About a month ago, during the In the Dead of Winter Festival, I had the privilege to see the dynamic folk/country duo Tomato/Tomato at the Bluegrass Brunch, and it was a most delightful and spirited way to start the day! Tomato/Tomato are based in Saint John, New Brunswick. Husband and wife team John and Lisa McLaggan are for sure one of the most charming musical duos in the Maritimes. They have toured across Canada, to both Australia and the United Kingdom, have been nominated for multiple East Coast Music Awards, and won “Group Recording of the Year” and “SOCAN Song of the Year” at the Music/Musique New Brunswick Awards in 2017. Their new album, Canary in a Coal Mine, was just released on March 1st, 2019, and between March 8th and 21st they are headed back to Australia for a number of shows there. I had a wonderful time chatting with John and Lisa at the Mayflower Curling Club in Halifax.
“We are super excited about [the release of our new album],” Lisa tells me, “It was recorded at The Bomb Shelter Studio in East Nashville, and it was recorded to sixteen track tape, so that was really cool. We’re more excited about this project than anything that we have released before!” When I ask why she quickly responds, “Because it’s better,” and laughs heartily.
“Yes, I do believe that,” John agrees, “This is the first time that we had somebody else record [an album of ours]. We’d always done all our own recording at home. So, this really allowed us to go down and just be artists and not have to worry about, “oh, is that microphone placed in the right spot?” ..It also allowed us to get different musicians and different perspectives and to have the perspective of the engineer. So, that was really helpful. It was a much quicker process because of that. It was nine days of recording and mixing and then it was done. I think when you record to tape you just have to make decisions early on, because there isn’t an opportunity to sit and edit, and edit, and tweak, which I think was a really good thing.”
The choosing of the Bomb Shelter Studio was serendipitous and allowed John and Lisa to reconnect with an old friend in the artistic hub of Nashville.
“We were reflecting on our favourite records, and trying to figure out what made them so special- in terms of production- so we started researching where our favourite albums had been recorded and produced,” explains Lisa.
“It’s a hard thing to separate,” says John, “because you might go back and listen to some albums that you love, but when you listen to the production separately, you might not love that. It’s tricky. For me, the one album I kept coming back to was the Alabama Shakes, their first album, Boys & Girls. From the minute that I heard it, I just thought that sounded like what analog should sound like, and so that studio was always at the top of my list. We weren’t set on going to Nashville, that’s what everyone kind of does, we just wanted to find a great studio. If it’s in Portland, or wherever, we just want to find the right fit. So, we reached out to a friend of ours, we used to live in Miami, and we played a lot of jazz gigs with this fellow, he’s an amazing bass player, he was from Nashville originally, and he had moved back to Nashville. So we sent him an email and just inquired, ‘what are some great studios that you know of that aren’t a million dollars and will actually be invested in our project.’ And, as it turns out, when he wrote back he said, ‘Well, I’m biased. I work at this great studio called the Bomb Shelter,’ and that’s where that [Alabama Shakes] album was recorded! And we were just like, “WOW!” At that moment, it was just like, “We’re done. That’s where we’re going.” Lisa adds, “He said, ‘Come down, guys! When do you want to come?’ And we were like, ‘January?’, she laughs.
“It was crazy,” says John. “We had no idea he was working there. What are the odds?… The other thing that is different about this album is that I spent a lot more time writing it. For the last albums [the songs] were written for the album, I wrote ten songs or so and that’s what went on the album. Maybe I wrote eleven and didn’t use one. This time I wrote close to forty songs, and then we recorded ten originals and two covers. So, that was a different kind of process that allowed me to take more chances as a writer, because I didn’t have to have everything work out. I’m not a fast writer. It takes me about a week by the time I mull it over and try different things. So, I write about a song a week. Just keep going. We always say, ‘just keep making pancakes.’ You’re going to burn a few. … And then we try them out. “Gotta Get Up” was a totally different tune for awhile, and sometimes it’s like, ‘I know this tune can be something, but [right now] it’s not, but you then you think, ‘[I] just need to put down the acoustic, grab a resonator, and change the key, and have [Lisa] sing it, and change the tempo…’ and sometimes that’s all it needs.”
