Words & Photography: Amy Perdoni, Grace Minghella, Leela Brundson and Meg Hardy

Ahead of a special Christmas performance this weekend, LDN sits down with songwriter and expert storyteller Lail Arad to hear about her ongoing collaboration with JF Robitaille, and a very special Joni Mitchell tribute in the New Year.

LDN: You’re playing at the Heath Street Baptist Church again this December. What was it like the last time you played there? And is there a reason that you wanted to go back?

Lail: It was absolutely freezing because the heating broke down. My main memory from that show is just that my hand was so cold. I could barely move it on the guitar. But other than that, it was really special. The people who run it are real music lovers and put on a very broad mix of music and a lot of classical as well. It’s just a really nice kind of listening atmosphere. It’s a beautiful church. So yeah, they kept saying, come back, come back. And we thought like – I think this year of all years, with so much horror going on in the world – because we’ve often played Christmas shows, it’s like a nice thing to do. Come celebrate. Have fun. So you’re like, Okay, let’s do something that concentrates on just like bringing people together doing something really joyful, which doesn’t necessarily mean playing all upbeat songs. I think there’s something cathartic about doing sad songs together as well. And yeah, it felt like the right place for that.

LDN: You went on an extensive tour around Europe with your partner (Canadian singer-songwriter) JF Robitaille in 2018? How did that tour come around?

Lail: I did a lot of touring in the more traditional sense of like, album cycles, you know, release an album, and you do the places that you’re meant to do. And then I think at that point, we were in between albums, both of us. And it was something that rolled really organically, with local bookers from each country. We played a lot in Italy, we had a really great booker there. And he set up the Italy leg, and another booker said, ‘Oh, will you come to Spain?’ so we did the Spain leg and it felt the old days going around with one guitar and taking trains. It was very romantic and grassroots.

LDN: On your press release, it says you played over 100 shows across eight countries.

Lail: Was that with JF? Oh, that was. So I think through the history, it’s probably been a lot a lot more, but we were really on a roll at that point. The most exciting part was that we were offered a tour of India. It was organised by the biggest English-speaking newspaper in India called The Hindu, and it was amazing. They flew us over and we played these big, sort of concert venues where it was a festival that moved cities. Each night, they put on something, and then the whole thing moved. So there was like, traditional Indian music, one night classical, one night Bollywood, and the other night was us as the Western component. Just the chance to have performed there, neither of us had been to India before, that was amazing.

LDN: You use humour a lot in your songs, why do you decide to tell your stories that way?

Lail: I’m not sure it’s exactly a decision, a strategy, like ‘I’m gonna use humour to get this across’. I think it happens naturally, maybe the way that I think about things. Sometimes you write when you’re in the midst of something happening, and you don’t have the perspective. But if you wait a little bit, sometimes things seem a bit funnier with distance. But I also do like using humour a little bit more strategically, like in live shows, and really mixing it up. So you know, playing some light songs or some satirical songs, and then hitting them with a really sad heartbreak. I remember being really inspired by a physical theatre company called DV8 when I was doing theatre studies. They talked a lot about how they use humour to relax the audience, and then catch people off guard with something they want to say that’s harder. I also appreciate humour in other people’s lyrics. It’s something I’ve always liked, maybe not comedy, but just a wink, it feels like you have an understanding.

LDN: In 2016, you released The Onion, what is the story behind that album title?

Lail: It’s the name of one of the songs – and if I remember correctly, the line is ‘the onion of opinion stings my eyes and the layers of love take me by surprise’. I started thinking about the whole album like that, the way that I need to have more and more layers, and also to keep with what we were talking about, about humour. It makes you cry, it’s such a strong taste, but you cook it to become sweet. All that kind of bitter-sweetness. There’s also an amazing album by The Incredible String Band – a 60s psychedelic folk band that I really, really love – called The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion so it’s a little bit of a nod to that as well.

LDN: What inspired you to publish an accompanying lyric book?

Lail: This place called The Society Club, which sadly no longer exists, was significant for me. It was a little bookshop and cocktail bar in Soho that I passed by in a little alley, and by chance, I saw there was a piano. I went in and I was like, do you do music here? They said not really, but you can play if you want to. I started playing there a lot. There was what they called poetry night, once a week, where people came and recited things, and some people sang, it was very bohemian, with a lot of characters and a mix of ages.

When the album was coming out, they had a very small publishing imprint, and they offered to publish a lyric book. I guess because the lyrics are very central to the songs. I worked very closely with them and with a graphic designer, and we used photos from a music video I did for the album’s single called ‘Lay Down’. All black and white pictures, the video was made of photographs, so we thought we’d use the stills in the book. It’s funny, I have a two-year-old and he picked up a copy of the book in the house yesterday when I looked at it it was all upside down, and suddenly I had a flashback to the first test that we printed off, which came out completely upside down and one page off. It was at the time when people stopped buying CDs, we were like, what can we sell? So we did have vinyl for that record, but we sold the books with a bookmark, which included a download code. So it was just a nice object that people could take away.

LDN: Why did you and JF decide to work together?

