Mary and Meredith talk songwriting and Wilco fandom with Norma MacDonald, a singer-songwriter based in Halifax, Nova Scotia whose new album In Waves is available for pre-save on Spotify and will be available October 27th, 2023.
Check out Norma's website www.normamacdonald.com
She also has a Bandcamp page.
As well as a Linktree.
And here's her partner Chad's band on Instagram, if you want to give him a little love, too.
THEME MUSIC
Meredith Hobbs Coons: Hi Mary
Mary MacLane Mellas: Hi Meredith
MHC: Hi listeners. We are continuing our interview era,
MMM: -which is my favorite, although going through track by track of Wilco songs is really fun, too.
MHC: It never disappoints really. Going through Ode To Joy? Remember when we did that, everybody? Wasn't that fun? Didn't we have fun together?
MMM: It was so fun. But we are ready to hear other people talk about Wilco. As much as we love talking about Wilco.
MHC: That's right. And we get to talk about Wilco with them. So really, it's a win win. Who we talkin' to today? Why that would be Norma MacDonald (NorMA MacDonald, not Norm Macdonald). She's a country folk singer-songwriter, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, staple of the scene there. She's got five solo albums. She's got another one she's releasing this fall. She plays in the Halifax folk rock super Bend the River. She's amazing. And a big Wilco fan, too.
MMM: Yes.
MHC: We had a great conversation. And now we get to share it with all of you. Ready to do that, Mary? Should we?
MMM: Yeah, I think we should let Norma speak. It's really lovely to talk to another fan of Wilco and someone who's also a creative.
MHC: Let's do it.
THEME MUSIC
MHC: Hello, thank you so much for coming on, Norma.
Norma MacDonald: Oh, my pleasure. This is very exciting for me.
MHC: It's exciting for us, too. So, Norma. First question: Are you a fan of the band Wilco?
Norma MacDonald: Am I?! [Laughs] Yeah, from the very early days, I've gotta say,
MHC: Really? How early did you get into Wilco?
Norma MacDonald: I would say late 90s. For sure. I wasn't a listener, like, back when the first two records came out. But probably late 90s, early 2000s. I was on tour with my very old band over 20 years ago. And we had a bass player filling in for us because our other bass player had gone back to school. And so it was someone that we didn't really know that well. And he brought all this new music to listen to in the van. And so he played Being There. And I swear to God, it, like, changed my life. I just- first time I heard it, I felt like, this is the music that I've always wanted to listen to, but I never knew it existed.
MHC: Aw! Do you remember what song really got you?
Norma MacDonald: I mean, I think right from the opening bars of "Misunderstood." I was just like, "oh my god, what is this?" But then, yeah, "Far, Far Away..." I mean, I love that whole record so much. I'm basically just gonna go to like every track on the album and talk about how much I love it.
MHC: Just giving us the whole tracklist?
Norma MacDonald: Exactly.
MHC: That is so beautiful. That's funny because we actually were thinking that when we have musicians on asking them about music they like to listen to in the van on tour. And it sounds like Wilco has been van music for you.
Norma MacDonald: Yeah, for a very long time now. My life is very different now. And I don't tour as much anymore. And the way that we listen to music is so different now. You know, if I'm going on a long road trip now, I'm much more apt to put on, like, a Spotify playlist instead of a whole album. But I really love listening to album start to finish. And I don't do that enough anymore.
MHC: Yeah, that's something that we talk about, too: the sort of deliciousness of getting to listen to an album start to finish and really, like, take in everything that the band intended you to hear.
Norma MacDonald: Yeah, that's why my partner and I- he's got a fabulous vinyl collection, I've got a small but mighty vinyl collection. And we find that putting on a record really makes such a difference in that sense, that you're so much more engaged with the music than you are if you just have a playlist on in the background, any kind of streaming. You're interacting with it more.
MHC: Yeah. I would agree. And you end up tying certain albums to certain memories like that. Is that the Wilco album that you have most tied to a memory in your life?
