Sunleadsme

On tour with Couer de Pirate at the Royal Theatre in Victoria BC, March 3,2019. 

 HANORAH  (Lizzie Hanley) is a genre bending Rock & Soul singer/songwriter from Montreal who has found her strength through the medicine of music and has allowed her to work through a personal trauma.

After being assaulted a few years ago, Hanaorah has channelled her pain into ART, From turning her poetry about the attack and her love for soul, blues and jazz into her 2015 debut album, "Unstuck.".  in late 2015, initially performed solo, with a more electronic sound out of necessity. In 2016 she assembled : guitarist Paul De Rita, bassist Christian Henegan-Comeau, keyboardist Adam Shore and drummer Olivier Cousineau.

After playing shows with the band around the Montreal and migrating to into Ontario, Hanorah made an appearance on La Voix and soon got signed to Dare to Care Records.

At the time of this interview she was on a tour,opening for Coeur de Pirate, in a stripped down solo performance on stage.

We caught up with Hanorah after her brilliant set on March 3rd opening for fellow Montreal ARTiste Courer De Pirate at the Royal Theatre in Victoria. BC

Hanorah has since released her first EP For the Good Guys and the Bad Guys coming out on March 22nd, 2019. 

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SLM: What an amazing performance last night at the Royal.  How is the tour going so far? 

 

HANORAH:  Thank you, It's going great. I did the gig the other day in Vancouver and I was more nervous than I've ever been in my life. I've been performing a lot in the last two or three years or so, and something usually just comes over me and I feel calm, cool and collected, and in control. But normally I play with my band and in a city where I'm the headliner and it's my own fans. So to be completely, alone and with a first time gig in a new city, was really vulnerable. In Vancouver I was so nervous, but then yesterday in Victoria I was like, "I got this." It was a lot more fun. 

 

SLM:The Royal is kind of an theatrical place because it's such a theater setting, and it was perfect for your performance. It was really beautiful. You have a new EP coming out this spring. Tell us a little bit about For the Good Guys and the Bad Guys? 

 

HANORAH: So that is coming through (Dare to Care Records), and I recorded that with my guys and also with some members of a band called The Brooks out in Montreal. The Brooks is a funk band, and they've been around for a very long time too. It's actually their bass player, Alex Lapointe who was the producer on that record. And it was just really fun. We did everything kind of live off the floor, very live, warm sound. Yeah, that was kind of the recording process. We banged it all out in two days because Alex and the band, The Brooks, were going on tour. So we only had two days to record it, but yeah, it was a really fun experience. 

 

SLM:  Are there any collaborations with other Montreal artists for this EP as well? 

HANORAH: My guitar player and boyfriend, Paul De Rita is on it, he played guitar on the whole record, and my keyboardist/back up vocalist Christian, sang back up vocals on every single song except for New Orleans. I also had my drummer come in and do back ups on Saturn Return, which is on the record as well. 

 

SLM: I understand you have a background in visual art as well.  Have you helped with any of the design for the album art work or any videos to accompany the album? 

 

HANORAH:  I give my feedback , but with the visual stuff its different because when I entered art school  I was around 18 , and this was directly after I was assaulted by an ex-boyfriend, and I was really in a terrible place, and struggling with PTSD and a whole slew of other awful side effects and symptoms from that experience. Art school was a safe place for me and I could hide behind the canvasses and not put myself out there. I could just kind of hide away and be isolated and not have to justify or confront anything or anybody. But then at a certain point, when I was still miserable and angry and my life wasn't going anywhere good, I had to make a decision about okay, do I want to carry the burden of what happened for the rest of my life and let it dictate how I live my life? Or do I want to take control and live the life that I want, and that I think I've always deserved. 

I've always sang, I've always wanted to play music. It was never a question for me. In fact, as a young person I just assumed that everybody wanted to be in a band, that everybody was choosing other jobs because not everybody can be in a band. We need people to do other jobs. So I took the plunge, I put myself out there, find some people to collaborate with and then around 2016 is when I started playing with Paul, my guitarist, and then we put together our band. 

The visual arts, was maybe more a cathartic thing than anything else, more like a hobby. It was always music that was my primary mode of expression. 

