cool Hamilton backstory to Lightfoot’s version. “I loved and absorbed that song as a young person,” she recalls. “I later played very briefly in the (Hamilton rock band) Don Vail, and Treble Charger’s Bill Priddle (writer of ‘Red’) was also in that circle, and we became friends. Every summer we’d have a big party with everyone singing cover songs together. Bill would always sing ‘Red’ and everybody would just melt.”
Priddle now lives in Sault Ste. Marie, and when Lightfoot performed at a festival there last year, she lured him back onstage. “Along with Daniel Romano and The Trews, we all did ‘Red’ with Bill. I told Dan after I loved that song as a kid, and he goes ‘me too.’ It was a shared Canadian heritage moment.”
The Home Front version of the classic is a compellingly fresh take. “Jon said, ‘I think we should do that song country-style with a violin playing the guitar line,’” says Lightfoot. “Anne Lindsay (Jim Cuddy Band) played fiddle, (blues star) Steve Marriner is on harmonica, and Bill Priddle sent us his vocal contribution. He loves our version.”
Lightfoot’s original tunes on Home Front are equally strong. “The Queen of Trout Lake” tells the story of her grandparents’ move to North Bay, while “Yours Forever” tackles the theme of domestic violence in a way that is both poignant and empowering.
Though no longer a Hamilton resident, Lightfoot remains full of love for this city and grateful for its impact on her life and career. When this scribe suggests that perhaps you can take the girl out of Hamilton, but not Hamilton out of the girl, she responds passionately.
“Absolutely. That is so true. So many cities I’ve gone to are trying to be something else. Hamilton just knows what it is. Hamilton for me means saying what you mean all the time, even if it’s not appropriate. It means being able to laugh at your own self and we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We don’t really care who’s in the room with us, everyone is on the same level. There’s a tough friendliness that goes around here.”
Her musical career remains deeply rooted in Hamilton, via her long connection to Sonic Unyon Records. She signed to that prestigious independent label early in her career (all her albums are out on that imprint), and is managed by Wayne Petti at Sonic Unyon Management.
Lightfoot explains that she and Sonic Unyon head Tim Potocic “are friends first and our business stuff is based on that. I feel we have a great understanding of each other and it has meant the world to me to be with Tim for this long.”
She jokingly recalls that when Potocic signed the young Lightfoot “I was playing in about 10 different projects. He said, ‘We can’t manage you when you’re playing in just about every single band in town. You have to quit a couple.’ I just loved playing music with as many people as I could.”
One of those bands was the Dinner Belles, something of a local “supergroup” that also featured Brad Germain (Golden Feather), Brandon Bliss (Monster Truck), Greg Brisco, and Scott Bell. Lightfoot recalls that group with great fondness, noting that “one Hamilton moment I’ll never forget was when Gordie Lewis of Teenage Head came to practise with the Dinner Belles for a gig and the only space at the Corktown house I was living in was my huge bedroom.”
That clichéd phrase “paying your dues” certainly has applied to Lightfoot. All those years of hard work playing bars in and around Hamilton in many different musical settings proved invaluable, allowing her to hone her chops while connecting with established local stars who lent support and wise advice.
Lightfoot singles out the likes of Rita Chiarelli, Lori Yates, Daniel Lanois and Tom Wilson, along with “honorary Hamiltonian” Colin Linden, in this regard.
“Since we played Harvest Picnic almost 15 years ago, Daniel has been so supportive,” she says. ”He’s an inspiring cat and I learned a lot about leading a band from him. He and I toured with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings a little while back, and getting to play Dan songs with Blackie backing and me playing guitar was very fun.”
Another Hamilton believer in Lightfoot’s talent from early on was concert promoter and This Ain’t Hollywood co-owner Lou Molinaro. “The very first time I ever booked Terra was in 2008, when she was just starting to do shows on her own,” he recalls.
“I had a show booked at a bar called Pepper Jack's on King William. Chris Houston and Gordie were going to play as a duo as openers, but Gordie was too upset over the death of Frankie Venom the week before to do it. My friend Ken Inouye managed Pepper Jack’s and he reached out to Terra, who agreed to do the show with a couple of hours' notice. The headliner was (English prog rocker) Peter Hammill, of Van Der Graff Generator fame. What really freaked me out was that Terra actually knew of Peter Hammill. She killed it up there and that was the beginning of my working relationship with Terra.”
Lightfoot has a vivid memory of that show, telling HCM it was something of a watershed moment. “It happened on the day that my grandmother on my mother’s side died. She played piano and trained to be a professional musician. She was so supportive of me and I know she’d have wanted me to play that show. I think that was a big day, as I became aware of my ability to perform, no matter what.”
Molinaro says he knew Lightfoot was going to do well.
“You know when someone has it? She left tire tracks on most of the local talent. Terra was always super kind to This Ain't Hollywood, name dropping us in interviews,and playing our room a bunch of times.”
In 2010, at the legendary James North venue (now home to steakhouse Le Tambour), Lightfoot shared a bill with Frank Black, frontman of The Pixies, and that was one of his favourite This Ain’t Hollywood moments, says Molinaro.
The substantial peer respect that Lightfoot has earned is reflected in the fact that she has opened tours for such major Canadian stars as Bruce Cockburn, Colin James, Blue Rodeo and Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. She has been termed a “musicians’ musician,” which is sometimes code to describe an artist worthy of greater commercial success.
That is certainly Lightfoot’s current situation, but she does not lust after fame and fortune. “I just want to make great music,” she declares. “It is a great privilege to do what I do and I don’t take that for granted for a second. I get to live a life that makes me happy.”
