Harmer No Longer A Farmer
It took a looming deadline for Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer to come up with the direction for All Of Our Names, her new solo collection of roots-pop-folk that hits record stores today.
Harmer had just two days to write a tune about greed for a CBC radio show about the seven deadly sins. That song, recorded in the basement of the Toronto home of her boyfriend/keyboardist /soundman Marty Kinack, became the new tune Took It All.
“I was cruising down the highway listening to the song and it was pretty brand new to me and I thought, ‘Marty and I can do this! We know what we’re doing!
We’re adults now!’ ” said Harmer, 33, the onetime frontwoman for Kingston rockers Weeping Tile.
“So I called him and was, like, ‘Let’s make the whole record. I’ll get a bunch of gear. We’ll set up in my house.’ ”
Sure enough, Names — the followup to Harmer’s highly praised 2000 major-label solo debut, You Were Here — was mostly recorded at her farm house in Quaker Valley, Ont., just north of Kingston.
“I have cables all over the place, down through the staircase, into the living room,” said Harmer, sipping a juice during a chat yesterday morning in the newly refurbished Drake Hotel on Queen Street W.
“But they’re pretty much tucked away. They’re kind of running along the ceilings and the floors. It was a bit of a flea-market look. But I’m really glad we did it the way we did. There’s a certain energy when you’re recording at home.”
In addition to being excited about today’s release of Names, Harmer was feeling bolstered by a successful stint at South By Southwest in Austin, Tex., from which she had just returned on Sunday.
“All my clothes smell like beer, so it went really well,” she said with a laugh. “It was great. We played three shows and saw lots of great music. I was just thinking, ‘You never get to go to a city where you know (so many people).’ It was like a mini-Toronto.”
Her latest tour will also include five weeks of shows in the U.S., where You Were Here sold 80,000 copies (compared to 100,000 in Canada) and was called the best debut of 2000 by TIME magazine.
“I do feel like I have fan base now, that’s for sure,” said Harmer of her U.S. profile.
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