From This Moment On (32 page)

I had a recording contract, but with nowhere to live, I moved back to my parents’ old house in Timmins for a short time. We were renting out both the downstairs and the upstairs until we could sell it, so I took the temporarily vacant upstairs apartment. As the family member responsible for managing my parents’ estate, I really needed that apartment to be rented to cover maintenance bills on the property, but the short window between renters was a blessing during the pit stop I made back at 44 Montgomery Avenue. I was grateful for the chance to take refuge in the empty nest my parents provided for me even in their absence when I had no place else to go.

I spent those weeks holed up in the apartment, intently writing music and feeling sad and melancholy, for the house evoked so many family memories. Nothing had changed in the five years since my parents’ death. I could practically smell and taste the past lingering in the air, and I could still hear everybody’s voices. At times, I imagined their footsteps clunking up the stairs and half expected them to barge in through the door any second. My stirred emotions there produced a lot of songwriting.

Along with the sadness, however, I felt at peace. Unlike the other places where we’d lived, the Montgomery house hadn’t been tarnished by violence. I’ve always maintained that financial woes accounted for most of my parents’ fights. Well, things were looking up when they bought this place, and while my mother and my father may have squabbled, the arguments never turned physical.

Once I had to leave the apartment for the renters who were about to move in, Paul’s parents, Larry and Helene, generously let us stay with them for a while. I was signed to the label and hoped it was
only a matter of time before I would be more stable professionally, but for now, I was still in transition, with one foot in my old world and one in the new one. I worked part-time at Sears three days a week, and when Paul and I had time off, we’d head to his parents’ camp on the shores of Kenogamissi Lake. There in the bush, we built a tiny ten-by-twelve-foot cabin made from scraps of wood and recycled bits from demolished homes. Paul was a skilled builder, and I designed the layout so that we could actually cook, sleep, bathe, and stay warm in this small space. With no electricity or plumbing, the cabin was the equivalent of a circus clown car; we squeezed a lot of living into it.

I enjoyed my time alone in the bush during the stretches when Paul was working in town and I couldn’t get any shifts at Sears. He’d drive me out to the cabin with a week’s worth of food supplies, then join me on the weekend. I loved the solitude, especially during the gorgeous winter. The road leading to the campsite would be snowed in and impassable by car or truck, so Paul would have to haul the Ski-Doo with a trailer pulled behind with supplies for a couple of miles off the main road. Once in the cabin, I felt isolated yet safe, and very much at home. I wasn’t afraid of staying alone in the bush in the middle of winter. Bears hibernate in the winter, and road access is much more limited, so humans were nowhere in sight, either. I had nothing to worry about other than freezing to death if I ran out of wood. Wolves are no problem, as they are timid toward humans and they can’t knock doors down, let alone blow a house down. A bear could have ripped through my windows or doors, but like I said, they were sound asleep at this time of year.

The experience stamped me with the joy of aloneness. By that, I mean the chance to dive into a space where time has little importance, and the divine right to feel, think, or say whatever you want is yours. All yours. Lost in the bliss and simplicity of less, with all the time in the world to reflect and turn those thoughts and feelings into music. I was very productive in my little corner of the wild and enjoyed every minute of it. I miss that cramped hideaway! The basis of many of the songs that I would eventually complete and
record with Mutt Lange a few years later were written there. I still enjoy listening to my cassette tape recordings of my writing sessions from that time, as you can hear the wood stove fire crackling in the background.

