Belle Plaine processes malice, mercy and other emotions on latest album
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:00:27 +0000
When: Nov. 25
Where: The Heatley, 696 E. Hastings St.
Tickets and info: By donation ($20 suggested), facebook.com/events/the-heatley
Malice, Mercy, Grief, and Wrath, the third album from Belle Plaine (a.k.a. Melanie Hankewich), mixes fun, sassy country (Is It Cheating, with guest vocals from fellow Saskatchewan native Colter Wall), lush Americana (Golden Ring), and tender balladry (Radio Dreams).
Postmedia News talked to the singer/songwriter about growing up in small-town Saskatchewan, going to school in Edmonton, and writing about family. (Along with the Heatley, Hankewich’s Belle Plaine quartet also plays a Lions Bay House Concert on Nov. 23, $35-50, and the Tractorgrease Café in Chilliwack on Nov 24, $15, both at eventbrite.ca)
Q: Do you still live in Fosston, Saskatchewan (population 45)?
A: (laughs) I moved out of Fosston quite awhile ago now. I live in Regina, about three hours away from where I grew up. But I still go back around that way fairly often. The farm that I grew up on was outside of town, and when I was 13 we moved into town, Rose Valley.
Q: So Regina seemed like the big city to you?
A: No it didn’t. I went to Edmonton right after school. I always wanted to live somewhere more urban. Though I do appreciate now what growing up in that kind of community was able to give me, like a sense of independence and autonomy.
Q: Was country music something you naturally gravitated toward? Did you rebel against it?
A: My parents listened to a lot of country music when I was a kid. The first voice I remember singing along to is Dolly Parton’s on Islands in the Stream. I don’t think I was even totally verbal at that point, it was just making the sounds. And I listened to a lot of Marty Stuart, Randy Travis, Dolly, Reba McIntyre. That was kind of my parents’ flavour of things. Then in junior high and high school I discovered Tori Amos and Radiohead and Sarah McLachlan, and was figuring out what I liked. In Edmonton I went to jazz school, and that kind of blew everything wide open.
Q: How many years after you finished school did you release your first record, Notes From a Waitress?
A: I finished in 2000 and my first record came out in 2011. After I finished art school I didn’t want to go into arts. I moved around the West Coast, I moved to Australia, I moved back to Saskatchewan, then I got a job in the arts as a lighting technician. It was a real struggle for me to admit this was something I wanted to do. It was just a fear of it. By the time the record came out I’d been performing for about two years.
Q: One of the songs on Malice, Mercy, Grief, and Wrath, Laila Sady Johnson Wasn’t Beaten By No Train, is about your grandmother. And you’ve said that you like to write about your family. Does that come from growing up in an isolated area?
A: No I think that comes from touring with my husband (songwriter/musician Blake Berglund). It’s safer than writing about the trials and tribulations of a relationship when you’re on the road with said person.
Aside from being glib, I wanted to write some music that connected to my family. My grandmother is so important to me. There are other songs on the record that deal with the big emotions the title suggests. The opening song (For All Those Who I Love) is about my dad and finding forgiveness for him after he died. And there’s a song called Radio Dreams that’s for my mother.
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