Norma MacDonald: Probably. It was just such a lightning bolt when I heard that record. It felt really good. I'm feeling very nostalgic this evening, but I just- I miss that feeling so much. It's been a long time since I've been struck by a piece of music like that, that just grabbed me so much, and I just want to listen to it all day, every day, for months on end. Being There did that, but then so did Summerteeth when that came out, and so did Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. And I found that as my life kind of changed more (I worked as a nurse in an emergency department for 10 years, and now I work as a nurse practitioner in primary care) I still play music, I still listen to lots of music, but like I said, I don't tour as much. The time I have to spend listening to music is not as great as it used to be as years have progressed. I feel like there's probably lots of reasons for this. But the more recent Wilco records, I don't know them like the back of my hand like I know there's early records.
MHC: Right. That makes sense. That's understandable. Sounds a lot like how life is.
Norma MacDonald: I know. We're all living that now.
MHC: It's very true. So while we're feeling nostalgic, what is your favorite live Wilco memory,
Norma MacDonald: I've only see them live three times. I saw Jeff Tweedy do a solo show once. But the first time I saw Wilco probably would have been whatever year A Ghost is Born, came out. It was the Kicking Television tour. And they played the show in Halifax, well actually in Dartmouth, over on the other side of the bridge. You probably don't know Nova Scotia all that well, but they played an outdoor venue called Alderney Landing. And it was still to this day, the best concert I've been to. And it was just like this beautiful, warm, summer evening. Alderney Landing is like right on the water. It's right on the harbor in Halifax. And in the middle of a song Jeff Tweedy just kind of stopped, and he kind of looked around, and he was like, "Do you guys realize how beautiful this place is?" And it really was. Everybody just has such a warm memory of that night. It's legendary now, not even just among the musician community. Everybody who was at that show was just like, "You were there that night, right? Were you there? Were you there?" It was a legendary concert.
MHC: That sounds really beautiful that he was like acknowledging it, too. It sounds like all of you really felt the moment.
Norma MacDonald: I really feel like it was very much a shared experience. For a very long time. I've been trying to write a song about that experience, about that feeling of everybody coming together in this one magic night that we remember forever. But, even just saying that sentence, it's so hard not to make it just completely cheesy.
MHC: Yeah.
Norma MacDonald: Someday I will figure out how to do it and make it good and not gross.
MHC: I believe in you.
Norma MacDonald: Thank you.
MHC: Yeah, you run the risk of it ending up sounding trite, but sounds like you know that the goal is to avoid that. So-
Norma MacDonald: Exactly. And like I said, I've tried it. And every time I'm just like, "No, no, no, we're gonna scrap this and I'll start over again at another time." I can't quite get the feel of it. But someday I will.
MHC: Yeah.
Norma MacDonald: I also saw them open for Neil Young and Halifax to you, which was also a really great show.
MHC: That sounds really amazing.
Norma MacDonald: Yeah.
MHC: I also want to know if you have a favorite Wilco song or album. Being There, it sounds like, is your favorite album. Do you have a favorite Wilco song?
Norma MacDonald: Hmm... yeah, I've got so many. I feel like it's really hard to pick. It tends to vary a bit, depending on my mood. I feel like I should open my Apple Music and look through. Like, "which is my favorite?"
MHC: First thought, best thought.
Norma MacDonald: I love "Forget the Flowers" from Being There.
MHC: Yes.
Norma MacDonald: I love "She's a Jar."
MHC: Yeah.
Norma MacDonald: From Summerteeth. That's another kind of- I mean, it was a punch you in the stomach moment in a different way. I remember hearing that song for the first time and just, "wow, this is so beautiful." And just that last line... is such a sucker punch.
MHC: Yeah, yeah, it is. It's like a sick, unreliable narrator kind of thing?
Norma MacDonald: Yes.
MHC: Or I guess maybe reliable, because he's telling you exactly who that character is.
Norma MacDonald: Yeah. Unreliable for most of the song and then at the end...?
MHC: Yeah. Right. You're right there with him, and then at the end, you're like, "Oh, no!"
Norma MacDonald: Yeah. That's kind of an interesting way to think about that. I'm really loving Cruel Country and I really love "Tired of Taking it Out on You."
