Skye Wallace dresses her radio-friendly sensitivity in rock music hooks and a brash vocal delivery – the leather-and-lace approach.LANE DORSEY/Supplied
“Tore myself apart, killed myself for my art,” Skye Wallace sings on the lead track to her new album, Terribly Good. Is this hyperbole? Melodrama? Pop music believes in both.
Or is this a singer-guitarist howling against the wind in a public confession of vulnerability? Pop music believes in that too, now more than ever. Selena Gomez, for example, released the emotional mental-health single My Mind & Me this month. Adele had a hit a year ago with a song that was literally a request for leniency – “Go easy on me, baby,” she sang – and Shawn Mendes began his 2018 single In My Blood with “Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in.”
Wallace’s Tooth and Nail song is a defiant, stomping rocker about the unreasonable expectations and self-doubt that plague young artists. “It’s a reminder to me to look at yourself through the eyes of your younger self and to realize all the things I’ve accomplished and fought for, and to continue to fight for a space for myself in this world,” says the 32-year-old native of Whitby, Ont., speaking from the road at a Days Inn in Kamloops, B.C.
Wallace dresses her radio-friendly sensitivity in rock music hooks and a brash vocal delivery – the leather-and-lace approach. The introspection found on Wallace’s fourth album is new to the songwriter, who has always felt more comfortable as a storytelling narrator. “It’s outside of my comfort zone, but it’s cathartic and empowering and I think the listeners connect to it.”
Linking to audiences, of course, is what the music industry is all about. Here’s how Wallace and her new record label are making those connections.
Getting a team: Wallace’s previous albums, dating back to 2014′s Living Parts, were released independently. In 2019, she signed with Toronto’s Six Shooter Records, a thriving boutique label (owned and operated by women) that is home to Whitehorse, William Prince, Tanya Tagaq, July Talk, Amelia Curran and Rheostatics. “It felt like the time where I wanted to see what the next step was, as far as growth and momentum,” Wallace says, explaining her decision to sign with a label.
Six Shooter joined Wallace’s team, which already included manager Savannah Wellman (co-founder of Tiny Kingdom, a Vancouver label and artist management company) and well-established booking agents Jack Ross and Stefanie Purificati (with the Agency for the Performing Arts).
LANE DORSEY/Supplied
Guitar rock is back (sort of): You wouldn’t know it by looking at the pop charts, but guitar-based rock is an aesthetic in vogue. And some of the best artists of the genre are women – Brittany Howard, Courtney Barnett and Canada’s Terra Lightfoot, to name a few. Still, Wallace’s high-energy riffs-and-blare approach would have been much more marketable in the 1990s. “There are fans out there who are really interested in it,” says Six Shooter chief executive Helen Britton. “But radio formats are narrower and narrower and more particular as the years go by, and it’s always been tough to get female-fronted rock music played anyway.”
Hitting the road: This past summer was a trying one for touring artists who battled COVID-19 concert cancellations, inflated costs, equipment scarcity and a saturated field with too many acts touring at the same time. And, yet, in her bio information, Wallace is billed as a “guitar-slinging Canadian road warrior.” With TikTok promotion being the trendy marketing tool and with all the factors that have colluded to make touring for mid-level artists unprofitable, why hit the road?
“Honestly, I’ve never seen it this hard out there,” Britton says. “But you can’t really put out a record and not leave your house. You have to go find your fans.” Wallace is currently in the middle of a Canadian tour that finishes at Toronto’s Lee’s Palace, a bump up in venue size from her last headlining show in the city at the Horseshoe Tavern. For 2023, the plan is to get Wallace in front of larger crowds as an opening act for bigger artists.
Fighting the fight: Wallace says she has received nothing but respect and support from the male acts she has toured with, Matt Mays + El Torpedo and the Sam Roberts Band included. In terms of the treatment she otherwise receives, however, there are issues. “There are still times where a dude will explain my effect pedals to me,” says the guitarist, who addressed glass ceilings on the 2019 single There is a Wall. “Or they ask a male member in my band about my equipment. So, there’s work to be done.”
Skye Wallace plays the following Ontario dates: Nov. 17, St Catharine’s; Nov. 18, Kingston; Nov. 19, Ottawa, Nov. 20, London; Nov. 24, Hamilton; Nov. 25, Oshawa; Nov. 26, Toronto.