After training and working as a visual designer for several years, Meredith Lazowski has returned to her musical roots, capturing moments in time by way of image rich lyrics, comforting vocals, and expansive roots arrangements. “Prairie” is Meredith’s tribute to the breathtaking landscape and family influences of the prairies of northern Saskatchewan, Canada; honoring her grandmother’s roots from northern Saskatchewan who today continue to farm large tracts of land.
“I believe “Prairie” was the second song I ever wrote. I was sitting in my parents’ living room thinking of ways to commemorate and remember my Prairie summer experiences. I was trying to capture my strong emotional relationship with the Prairie landscape in both my lyrics and my melody. As a visual artist, I sketched these landscapes and searched my photographs for inspiration. The process was organic. It started with the rhythm and the instrumentals, followed by the lyrics. Emphasized is the repetitive, sonorous instrumentals emulating the Prairie landscape and the westerly winds.”
Meredith teamed up with Toronto producer Justin Rutledge (a JUNO Award Winning artist), enlisting a slew of Ontario talent to play on the track;including Joshua Van Tassel (drums), Kelsey Mcnulty (keys/organ), Tom Juhas (electric guitar), Devon Henderson (bass), Bronwyn Lazowski (backup vocals) and Burke Carroll (pedal steel guitar).
In our interview, Lazowski explains the sources of inspiration for her sweeping, gorgeous, cosmic track “Prairie.”
Who are some of your musical influences?
Neko Case, Mavis Staples and Gillian Welch are some of my biggest musical influences. They are incredibly strong women in the industry; these powerhouse musicians with their incredible songwriting skills have paved the way for so many, especially for other women artists.
Explain the title of your album.
Other Way Home is the title track of the album. In many ways, this title was chosen because this album was a way of coming ‘home’ for me creatively. For many years now there has been a certain emptiness in the creative aspects of my life. I am unsure of how it got to that point, but I was aware that I needed to navigate my way back. For the first time in many years, I feel like I have found my way back creatively.
The word ‘home’ has many meanings and especially, in this case, does not necessarily mean a specific physical place; sometimes it is just a moment in time, sometimes it is an emotional space between two people, and sometimes it is just the landscape of the world around us. There are many ways to get ‘home’ – but the important part is just trying your best to find your way there and embrace that journey along the way.
Does your album have an overarching theme?
Overall, the album explores the journey of finding a way back “home,” yet I believe that one of the major overarching themes of the album is “time.” Each song from the album was written at very different moments in time over the past 15 years of my life, still they all seem to have an underlying theme of “time” and “timeliness.” This was done unintentionally as many of these songs have been written years apart from one another (some even 15 years apart or so). It was something I noticed as an almost retrospective when compiling the songs for the album.
Though major life’s milestones: meeting new people, saying goodbye, embarking on new beginnings, creating distinct memories and finding your way back to “home,” these moments all have a timeliness factor to them, and that always resonates the most with me.
Tell us about the first song you wrote.
“December,” the second song on the album, is the first song I ever wrote. I I wrote it when I was about 13 or 14 years old or so. It’s hard to remember exactly how the process happened, but I distinctly remember writing it while sitting on the couch in my parent’s living room back home. At this moment I was fairly new at learning guitar and had just started to play with different chord progressions. From there, I I started to write what I was feeling at that current moment in time. The song explores the idea of reflecting on current relationships and friendships and coming to the hard realization that things inevitably will change because you grow and become independent. Your life has not yet even begun. Do you try to cement certain things in time; do you focus on what’s next; do you move on from certain people in your life? I think it was the first moment of feeling that independence was not far away , and that with the excitement of change also brings the realization of some sadness about who or what might not be there for what’s next.
Do you start off with the music or lyrics first? Why?
It really varies for me in terms of approach. In both instances, the constant is that I usually am thinking visually throughout. My mind will often play out the scene or backdrop that the tone plays into. It could be a scenario, an object or even just a colour pallet that tends to be the driving force of the theme of the song. That often helps to shape how the lyrics and music come together. This is probably influenced by me growing up as a visual learner, and then an artist and also pursuing a career as a designer.
In most cases, I will start by humming a tune, quickly recording a voice memo on my phone (before I forget) and then start translating the humming into the guitar. Usually, I will keep a voice memo rolling and start ad-libbing lyrics. In some instances, the lyrics fit and then I just keep iterating and reworking them. It’s an approach that has worked well for me over the years, so it’s one that I keep experimenting with. In other cases, I will start off with a lyric or a line and start building phrases around it. After that, then I will build the music around it and iteratively adjust. I really don’t have a specific method for it yet; it just depends on what comes first sometimes.