 

SLM:  I've been listening to and  Clementine, I’ve read you mention, that this was a growth song as a musician and survivor. It's such a strong track. Tell us a little bit about this one and how it's being received live? 

 

HANORAH: We've been playing this one live as a band for a very long time, so it's evolved quite a bit. Our fans know it well, they sing along. And that's usually the one that I get asked questions about after the show, like especially younger women will come up to me because I'm very open about the trauma and the PTSD. So I often get young women coming to talk to me after a show, telling me that they appreciated it or asking questions or just sharing the fact that they had lived through something similar. And it's fun. I get to kind of be an ear for that person. We don't know each other, and the only thing that's connected us is that experience, but some barriers just come down when you're confronted with somebody that's hello, me too. Do you know what I mean? 

 

HANORAH: So it's been a really uniting song so far.

 

SLM:Yeah, absolutely. New Orleans, you've said, it's a "Valentine"  to your band. It's getting a lot of buzz. Have you spent time in New Orleans and can you share with us some experiences as a musician if you've been there? What inspired this one? 

 

HANORAH: I haven't. That's the thing, for me, New Orleans is a big death city. I love how they go about their funeral practices, I love the culture there. I haven't been yet and I'm dying to go. And for me, it just kind of represents a sort of final place, a resting place kind of thing. And when I envision my own final destination, so to speak, as a musician I hope that I have all the amazing friends and musicians with me that have supported me thus far. I mean I'm filled with nothing but gratitude that I have been supported by these musicians, my own band, and I hope that I can share the fruits of our labor appropriately. So far I have. I'm dividing everything from gigs, all the money that we get from gigs, it's split even ways despite any costs or whatever. And same thing with song writing. We've divided it in such a way where no matter who was in the room and who did what, everyone gets a set amount for every tune. I don't know how far this whole thing is going to go and I just want to make sure that I'm surrounded by people I love when and if it gets bigger than I think it might. Just in case. 

 SLM: It will. How did your band come together? How did you guys all meet? 

HANORAH:  Paul, my guitarist, was busking in the Metro. Oh, it's funny, he lived in Victoria for a while when he studied at a music conservatory here five years ago, six years ago, something like that. HE started busking here, then he got his looper pedals and his whole rig and he developed that whole thing here.  I saw him in Montreal busking three years ago after he had honed that whole thing and was blown away by his tone and the soulfulness with which he played. And he's like this small guy with all this hair, dreadlocks down to his butt, and I was just like, who is this person? 

 I walked up to him, and I was actually on my way to art school that day, and I was like, oh, it just really touched me. So I contacted him, and we started playing a duo thing, like just him on guitar and me singing. And then we met Christian and Adam, our keyboardist and bass player, through some mutual friends in music I guess, and they played in another band together called Safe and Sound out in Montreal.  then we found our drummer, Olivier, on Facebook. I posted, I need a drummer, and then someone tagged him and we just kept playing together and it was really fun. 

 

SLM:That's amazing. I think Long Road too, it's a great live version that you did on the River like freezing cold to play. Tell us about this song and its origin. 

 

HANORAH:  May of 2017, I did an ephemeral album called Maissoneuve. So what I would do is at home, this is kind of part of New Orleans came about this process too. I was learning how to play guitar because there was a lot of down time with the label stuff. Things take forever, so I needed a new hobby. So picked up the guitar, I learned how to record a little bit so I self-produced this little album, just in my room at home by myself. So I did guitar, bass, keys, vocals, I did the mix and master. 

 What I did was, each session was whatever happened in that session was the song, so didn't preconceive of the songs or write them in advance. I just kind of sat down, opened up the laptop, picked up a guitar, and whatever came out, that was the song. And Long Road was one of them. Long Road. And I swore that I would never play these songs ever again. I actually, that whole album, I pressed it on a vinyl, I played it for an audience one time and then I destroyed it. I destroyed the record. it was a beautiful ritual, it was lovely, but Long Road, it was so well received that Eli from the label was like, you have to put it on the record, it's so good, whatever, so that's what I did. We put it on there. 

