Abigail Lapell returns to Folk Fest with her new album

Would it be Folk Fest without a folk noirist? Abigail Lapell is exactly that. She’s a Canadian folk songwriter and instrumentalist based in Toronto. This weekend she brought her sixth album to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival (EFMF). Since the release of Anniversary, Lapell has been touring all over Canada and the north-east United States (U.S.).

“It’s been really fun because there were a lot of songs I hadn’t played live yet. So it was really exciting to rediscover a new format, how to present [the songs] live, how to arrange things.”

Lapell said many of her songs are mellow, but her song “Rattlesnake” has been an opportunity to get the audience more involved. There’s some complicated clapping parts to the song, which she said made it fun to perform at summer festivals. Yet, she highlighted that “people have been doing a great job.”

Her album is “all love songs,” which is new for her. Despite five previous albums under her belt, she hadn’t focused in on that theme before. For Anniversary, she wrote songs relaying different aspects of love, including “loss, grief, … and the end of love and then also some nice lovey-dovey kind of songs.”

Lapell said she hopes people come away from the album with “at least one song stuck in their head.” She writes songs she likes as a listener and hopes her audience can enjoy the album as much as she does.

Recording the album in an old church was intimidating, but inspiring

The theme of love wasn’t the only different thing about recording her album. She recorded Anniversary in a 200-year-old church in Niagara on Lake Ontario.

“Acoustically, finding a spot like that is more interesting as a performer,” she said. “Having an actual performance in a space that feels very live and very interesting sonically.”

Recording in an old church meant “giving up a lot of control,” and Lapell even felt slightly intimidated by it. She wasn’t able to track each thing as she usually would be able to, especially with editing and how the songs are put together.

Lapell described the event as “a more … immediate and more vibrant experience.” She said she can definitely hear the difference in the space between this album and her other records. It gave Anniversary a more “soaring and … natural reverb.”

It was her co-producer Tony Dekker of the band Great Lake Swimmers that found the building they chose to record the album in. Dekker had experience recording albums in non-traditional spaces, like a grain silo. While he is Lapell’s co-producer, he is also a friend. Dekker and Lapell first met through mutual friends in the music scene in Toronto.

“We started talking about [co-producing an album] together years before.”

She contacted Dekker last year after several years had passed since they first discussed collaborating. It just happened that their schedules lined up perfectly for rehearsals and recording. “So obviously it was meant to be.”

According to Lapell, Dekker was a “great champion for the project and the songs.” She said he had so many great ideas, but also had a light touch that allowed her ideas to shine through.

“It felt like a really good balance, his input was so valuable to me. I’m so grateful that the whole thing came together.”