Lail: That’s a very good question, we met through hearing each other’s music. He was in Montreal, I was here and we started corresponding about music. Then the opportunity came up to do a co-headline tour in Italy, so we were performing side by side. In the beginning, it wasn’t an integrated show, we would take turns. Then we said, ‘Okay, let’s do a couple of covers together’. I started doing some backing vocals for him, and the audience really responded and would come up and ask to buy a CD of something we did together, but it didn’t exist. So then we released a single that we wrote together that his Canadian label released, and then we released another two. And then we were like, okay, let’s write an album, which is now finally finished and will come out next year. So a very kind of natural, organic evolution. And meanwhile, we also had a child.

LDN: How have your collaborations with JF affected your solo songwriting process?

Lail: It’s a very, very good question. Neither of us had ever co-written with other people, which is a big thing in the songwriting world. Especially in pop music, it’s all about co-writes and we both just did our own thing. So it took some time to figure out how to make it work. I feel like the first songs we wrote together were not as good as either of us would have written by ourselves. But slowly, we started trusting each other more. Almost, it was like an internal editing system. We didn’t let each other get away with anything that wasn’t great. Then we upped our own game to make sure. On the album that comes out next year, I do think that it’s, in many ways, our best work. And rather than being a compromise, it takes the best bits from both of us.

It’s different from what we each do, it’s less idiosyncratic than what I do by myself and a little less serious than what he does by himself. It’s like a sweet middle ground. It’s exciting, what we’re putting out together. And I will also be releasing some solo stuff next year too. So I think it’s important to us that we continue that as well. Sometimes when we really sit down and like, try to write a song together, that works the least. Mostly someone has a beginning or an idea or a chorus, and the other one improves it or writes a verse, it kind of happens like that. There are songs on the album that I wrote that he sings, and the other way around, but sometimes I write a song, it’s great. But there’s no way that I could change this or add to it, you know, because it’s you, not even too personal, but just to me, and vice versa with him.

LDN: If you’re writing together, or if you’re filming a music video, who decides on the camera shots?

Lail: I think it varies from each video. There’s a song that was absolutely my song, but that JF made the video for. So I think it’s about it’s 50/50. But that doesn’t mean that we do everything 50/50. Whoever runs with an idea takes the lead and then the other gives their input.

LDN: You curated the Joni Mitchell tribute show in April, what kind of influence has Joni had on your own songwriting and your music?

Lail: Well, every kind of influence. I’ll tell you a bit about the show. I was watching Joni Mitchell’s surprise appearance at Newport Folk Festival earlier this year, and I noticed it said she’s 79. I was like, ‘Oh, when is she turning 80?’ She just turned 80 in November so I was like, ‘We have to do something to celebrate!’ I have a weird history with celebrating 80th birthdays – I did a song for Leonard Cohen’s 80th birthday. Originally, I thought to just ask any friends that want to do it and we’ll do a fun, ramshackle night without much preparation. Then very quickly, I realised that everybody else was like, ‘Yes, I’ll do it!’ and all venues said yes. No one didn’t want to be involved in a Joni evening. It outgrew my original ambitions pretty fast.

I approached The Roundhouse [and] they suggested that we do it as part of the In The Round Festival, which is a festival that they put on and curate each year, rather than a commercial show that rents the venue and it’s seated. So though it’s the Roundhouse, it can still be intimate. I’ve been working very intensely with the Head of Music there and their marketing team and publicist. I have curated quite a lot of stuff before on a smaller scale, but for me, it’s quite new to do such a big show.

Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ was the first song I ever sang in front of an audience. I was on a school camp aged 10. I heard a music teacher who was one of the camp supervisors singing it with someone in the class, and they were getting all the words wrong. I knew every word because all I listened to was Ladies of the Canyon. It was the era where everyone else was listening to the Backstreet Boys. The teacher asked me, “Oh, do you know it?” So I sang it and they were like, “Oh my God, you can sing, you know the words!” They made me sing it again, at the campfire that evening. Then they said, “Will you sing at the school summer show?” That was the first time I sang in front of an audience.

From then I was like, ‘This is what I want to do’ so I really thank her very much for my musical life. My parents listened to her. When I was in the womb, I was listening to her. I don’t know of any time when I didn’t have her music around. In terms of her influence on my songwriting, I think whether or not people realise it, she changed so much in terms of what was possible for everyone. Blue was really the first album that was so honest, emotionally vulnerable, and pushed the boundaries of what was allowed to be said. Many people around her said to her at the time, “Are you sure this is a good idea? You’re revealing too much of yourself” and I mean, look at us now. She really opened up that world and also musically she just evolved so consistently through her life and albums. It’s quite inspiring to see someone who didn’t feel she had to stick to what she was originally doing and could grow up and mature with her work.

LDN: While we’re here, are there any other artists who you would cite as influencers on a similar level?

Lail: A few of them from that era, like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Lou Reed are the bread and butter of what I still listen to and certainly listened to a lot as I was growing up. Then I had another mind-opening era with the anti-folk movement of Jeffrey Lewis, Herman Dune, and The Moldy Peaches, which in a very different way again, made me think, ‘Wow, you’re allowed to write like this? You’re allowed to be so colloquial [and] write things that are so honest and rock and roll?’ That was when I discovered all those acts in that scene, just after I left university. That was a big moment for me. I befriended a lot of them, got to tour with them, and opened shows for them which was truly special.

Lail Arad and JF Robitaille perform at Heath Street Baptist Church on Sunday 10 December from 6pm. Celebrate Joni Mitchell’s iconic 80th birthday as part of In The Round at The Roundhouse on 18th April.