Ireland ready for second CD recording
Terry Halifax
Northern News Services
Hay River (Nov 20/00) - A Hay River woman has realized her dream of recording her own CD and has now completed writing enough songs to relive the dream.
Shannon Ireland has been around music as long as she can remember. Her mother is a music teacher in Hay River, and music has always had a place in her home, her head and her heart.
"I started off when I was a wee girl, playing piano," Ireland said. "It was always there; Saturday mornings we'd always wake up to someone taking piano lessons in our home."
She took lessons from mom for a few years before setting her own musical course. She writes all her own lyrics, but admits she never did learn how to read the notes.
"I wanted to branch out on my own just to play my own kind of music and ever since I was 12, I wanted to record my own CD," she said.
"Reading music became sort of a mental block for me -- maybe it was because my mom was teaching me."
Now herself a mom of four, Ireland is passing her talent on to her children. Two of her kids play piano, one is taking guitar lesson and her eight-year-old son has begun to play the drums.
She hopes to pull the family talent together in their own recording.
"One day it's my goal to make a family album with my kids involved," she said. "Possibly a kids album, there is always a call for kids music and Sharon, Lois and Brahms are getting kind of old."
With her first CD -- A Woman Such As I -- she said the recording took about a year and a lot of late nights recording in Hay River producer Dana Cross' studio.
"I'd go in after my work and when Dana was finished his work and we'd work in the studio until about 12 or 1 in the morning," she said.
Ireland said she learned a lot about arrangement and what she wants out of the song and thinks she will have a better idea on how to record the next collection.
"This album was a little more complicated than I thought it would be," she said. "For my next album I'd kind of like to do more of an acoustic sound."
"I really like the simple sound."
Drawing from some hard-gained personal experience on the first writings, she said many of the songs were autobiographical, and admits, "it was almost too much."
"But looking back on it, I wouldn't change a thing," she smiled. "It's kind of a melancholy album, but it was just from things that were happening in my life at the time."
She said many women who've heard the album can really identify with the songs and especially the title track.
"Even though sometimes it was married women listening to it, they'd say, 'Oh sometimes I just feel that way myself, you know...'"
She calls herself a folk singer and draws inspiration and influence from artists like Tracy Chapman.
"She sings about issues and things that matter and I like that," she said.
A single mom of four has a tough time keeping kids supplied with porkchops and Pokeman, so Ireland said she was grateful for grants from RWED and the NWT Arts Council to help with the production costs.
"I couldn't have done this without the grants," she said. "Now that I know a little more about it, I could probably do it out of my own pocket, but it would be one song at a time and it would take about a year or two to get finished."
Ireland said she has written songs for friends and hopes to one day write and sell her songs to other artists.
"It's usually when something happens in my life that I will write a series of songs," she explained. "The last album was a bit melancholy like I said, but then I wrote a whole spurt of love songs there for awhile."
She said she's seeking wider distribution for A Woman Such As I, which is for sale in Hay River at the Sundance Music Centre and One Stop Computer Shop in Hay River.