MHC: Yeah.
MMM: That's a really good one.
MHC: Here's a fun little... feels like a Beatlemania style question. [Laughs] Do you have a favorite member of Wilco?
Norma MacDonald: [Laughs] Oh, I'm totally- I'm a Jeff girl. 100%. All the way. It's funny, because I'm a songwriter myself, so I just assume that Jeff is everyone's favorite Wilco person. But we had some friends over to watch the Ashes of American Flags tour documentary a couple of months ago. And, of course, my partner Chad, who's a guitar player, and then my friend Nick, who plays guitar in my band with me, they're just of course, going off on Nels. And then- just- Jeff is not everyone's favorite, which never occurred to me before. [Laughs] Yeah. I'm definitely a Jeff fan, for so many reasons, but I love his writing so much. And I love seeing him live, his personality, that kind of self deprecating... Just so funny, so easy, but just such a great rapport with the audience. Like I've modeled so much of what I do after him. I mean, there's definitely songs that I've written that are just straight up Wilco rip-offs [laughs] that I manage to kind of subtly change, a couple things here and there, but when I listen to them, I'm just like, "Ooh, yeah, that's uh... that's pretty close." But, and even just when I play shows, trying to have that rapport with an audience, and you know, you're playing kind of heavy, sad songs, but at the same time, trying to keep it light with the audience. So that's my inspiration,
MHC: You know what? I never thought about it until just now, when you said that, but I think that subconsciously, I've modeled my stage banter after Jeff Tweedy, too. [Laughs]
Norma MacDonald: Oh, really? [Laughs]
MHC: Yeah, I think I have! Just because it makes such an impression. He does it really well, that sort of intimate quality. Just as a solo acoustic singer-songwriter, he has that really charming way of connecting with an audience that I think can be difficult to pull off.
Norma MacDonald: It really can because it always runs the risk of being smarmy and self indulgent, and singer-songwriters can sometimes be overly confessional. It can feel manipulative, almost? But yeah, he never has that. He knows exactly where to draw the line.
MHC: Yeah.
MMM: Cool. So since you were mentioning you're a songwriter, I'm curious if you've read How to Write One Song, because we have asked a couple other songwriters on the show if they had a favorite exercise from the book, or-
Norma MacDonald: I do have a favorite exercise from the book. There's an exercise where, I don't know if there's a name for it or not, but you basically just look around the room and write down objects that are in the room, write down a bunch of verbs, write down a bunch of adjectives, and just kind of put things together just randomly like, so you're putting words together that wouldn't necessarily have any connection to each other. But then once you put them next to each other, you've created a connection between them. And then from there, you can kind of, not that the rest of the song writes itself, but you can definitely use that as a springboard. And I really find, since I read that book, people think that songwriting is always just an epiphany. And it's a moment of inspiration that you just have to wait for it to strike. And really, he has such a utilitarian attitude towards songwriting, that you just go and you do it. And sometimes it's gold. And sometimes it's just nothing special, but you just keep doing it anyway. So my partner and I have been doing songwriting challenge days. We'll put aside three hours. And we'll each go in different rooms. And we have a challenge that you have to, at the end of the three hours, you have to have written three songs. And it doesn't matter how good they are, it doesn't matter- You know, the lyrics can be terrible, but you need a whole song done. And then we get to have a beer as a reward [laughs]. So at the end we'll have a beer, play each other our songs, but we've written so much this way. And both in the past, have had a tendency to not write anything for a while, and then just be like, "Oh, man, I need to put out a new record. I need to write all this stuff at once." But I feel like both of us have been writing more consistently, and I do feel like How to Write One Song was a big push in that direction.
MHC: That sounds lovely. Now that you mention that, it reminds me that he's invited our little Zoom group to partake in that. He's suggested that we do that exercise with the two of you over Zoom. Now I'm wanting to revisit that plan. Because it sounds really fun.
Norma MacDonald: And it would be a great idea to do it with a larger group of people, too.
MHC: Mhmm.