“That’s kind of where I come in to the process,” says Lisa, “He has this finished product- the skeleton is done: the melody, the chords and the lyrics, and then he brings it to me. Sometimes I’m just harmonizing with him when he first shows it to me, and sometimes, like in the case of “Gotta Get Up” I’m like, ‘I think I should be singing the song. Why don’t we try this?’ I start envisioning the arrangements a bit more. And saying, ‘Ooh, if we had a hit here, if we repeated this…’ and that’s the part of music that makes me the most excited! It’s the stuff that’s not written down, that’s off the page. So it’s really a good way for me to contribute to the arrangements of the songs.” “Yes,” John agrees. “and take ownership of them as well.” “I have this cake analogy,” adds Lisa, “where I think of it as John bakes this amazing cake, he’s measured everything perfectly, it’s like perfectly golden and comes out of the oven and I’m like, ‘Okay! I’m going to decorate it!’ and I start getting all the frosting, and the decorations and stuff, and he does a lot of the decorating too, but that’s just sort of my role, I guess.” “We’re different personalities that way,” says John, “I’m a reader. I read a lot. We played jazz for years, and I only wrote instrumental music. I wrote Big Band music, and all kinds of different things, never lyrics. That’s more of a recent thing. But, once I started doing it it felt like a great fit because I’ve always been into literature. It just seemed like a natural combination of two things that I really love. I love words. The song “Algorithm,” if you actually go through it, you’ll find a bunch of math words. They’re not necessarily used in the traditional sense, or they might be slanting off a different meaning of them. but i really enjoy getting into a vocabulary world for a song. So, if it’s going to be about algorithms then I’m looking up as many different math words as I can and trying to incorporate those. It’s a way to keep it interesting for me, too. You can easily slide into a rut of using the same vocabulary over and over again, even if the song meaning is different. Like we do when we speak. I try to tweak the personalities of the songs a little bit.”
The McLaggans both have degrees in Jazz Performance, and while they have been performing together for years their evolution from jazz to folk/country is more recent.
“We were playing jazz gigs as a duo,” Lisa explains, “We had met in school for jazz, so that’s all we had ever done. But, around the house, we were singing folk music and we were harmonizing, and there was a specific day that we were just hanging out and singing and harmonizing, and I actually had a shaker in the house, a cabasa, and John had his guitar because we had one very random ask for us to play at the zoo in Saint John, but it was to lead a parade of children during Christmas in July or something-“ “There was a llama,” adds John, amid laughter. “When we were playing as a jazz duo John played saxophone and I played piano and sang, and we can’t lead a parade with a piano, so John was like, ‘Well, I played some guitar in High School, I could surely find some chords to play these Christmas songs. We’ll just make it happen!” So the guitar was out, it was out of the case, it was in the house. I was pregnant with our daughter at the time, and we were strumming some tunes, I had the shaker and I was like, ‘You know. We sound good together! We should totally do this!’ And John was like, ‘No,’” Lisa laughs, “He was like, ‘You’re crazy.’” “Well, I was just learning to play guitar,” says John, “At this point, I wasn’t a singer. So, it was a lot to take on. It was a lot to wrap my head around.”
Not long after, they had a local jazz gig at a bar in Saint John and they asked the owner if they could do some folk covers along with their usual jazz set. “He didn’t care,” laughs Lisa, “he was like, ‘Sure, reset. Do whatever you want.’” They performed four or five cover songs, Lisa had her cabasa, and John was “so nervous [he] could barely sing.” “We had no aspirations to do anything with it, it was just a fun thing to do,” he says. That changed when they saw the band Old Crow Medicine Show live in Fredericton, with Shakey Graves as an Opening Act.
“The night that we saw Shakey Graves and Old Crow was a shift,” says Lisa. “It was very inspiring, and that’s when we went in more of a country direction. Shakey Graves does a lot of multitasking when he plays, so that was inspiring for me to see as a percussionist. He had both feet going, and he plays the guitar and he sings, and it’s all at the same time. I was really into it and I got home and was like, ‘I’m going to do this too!’” She laughs, “I already had a tambourine that I had been playing- that I hit with one foot with a kick drum pedal- but other than that, I didn’t have anything else. So, I originally I didn’t have a kick drum, and I played an old suitcase, an old hardshell Samsonite suitcase, that I hooked a kick drum pedal up to, so I played that.” “We were just playing Farmer’s Markets,” says John, “Yeah. Open case in Saint John. For tips,” adds Lisa. “Then we did [CBC] Searchlight,” says John, “and we ended up winning for New Brunswick, and we started getting some calls from festivals, and then were like, ‘What’s the ECMAs about?’ We were very new when it came to that part of the industry. We kept saying yes. and taking opportunities, and we just ran with it.” Their first album was nominated for Music/Musique New Brunswick and East Coast Music Awards. “We were completely blown away by that support from the industry,” says Lisa, “and, as it turns out, this kind of music is a lot more fun for us than jazz!” She laughs.
