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Mortified: Singer-songwriter Lorri Solomon's return to recording

After a year-long hiatus due to a medical issue, singer-songwriter Lorri Solomon-Matthewson is back-and she's hard at work on material for a new album and tour.
Lorri Matthewson

            After a year-long hiatus due to a medical issue, singer-songwriter Lorri Solomon-Matthewson is back-and she's hard at work on material for a new album and tour. The project's working title is “Mortified” in honour of her friend, Moose Mountain-area potter, Gerald Morton, who passed away in 2014.

            “Mort was an unrepentant artist,” says Solomon-Matthewson. “That's what he did. And this project is a nod to the idea of an artist who is unflinching.”

            “I loved Mort,” she continues, holding a pottery cast of the potter's face and a vintage edition of American writer Dorothy Parker's poems. “Mort would cook fish and this (book) was his- I would read this to him. He said to me 'You should read this.' I borrowed it, but he ended up giving it to me.”

            “To me, Mort was an artist and I own a lot of his work. The dishes I use every day, all day- all Mort's. I like that his hands were on them, creating them.”

            “There is an energy to his pottery,” adds Solomon-Matthewson. “I learned that there's the art and the craft. They're both vaild forms of expression. For me, it's more about the art as opposed to the craft, but you need both. That's something I learned from Mort.”

            Although 'Mortified' is a working title for Solomon-Matthewson's next project (“It could change”), she says that the artistic inspiration her late friend provided her with permeates the nearly 30 songs she will choose from to decide the CD's final cuts.

            “Of course, there's a song about Mort,” smiles Solomon-Matthewson. “It's called 'Mort's Toast.'”

            In this tribute to her friend, Solomon-Matthewson references Morton's iconic Saskatchewan pottery, as well as homey pleasures, writing: “And there's marshmallow cookies, like you had at your mom's/ Piled in your potter's dish.”

            “This one might be (Mort's) favourite,” she says, of another verse with an irreverent twist on Morton's peace being disturbed by “the park police” in a place where “the laws and the rules all make sense...”

            Another person whom Solomon-Matthewson credits with her return to music is her husband Greg Matthewson.

            “When I was sick, I almost sold my gear,” she says. “'The Mister' told me: 'You don't have to do that now; wait until you get better and see how you feel then.'”

            “You go through a phase in writing songs where you only present the ones that don't offend,” adds Solomon-Matthewson. “You don't want to ruffle feathers.”

            “ But being sick reminded me that life is short. Before, I thought I had a lot of time,” says the now-healthy performer. “But now there's so much more urgency to it all.”

            Case in point: Solomon-Matthewson says much of the new material she's currently writing is similar in tone to her song 'I Don't Have To Be Nice', from her second CD 'Two Days In June.'

            “But I've been renewing things as far as songwriting goes. I'm back into journalling, back into writing,” she continues. “It's a process. I've been bouncing some songs around lyrically and bouncing some around musically, but definitely, there will be more songs like 'I Don't Have To Be Nice.'”

            “Lately, I've been listening to old blues stuff and swing standards. Lyrically, they're just better than what's played on mainstream radio today. They say stuff, and that's what I want to continue to do.”

            “But I want to stress that this CD isn't a downer,” adds Solomon-Matthewson. “It's irreverent, funny and less censored than anything I've done before.”

            Born in Ottawa, Solomon-Matthewson grew up on a farm near Manor. 'Barn Went Flat' is a song which came about after the singer-songwriter revisited her childhood home.

            “Recently, someone burned down my parents' old farmhouse near Manor,” she says. “Mom and Dad are both gone now and nobody's living there, but even before it burned down, someone went out there and broke all of the windows in the house. I saw it right after that and the song, 'Barn Went Flat'  was the result of that experience.”

            She writes: 'I said I'd never go back, but last week I did/ Dug my toe in the dirt like when I was a kid...'

            'Windows smashed out, swing sets junk/Waist-high weeds around the water pump/Clothes line pole but there is no line/A bumper crop of thistle from the garden this time.'

            Solomon-Matthewson says for her, the writing process is ongoing.

            “ I always research, write and perform,” she says. “I usually write longhand, because I  carry a journal with me and I always have a notebook. The lyrics end up on my computer, simply because I have them right up on the screen, when I'm figuring out where the chords go.”

            Solomon-Matthewson's upcoming recording will be her third.

            “The first one was recorded at CBC Radio One in Regina,” she says. “The second one was recorded at home. This one-the third- will be wherever the producer says we'll record. And I'm really hoping that producer will be Ken Hamm.”

            “I'm following the process that the CBC used,” adds Solomon-Mattweson. “With the first (album), there were 24 to 30 potential songs. That was my rough draft. Then we crowd-tested them and the CBC sent them to my producer. It's not a matter of pushing out a product, but I'm tentatively planning a 'test-tour' to try out which songs will make it onto the CD and then, I'm hoping to do a small tour after that. But touring all depends on when the CD is finished.”

            Solomon-Matthewson says a brief return to the stage in August underscored her commitment to performing live.

            “This summer, I was booked to perform at a place called Hillbilly Hoedown outside Prince Albert,” she says. “I invited a friend to come along and perform with me because I hadn't played in a year and I was terrified. But it was a good, warm place and I felt the encouragement.”

            “I play every day for the joy of it,” says Solomon-Matthewson. “We race each other to the bottom when we don't value what we do.”

            “When I was sick, I felt like I had to get back to music. It was a case of 'If you're going to waste the gift; we're going to take it from you.'”

            “Now, getting back to music feels like coming home.”