I spent the days chopping wood, clearing snow from my door and path, listening to the silence of the snow, taking in the view, and writing music as it came to me. I had a well-organized routine to my winter days alone in the cabin. Before going to bed I’d prepare chips and slivers of wood and kindling near the stove for quick access in the morning. I’d load up the stove with large, dampish pieces so it would burn as slowly as possible through the night, then I’d go to bed wearing wool socks and a sweater, and a heavy down sleeping bag draped at my knees ready for pulling up over my head in the middle of the night once the fire died out. The wood stove wasn’t airtight and the cabin not insulated, so it didn’t take much time for it to get cold out there in the winter woods with the average temperature anywhere between twenty and forty below zero. I had no radio or communication with me, so I never had any idea of what the temperature would drop to at night, but I had a good feel for what was coming naturally. The stars, the color of the sky, the wind, and the snowfall all provide clues of what to expect. The calm and clear nights in Northern Ontario are often the coldest ones. Clear, crisp, and cold. I loved those nights but knew I had to be ready for an uncomfortable morning.

With my fire goods handy and my wool socks and sweater already on, I was ready (or as ready as I’d ever be) to leave my cocoon and restart the fire around four o’clock, then wriggle back into my sleeping bag to enjoy a few more hours of warmth before the cabin cooled down too much again.

For bathing, I’d place a pail of water on the wood stove. Once it reached just the right temperature, I’d stand in a basin on the floor and use a cup to douse myself with the warm water as I soaped and rinsed in my makeshift shower. Melting snow into water was an all-afternoon affair, as it evaporates to nothing. But I had the time, so I didn’t mind.

Once Paul and his family got there on a weekend, they’d fire up the sauna near Paul’s parents’ cottage, and there’d be enough heat and water for everyone. I secretly preferred my cozy method and would often pass on taking my turn in the sauna. I’m sure they thought I was nuts, but I loved the rustic system I had going. It was exactly how my parents and I used to bathe in the large prospecting tents in the bush during tree-planting season once the cool of the autumn air made it too cold to jump in the lakes. The workmen used to hang out at my parents’ tent in the evenings, but when it was time for my mother’s sponge bath, she’d kick everyone out. I remember walking up to their tent one time to find a bunch of men standing outside, shivering in the cold. “What are you guys doing out here?” I asked. “Your mom’s having a bath,” one of them harrumphed, his breath forming a tiny cloud in the cold air. Not all the tents had stoves, so my parents’ tent was the place to gather till it was time to go back to their own smaller tents.

My days were simple and happy at any camp, and the one on the shore of Kenogamissi Lake was special. Staying warm, clean, fed, and creatively productive was all I had to do every day that I was alone there. It was heaven.

It came as a great relief when PolyGram finally advanced me $20,000, a fortune to me at the time, enabling me to rent a one-bedroom apartment in a newly built complex called the Landings, in the suburb of Brentwood. I’d fully expected to live in another dive, given my limited finances, but this was
nice:
brand-new range, a balcony off the living room—even a washer and dryer. No more scrubbing clothes on rocks down by the river! The grounds had a swimming pool and a circuit around the buildings that made for lovely evening
walks. I could not believe that the rent was so reasonable; to me, this was living in the lap of luxury. I felt like I was moving up in the world.

In the summer of 1992, I packed my Jimmy to the roof with every household item I owned. The rear window and the side windows were completely blocked, but I made the two-day drive from Timmins to Nashville safely.

By now, I even had my first credit card. To be honest, I was surprised by how easy it was to obtain one in the States. In Canada, card companies were far more discriminating about extending credit to people without a full-time job. And you’d have thought that my not being a U.S. citizen would have made it even harder. Nope! I wasn’t complaining, though. Having credit really helped me to cover my butt during the dry months to come.

Harold Shedd and Norro Wilson were the producers of my first CD. Harold owned a famous studio called the Music Mill, where countless gold and platinum records had been recorded over the years, and I was even lucky enough to meet Glen Campbell in the hall once. I always loved Glen’s voice, so it was a big moment for me to see him in person and be recording in the same building that he was.