Norma MacDonald: A little more nerve wracking, I guess. But I think you'd get some more inspiration, probably, and have some different perspectives, and just see what people would do with their time. And yeah. I'm on board for that, too.
MHC: Yeah, gotta get babysitting, do it up right.
Norma MacDonald: [Laughs] I've had people that have said that they don't like that about it, his utilitarian approach to songwriting, because they like the idea that songwriting is magic, that it is something that is pulled from the heavens. And I think that, in a world that, you know, I kind of feel like we're losing some magic in things. And I think that people like that idea of something being sacred, like songwriting, but it makes it just feel more attainable, knowing that you just keep doing it, and something good is gonna come out.
MHC: Well, I think I can see that argument. But also, as a songwriter, it's a tall order to feel like you have to channel magic every time you sit down to do something that's just a part of your well-being and self-care and livelihood.
MMM: Just waiting for inspiration to strike, too, is like, daunting.
Norma MacDonald: Yeah. And I feel like that's a bit of a myth that's been propagated by the music industry for years and years, too, that, "Oh, these people that can do this, they're so special." But really, we can all do it if we really want to.
MHC: Yeah, there's nothing that says that what they're churning out is any better than what people are making that isn't getting the press package.
Norma MacDonald: Exactly. Yeah, really, at the end of the day, a lot of (this is getting away from Wilco, but) success in the music industry, a lot of it is about how bad you want it.
MHC: Mhmm.
Norma MacDonald: It's not how good of a writer you or how good of a performer or whatever. It's like, what are you willing to put into it? You know?
MHC: Yeah, absolutely. Why don't you tell us a bit about your music and sort of your journey as a musician. We're talking about being songwriters, and our relationship to songwriting and our relationship to Wilco. Where have you been? Where you going as a musician yourself?
Norma MacDonald: So my journey is long. I started playing music full time when I was quite young. So I was 19, at university, he first time I went to university. I started playing in a cover band, and we became very successful and very popular, first in Halifax, and then to the point that we were touring across the country, but playing, like, university campuses, playing in bars, things like that. So I was able to support myself that way. It was very fun, but it was very hub-ish kind of music. And I didn't really love the music that we played. And at that time, I mean, this is a long time ago, and I was very into Sarah McLachlan at the time. And, you know, it's like, I need to start writing songs. So I started writing these very moody dark kind of songs. The very, very early days of me playing guitar as well, like two months before I started playing in that band was when I got my first guitar, and I was kind of thrown into being the rhythm player. So I had to learn how to play very quickly. When I mentioned about hearing Being There for the first time, when we were on tour, this is the band that I was touring with. So I was playing music that didn't really feel like me, I didn't really love it, and then heard this band, I was like, "Oh my god, I want to make this music." This is what I want to do. And so eventually, you know, that band broke up, and I was kind of just figuring out what I wanted to do. And I was very nervous about playing my own songs, and I really hadn't, like, written a ton of them. But eventually, it was kind of like, I'd like to try to put my own band together and just record an album of my own songs. So that was my first album. My first solo album came out in like 2005, which is crazy. But that is definitely very [laughs] Wilco influenced. And really, I'm gonna say the majority of them are. I go back and listen to them, and I can hear what Wilco albums I was very into at that time. My songwriting, it tends to be alt-country to folk. My last record came out on April 24, of 2020. So that was a very difficult time [laughs] to release a record. It was actually pretty heartbreaking because I worked, like everybody putting together a record, you work really, really hard on it, and you're like, "oh, wow, this is the best thing that I've done to date. "And then you just kind of release it to a world that is not listening to anything at that point. So I started recording another album last year, and I was kind of trepidatious about it. It costs a lot of money to record a record. I don't have the skills to engineer things myself. I worked with a producer I hadn't worked with before a guy named Dan Ledwell, who lives out of Lake Echo, in Dartmouth here and he's fabulous. He's been nominated for several Juno Awards. He's just a really great producer, but also a really fun, easygoing guy, so we just finished. The guy who mastered it, Chad, my partner came across us. He was like, "Who can we get to master your record who has mastered a bunch of records that you love?" And I'm a huge Neko Case fan.