When asked about their choice of moniker Lisa explains that when they were doing jazz gigs their name was “The John and Lisa Duo”. “Which is, like, the worst name ever,” Lisa says, amid laughter, “So, knowing that it was super lame, we decided to start thinking about another name. It’s like naming a child, it’s a big commitment. So, we had a list of names. We were sitting around with friends in our buddy’s basement and we were like, ‘What do you guys think about this or that’ and our buddy said, ‘I dunno, guys. It’s Tomato/Tomato, you know, whatever.’ And I was like, ‘It IS Tomato/Tomato!” She laughs again, “That’s actually perfect! We latched on to it when he said it. It became the name that day. We never looked back.” “It becomes more suitable as the years go on,” says John. “Just with our personalities,” says Lisa, “It just matches it.”
The writing of “Kite Song” was inspired by a trip to a coffee shop in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. “We were sitting there and a gentleman walked in, and you could just tell he was a character,” says John. “He had super frazzled hair,” adds Lisa. “Grey hair, shooting straight up. He was wearing a peacoat buttoned all the way up, he had a red scarf on, tied, jeans rolled up- I can picture him perfectly- deck shoes… he sat in the corner, laid the paper out and was talking to himself. He was a local character.” “The people who worked there knew him by name. They were like, ‘Oh, hey, So and So!’ And he helped himself. I remember him opening up the cooler and just grabbing a drink,” says Lisa. “It was just one of those great moments. And the venue, the coffee shop, was very interesting. I mention a Cha Cha record in the song, and there was a Cha Cha record playing up on the wall, actually, like up above him, on a shelf. And the girl behind the counter had interesting dyed hair, and almost everything in the song is directly out of that moment in time. So, we went back to the hotel and I was frantically writing it all down in my journal. Then, we were talking about it, and I was like, ‘That guy was really interesting.’ and I said, ‘If it wasn’t for you, I would totally be that guy in the coffee shop talking to himself and reading the newspaper.’ And she was laughing at that, and I was like, ‘Well, don’t get too cocky because that would also be you if it wasn’t for me, you would also be that person.’” They both laugh. “True story,” says Lisa.
“Gotta Get Up,” on the other hand sees the duo delve into more overtly political territory.
“That’s another thing about this album is that it digs a little deeper, it’s a little more raw and it’s a little more personal,” says Lisa. “Our other albums were more safe, lyrically, and so I feel like it’s almost like how we tell kids, ‘you’re just as bad as the bully if you don’t stick up for someone being bullied.’ It’s almost like that’s what’s happened to us, musically. We just can’t be quiet anymore. It’s just time. We just can’t not say how we feel anymore.” “In so many ways the election of Donald Trump was just a bridge too far,” says John, “The song “Gotta Get Up” was written after the riots in Charlottesville. We just had this feeling that everything was all coming down. All the stuff that we thought was gone, or maybe not gone entirely, but we thought was mostly gone was not gone at all. And that was a terrifying realization, and a very disappointing one. I think that song was born out of that moment. It tied in for us, because we used to live in the States, we lived in Iowa, and we know how those little midwest Walmart towns work, so it hit close to home.” “I have family in States,” says Lisa, “and a lot of people ask me, ‘how does your family feel about all of this stuff going on’ and my family is just as mortified as the rest of the world. What is going on is not representative of the entire country.” “I don’t tend to put in a lot of stuff that is completely unrelated to my life,” says John of the song’s lyrics, “For example, if you’re writing in a country or folk genre it’s very tempting to write about the Southern US, it’s very common to sort of drop those names. But in “Gotta Get Up” there’s very specific references to places in the US. But they’re all connections we have. It talks about a road in Nebraska, and we’ve driven that road. It was important to me to feel like I was writing from an authentic place. I think the song is written from the perspective of someone who was living in a small town like we were in Iowa, and was maybe very religious, and grew up with the church being a big part of their life, and then watching it all be co-opted for political means and watching it change for them. Religion and Politics are so closely intertwined in that part of the States, so just seeing these terrible things being said in the name of your religion, that maybe you really grew up with, and that helped guide your life, and, all of a sudden, you’re sitting in church and the preacher is saying something and you’re thinking, ‘That doesn’t seem right to me.’ How that would feel. That’s where that one is coming from. What do you do when someone changes your faith on you?… There are a lot of churches in the US that have very extreme beliefs, and there’s got to be someone in that congregation who is horrified. But, these are your aunts and your uncles and the people you’ve grown up with your whole life. What do you do? I think it’s really important that both sides try to take the time to see the other side’s perspective, because it’s not happening right now… The problem is that everything is pitched as a ten. Everything Donald Trump does is a ten. But, it’s probably not a ten. He gets pretty high marks for stupidity, but maybe it’s a seven. Maybe, if you thought about it for a second, you could be like, ‘okay, I don’t agree, but maybe I can see where these people are coming from?’ You could start that as a discussing point. When everyone is at a ten, there’s no conversation.” “There’s nowhere to go but eleven,” says Lisa. “If there’s no conversation, there’s no progress,” says John, “Conversation is really at a minimum right now.”