Although Norro believed in me as a songwriter, I think he felt I wasn’t quite there yet and needed the support of Nashville’s writing community to find hit songs. Nor was Harold Shedd satisfied with the caliber of my songwriting just yet. On my first several trips down to Nashville, and after I moved there, the number one order of business was to carry on shopping for songs for me to record. The term “shopping” might sound a bit funny, but this is how we actually refer to looking for songs. Although not exactly in the context of “Attention, shoppers. In aisle seven, we’re having a sale on tear-jerking country ballads. That’s aisle seven!” So of course you don’t walk around pushing a cart, but the publishers push songs, and the producers and artists scan the choices till they’re satisfied they’ve found just the right list of goodies to take to the studio.

Usually it was Norro and I, and sometimes Harold, who would
go down to Music Row, the hub of the country music industry. It’s like one-stop shopping for becoming a recording artist. Within a radius of several blocks, you pass recording studios, record companies, and the offices of artist-management firms, public relations consultants, production outfits, song publishing companies—you name it. If this were New York City or Los Angeles, the other two major nuclei of the U.S. music business, they would all be housed in imposing corporate-looking buildings and skyscrapers. What makes Music Row so unique to me is its quaintness: the tree-lined streets are full of charming houses with wood-planked verandas and deep porches. The only way you would know that those
are
the studios, and headquarters, and so on, are the discreet plaques above the doors, bearing the businesses’ names. There are more mortar, metal, and glass structures on Music Row now that have cut into the charm of the smaller converted homes, so the feel is different today.

Imagine my surprise the first time I set foot in PolyGram’s Nashville office, which was in a large, inviting-looking three-story house with a white porch. It certainly made meeting the label head Harold Shedd for the first time less daunting than it would have been ordinarily. Music Row had an authenticity and warmth to it that just made it easier for a small-town girl like me to adjust.

That was true of Nashville in general. It was apparent to me right away that I’d been given a break by getting my professional start there. To be honest, if my introduction to the United States had come in the Big Apple or Hollywood, for example, I might have found it too overwhelming, at least at first.

The Music City of the early 1990s was less populated, slower paced, and more family oriented than other music industry hubs of the larger centers and certainly than it is now. When I first laid eyes on the surrounding countryside, I was charmed by the horse ranches that sprawled out in every direction, their miles of triple-rail fences framing vast stretches of pastoral, picturesque landscapes. I especially liked the Brentwood and Franklin areas south of the city, which called to mind country classics such as John Denver’s “Take
Me Home, Country Roads” and Porter Wagoner’s “Green, Green Grass of Home.” (You’re probably most familiar with the 1967 version by Welshman Tom Jones, but Porter had a big country hit with it two years earlier.) When I was growing up, those songs planted in my mind images of the Old South. Now they were coming to life for me: plantation homes, black-eyed peas, muddy rivers, watermelon wine. For quite a while after my move to Tennessee, I felt as if I were living on a movie set.

All in all, I think I adapted to my new home pretty well for someone who had never been outside of Canada before. There was so much I wasn’t used to. But it was all good. Like, grocery stores being open twenty-four hours a day? Get out of here! I couldn’t believe their size, either, or the fact that some of these so-called megastores sold everything from movies, to liquor, to tires—even guns. A completely new concept to me. If I needed to go out and buy milk at three in the morning, I could.
Whoa.

In my international travels, I’ve found that Canadians are often stereotyped as being a friendly people with a good sense of humor. I found Southerners to be much the same, although more formally mannered, addressing a lady as “ma’am,” for example. Southern people cursed a lot less than Northern Ontarians as well. When a Northern Canadian gets mad, it’s not uncommon for a string of “Jes*s f*cking Chr*st!”s to come out of his mouth, and the French Canadians have some doozies, too. Sometimes, though, the friendliness of the South was misinterpreted by the likes of a Canadian girl, as when total strangers walking toward you on the street would smile and say, “Hello, how ya’ll doin’ today?” I didn’t always respond, for the simple reason that I wasn’t sure they were actually speaking to
me,
even though they looked right at me and seemed so sincere.
Why would someone I’ve never seen before in my life care how I’m doing today?
was my thinking.