 

HANORAH:  Just like very much in the moment, like an intuitive writing process, just not thinking too hard and just letting whatever was there come out. So if I dig in there, there's like stuff about the bullying I experienced and definitely trauma and regrowth and all that stuff. It's funny, when you let your inner voice talk, you can't hide behind anything. Your own bullshit really comes out in a really clear way when you don't have your barriers up. 

 

SLM: The track Saturn. I love that vocal range. That track's so beautiful. Where did that one come from? 

 

HANORAH:Yeah, Paul had a chord progressing for that, that guitar riff in the beginning, and it took me a couple years to kind of get that one where it is now in terms of the vocal parts, like the lyrics. But I wrote that about a friend of mine who wasn't in a really good place at the time, and just disappeared for like a week without telling anyone where he was going. And of course, huge panic ensued. We thought he'd died.

There's vulnerable people in the city who struggle with various things and recently I did lose a friend in a similar situation this year, he passed away, so when someone just disappears and you hear nothing, obviously, you think the worst. Saturn, the whole thing is there's this theory that the planet Saturn takes 27 years to come around the same place in relation to the Earth as when, like it takes 27 years. So it's a theory, that's why people have such a tumultuous quarter life. The whole 27 club thing, maybe there's some magnetic pull or whatever, so I kind of spun that because my friend who was not in a good place was 27 when he just disappeared.

He came back, it was a whole dramatic whatever nonsense, but yeah, it's just a song about quarter life crisis I guess, and being there for your friend. 

 

SLM: I like that funky track Going Down too, it feels like an empowering track ! It sounds like more rocky than some of your other tracks as well? 

 

HANORAH: Yeah, you know what? I'm glad you said that because I write with the band, there's like a spectrum for me between the soul, funky and rock and roll. That's really the zone, and then New Orleans for me is like the outlier. So I listen to a lot of Otis Redding, so that's Saturn Return, the whole kind of mellow 6/8 song kind of comes from that. But I listen to a lot of Beatles, a lot of Led Zeppelin, like heavier stuff, and Etta James, and Parliament Funkadelic. 

Everything's political no matter what because I'm talking about trauma a lot and a very female specific on things, or femme specific things, a lot of the time. Not that it only happens to women, but the way it's handled when it does happen to women. And a lot of the times in the kind of public dialogue that I hear, I hear a lot of people sort of interrupting that conversation. Particularly, I have to say it, men who sort of are being performative in their support, but will talk over you when they haven't come close to living the same thing. So it's kind of just about I guess just asking people to ask themselves if they are actually good guy/bad guy in a situation and what evidence do they have? Because everyone wants to think that they're a good guy, but I mean if you don't reflect honestly on your own motivations and behaviors and look at yourself critically, then you don't really know.  that was a big part of my healing too, accountability and I can't use my trauma to justify mistreating other people and I had to be mature about it and catch myself when I was being crappy and learn a new way to behave, you know? 

 

SLM: Well, it sounds like you've come a long way and the music has really helped to support you in that journey too. 

HANORAH: I don't think I'd be here without it. 

 

SLM:The new album is being released you said March 22nd? Now that's at the Casa Del Popolo and then you've got Maelstrom Saint-Roch.

 

HANORAH: The Montreal launch party is on the 21st and the Quebec city launch party is the 22nd, but the online street release is the 22nd, so you'll be able to hear all the songs via the inter-webs on the 22nd. 

SLM: Do either of those places in Montreal give a special place to perform that holds like a special place in your heart? 

 

HANORAH: Absolutely, Casa ( Casa Del Popolo )is one of those places for sure. We've played there so many times and I fell in love with my band and honed my craft as a singer and performer on that stage. There is a small pub called The Honey Martin Pub. We had a residency there for about a year so again, every week you're paid a couple hundred bucks and you run through all your tunes and you get feedback. It was such a direct feedback from a crowd. You know what works and what doesn't, and it was an amazing growing experience and it was like paid rehearsal. The fact that those guys support up and comers so well is just so crucial to the scene. Definitely Honey Martin. 

 

SLM will continue to support this amazing artiste as well catch her tunes online :

https://Hanorah.lnk.to/longroad

 

P. Tinham March 4 . 2019

To Rid Myself Of Poetry