Canary In a Coal Mine also sees John and Lisa reimagine A-ha’s 1985 Billboard Chart topper “Take On Me.”
“I’ve always wanted to do that song,” says John,” It goes back to our jazz/instrumental days. Because, there’s this really sweet halftime groove in the chorus that’s really random and unique and I’ve always really loved that. So, for a decade, I’ve been wanting to cover that song and this just ended up being the right time to do it. We tried it in a few different ways. We had a faster version, actually. That was a little more, like, Outlaw Country, but it was too much because the song gets really intense at times, vocally, and it was just too much,” he laughs, “So then we just took it the other way.” “As a singer it was really fun because it allowed me to sing in a softer way, and I really liked it,” says Lisa, who has studied jazz, opera, and music education, “I’m a singer first. I like playing washboard and percussion and all that stuff, that’s really fun, but I could put all of it down and just sing ballads and be very happy. So, as a singer that song is really fun because there’s a couple moments in there where everything is very light, and I really enjoy getting to do that and it’s very rare that I get to.” “It ended up being a fun problem to solve in the chorus because it’s really rangy,” said John, “it starts really low, so I take over the melody in the chorus for a minute, and then we sing in unison, and then Lisa goes up and I go down, so then she she’s in melody, and I’m back into harmony, and it was just some fun problem solving.” “It’s fun to kind of slow it down and dig into the lyric a little bit,” says Lisa. “It sounded really sweet on the album too,” adds John, “Because it’s a full band thing, so we have pedal steel playing all that, and some really cool guitar parts intertwined with that. It turned out really cool.” “It’s one of my favourites,” says Lisa. “It’s a really sweet track.”
As different as they are, Lisa says that what she and John have in common is their self-proclaimed nerdiness and their enjoyment of the details in music.
“We are so nerdy and there’s nothing that we have been doing that hasn’t been thought about and analyzed, and thought about a few more times, and changed, and figured out. We are very deliberate in what we are doing,” says Lisa. “We talk so much about pronunciation,” says John. “We are super nerdy. ‘It’s not “eeh’ it’s ‘eeh,’” he says, giving me an example, and laughing. Both sounds are nearly identical, but not quite. “It’s getting your harmony to really buzz with a person, especially as a duo when you don’t have a third harmony part there,” Lisa explains, “A lot of it, and this is very nerdy of me, but it’s true, it comes down to your vowel placement and locking that in. So, we’ve done a lot of work together, we’ve really worked hard to align every vowel sound and get it to buzz in the right way.” “It does feel a bit like a Saturday Night Live sketch when you’re doing it,” says John. “Or, we will say things like ‘Just put a little more “ih” into it.’ The word is ‘wait,’ for example, but I think you need a little more e in the word and then it’ll buzz. But words are- he’s a wordsmith with lyrics, and then I’m in it as a singer- words are crazy. My favourite example is the word “Why” because it’s one syllable, there’s only three letters, but there’s three vowel sounds in that word. You have to say ooh then you have to say ahh then you have to say e. So if you’re singing the word Wahhhhh-y and I’m singing the word, “Whyyyyyyyy” it’s not going to lock. Even if we are singing perfectly in tune, it won’t buzz because every vowel sound has a level of brightness and darkness which affects the intonation of the note.” This is why siblings often can sing in such flawless harmony, because they tend to naturally sing with the same vowel sounds. I’m learning so much.
As a writer, John has a tendency to be reclusive. He doesn’t like technology, and types up the lyrics to their songs on a green vintage Olympia typewriter. “If he could be totally off the grid, he would be,” says Lisa. “There was a moment in time when we lived in Nova Scotia where John wanted to live on this like, it wasn’t an island, but there was a causeway that you could only cross at certain times of day because of the tide. He was really wanting to purchase some land over there.” “It would have been a compromise!” John laughs, “It’s almost an island! I’ve always wanted to live on an island. It’s only an island some of the time!” Lisa stresses her “need for other humans” and is more beholden to technology since she manages Tomato/Tomato’s Newsletter and does their Social Media, an area in which she especially excels. “It is ALL Lisa. I know I’m on there, but I’ve never actually seen our Instagram page,” says John. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘You haven’t shown up on our Instagram stories for awhile.’ It’s a lot of me talking, and I really want it to be representative of the band, so I sometimes am like, ‘Come, stand over here with me, we’re going to talk about this new single release, and then I’ll say all this stuff… and he just stands there!” They both laugh.
You can follow Tomato/Tomato on Facebook. Twitter. Instagram (@tomatotomato.sj). YouTube.
You can Stream Canary In A Coal Mine HERE or buy a physical copy (on CD or vinyl) HERE.
To check out their Australia Touring Schedule: CLICK HERE.