MHC: Oh, yeah.
Norma MacDonald: Yeah. Huge Neko Case fan.
Meredith Coons: Same.
Norma MacDonald: I do love Emmylou Harris as well. So the guy who mastered pretty much all the Neko records and Emmylou Harris's "Wrecking Ball," which is one of my favorites of all time."
MMM: Oh. I love that album.
Norma MacDonald: It's so good.
MMM: It's so good.
Norma MacDonald: Yeah. So very excited about that. So the new record's called "In Waves." I still don't really know what I'm doing with it. I'm gonna release it in the fall. I'm still kind of navigating this whole, releasing a bunch of singles before the album comes out. Everything needs a video. I'm just trying to figure out what to do with it. But yeah, I'm really happy with the record. It's nice to feel that every time I make something. I'm like, "Oh, this is better than the last thing I made. This feels like a step up from my last record that felt like the best thing that I had made to date." So it's a nice feeling.
MHC: Totally. Yeah, I hear that. And I love that Chad suggested that for you. That's such a good idea. And I'm so glad that it worked out so well.
Norma MacDonald: He just like cold emailed the guy, too.
MHC: Heck yeah, that's what you do.
Norma MacDonald: Which I would never do.
MHC: I love cold emailing. now. I've gotten to the point where, just through doing interviews and whatnot and different things, I don't care. If they say no, they say no, but sometimes they say yes. Sometimes you get an email that's perfectly friendly, and nice and wonderful that's a no, but it's from someone you admire. So, all kinds of reasons. cold emailing is good for the soul.
Norma MacDonald: I feel like you need to write a blog post about that.
MHC: Right? Maybe I will. I'll pitch it somewhere. "How cold emailing changed my life."
Norma MacDonald: I would read it.
MHC: Well, thank you very much.
MMM: I could use it, too. Meredith is the pro cold emailer of this podcast and it takes me like a week to build up the courage to cold email someone so-
MHC: -but I'm also completely comfortable with you sending me your draft.
MMM: Yes, that was very helpful. Meredith is my like... she gives me extra confidence and peace of mind of like, "I sound like a normal person in this email. And- [laughs].
MHC: Yes, you are a normal person. Well, hey, we've bonded. We've talked Wilco, we've talked Neko Case, and we'll let you head off to bed, 'cause, while it's 5:40 where I am, it's 9:40 where you are.
Norma MacDonald: It's almost 10:00 here.
MMM: Oh, you're an hour ahead of me even.
Norma MacDonald: Yeah, we're way out here in the ocean.
MHC: All right. Well, thank you so much.
Norma MacDonald: Thank you. My pleasure. It was really nice to meet you, too.
MMM: Really nice to meet you, Norma.
MHC: Nice to meet you. Let's do our songwriting challenge soon.
Norma MacDonald: I would love that.
THEME MUSIC
MMM: Well, that was a really nice conversation.
MHC: Mm hmm. I think we should have her on every day.
MMM: Oh, I agree.
MHC: Let's do it. Just kidding! Nobody has time for that. As much as it would be so fun.
MMM: I don't know if Norma said where you can find her music.
MHC: Norma did not say where he can find her music, but you can follow her on Instagram. It's @NormaMacDonald. And that should lead you to whatever you need to find. She has a website NormaMacDonald.com. And that's Mac Donald, M-A-C. And it's NorMA, N-O-R-M-A. So yeah, definitely pay attention to that. She's got an album coming out in the fall. There you go. Write us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else. Just tell people that we're good! We think you're good.
MMM: That helps a lot.
MHC: We can just appreciate each other. And it's nice. Hey, write us a review, and email us, and we'll write you a review. If you need one.
MMM: Yeah.
MHC: I'm comfortable with that. Unless you know, you're horrible. But if you're listening to this, then I doubt you are.
MMM: That sounds like a good trade to me.
MHC: Yeah, I think so too. All right, guys. Wilco Will Love You. We will love you.
MMM: I think we did good.
MHC: Another one in the bank. On that note, bye!
MMM: Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai