When Pat Skinner finished her new CD, entitled Sundays for Maud, last July, she had every intention of dedicating it to her grandmother, in return for the inspiration Skinner had gathered from their weekly meetings over the past three years. A month later, her grandmother passed away at the age of 92, suddenly casting a new poignancy on the recording.
�My grandmother would actually laugh if she heard the CD,� Skinner admits. �She had this thing about gals who wrote about sexy subjects, and that�s what she�d think of these songs because they�re erotic or poetic in content.�
It�s not new territory for Skinner, whose work has always explored personal themes, and which has been an approach that fits perfectly with her atmospheric folk-rock style.
�Even on my last album, Sundays for Maud, there were some songs that talked about the area around Huntsville and Camp Wabanaki, where I was for most of the summers during my teens,� she explains.
�I just seemed to keep coming back to these memories when I�d write that it made sense to somehow tie all the songs together with a common thread on an album. I guess when you spend such a big chunk of your life at a place like that, it never leaves you. I have especially fond memories of the times after I became a counsellor and I�d take the homesick kids up the hill and we�d just sit and talk and eat sunflower seeds. There are some songs that refer to specific things like that, but there�s also songs about people I grew up with, which ties into the overall theme as well.�
�These songs didn�t really come out of me wanting to tell specific stories about that time, but I started writing after I�d been thinking about the place and then trying to put myself in the mindset of being 15 again.
�I took a lot of those vignettes and ideas and played around with them, so while on one hand the songs are personal, in another way they�re not so much. More than anything, the album is a narrative about a place and not me. I think most people have similar memories about a place like that, so in that way I hope when people hear it they can put themselves in that same mindset I was in when I wrote the songs.�
Although Skinner is enjoying her current teaching position, she says it probably won�t allow her and her band to play as much as she would like in support of the album. She is, however, still open to any opportunity to play in the immediate area and is thoroughly looking forward to the album�s launch party.
�I know it�s going to be a really interesting mix, both musically and with the audience,� she says. �A lot of my old camp friends are going to be there, along with some of my students. We�ll be a five-piece band too, with Kim Regimbal from Snack sitting in. We can�t reproduce all the sounds on the album, but we�re going to do the best we can.�
Aside from being available at the show, Pat Skinner�s Camp Songs is on sale at Twelfth Night Music in Waterloo and Guelph.
�I still had some songs from Sweetfall that I wanted to record as well as some new songs where my singing and lyrics were really well defined, in contrast to how it had been in the band, so eventually we decided we should do an acoustic CD.
�Mark would be writing and recording fantastic music constantly and would keep giving me tapes. I�d just listen to them and write little stories that I thought would fit the mood,� Skinner says.
Sundays for Maud is indeed a fine showcase for Skinner�s smooth vocals, as well as the band�s tight instrumentation. And while the dedication may be a sombre reminder of mortality, Skinner maintains her songs are a celebration of the here and now.
�Most of the lyrics focus on atmospheres and poetics,� she says. �Not every song is about a Sunday, but I think every song has a Sunday feeling; that laziness you have on a Sunday morning, then the dread you start to feel by the evening thinking about the things you have to do first thing on Monday morning. Also that feeling you have if you love someone that�s far away and you might only get to see them on the weekend. It's really bittersweet."
�I like the setting of a caf� better because I�m not very demonstrative behind a microphone,� she says. �I like to be subdued and not really be the focus of anyone�s attention, so it�s nice to see people in a setting where they�re enjoying themselves and each other and then sitting back and checking out the music.