Joni Mitchell compiles CD for Sask.
TORONTO (CP) – Joni Mitchell hasn’t made it a secret that she’s fed up with the music business and would prefer to spend her time painting.
She’s happily done just that for several years now.
But she recently came out of her painter’s studio long enough to cherry pick 13 of her songs for a CD tribute to her childhood home, Saskatchewan, which is celebrating its centennial.
Songs of a Prairie Girl, out Tuesday, includes Let The Wind Carry Me, River and Raised on Robbery.
“I’ve retired basically,” she said in an interview this week with Canada AM from Los Angeles, which she now calls home. “They wanted me to perform (for the centennial), but I don’t do that anymore. I’m a painter now.”
The compilation, she said, was her way to show respect for her homeland.
“You carry your childhood with you. Saskatchewan is in my veins,” she said.
She jokingly admitted frigid temperatures play a big part in her memories.
“When I put this together I thought ‘Oh dear, it’s all about wanting to get out of the cold,”‘ she joked.
In fact, in the album’s liner notes Mitchell urges listeners to “get yourself a hot beverage and stand by the heater as you listen to these musical tales of long, cold winters, with a hint of short but glorious summers.”
Mitchell says she’s disheartened by what she sees going on in the music industry where listener polls and demographic studies rather than artistry are used to formulate songs.
“The things that I’ve been told to kill in my work by my record company and management . . . had I done that it would have been a tragedy,” she said in the CTV interview.
“The idea that our youth is being brainwashed by this sarcasm and bad potty training . . . this contrived money music. You hear young artists talking and they’re talking demographics.
“There’s no muse in this. There’s a drive to be looked at. These are not creative people. These are created people.”
Mitchell will take part in centennial festivities in mid-May at a gala dinner to be attended by the Queen and Prince Philip, among other dignitaries.
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