MEG LAGRANDE
Fiddle player, singer, and songwriter Meg LaGrande harnesses and remixes the power of Irish tradition, its earthy stories and ethereal strains. She uses loop pedals and age-old musicianship to summon Ireland’s wild storms and bittersweet tenderness, having honed her craft criss-crossing continents as a member of the National Dance Company of Ireland and entrancing crowds on the streets of Dublin.
The sought-after session player is now going solo. Her debut single, “With The Dawn,” bursts with gentle vigor and airy harmonies straight from the dunes of County Clare. (Single release date: November 1st, 2021) Produced by Alex Ryan, the bassist and musical director for Hozier, “With The Dawn” channels the bittersweet evanescence at the heart of many an Irish song. The track is a treat for both rootsy indie fans (think Tash Sultana and Mumford & Sons) and Celtic music lovers (think Lorenna McKennitt and Clannad).
“There’s something people everywhere love about Irish traditions, a deep sense of storytelling that the Irish people have in their dance, their song, their artforms,” LaGrande explains. “These artforms are amazing at painting a distinct imagery that you don’t need language to see. It’s very upbeat music, the dancing has a lot of power, but it has a real ethereal side, too. I live on the west coast of Ireland now, and here the music sounds like the Atlantic, mixed with the folklore, the faeries and stories of old.”
Growing up in Canada, LaGrande remembers, “music was always a part of life.” At age seven, her dad offered to buy her any instrument she wanted. There was just one condition: She had to learn to play it. “The violin teacher had these butterscotch candies, so I kept coming back,” she laughs. But she soon discovered something else sweet about the violin. “The folk fiddle is a party instrument,” she explains. “You can play music all night long.”
She saw this firsthand at fiddle camps, and as a young Canadian musician, she was exposed to varied violin traditions found across the country, from Nova Scotia and Quebec to the Métis communities of Central Canada. The experience bred a deep passion for folk music. LaGrande attended a prestigious arts high school in Ottawa and continued her studies of the instrument, but as she prepared to graduate, disaster struck. A terrible case of tendonitis nearly sunk her violin career, until instructors urged her to learn to sing. “I was honestly really really bad at first, they almost didn't let me into the vocal program but admitted me because they said that I was a good student and they knew I had a good work ethic,” she laughs, “but I spent the entire summer working with a private vocal coach in what was basically an intensive workshop.”
The intensity paid off, as years later Meg found herself auditioning for a spot with the National Dance Company of Ireland’s Rhythm of the Dance touring company. They needed a fiddle player, but they also needed a vocal soloist. Though she had never sang professionally, she insisted she was up for the challenge. “I threw myself in the deep end,” she recounts. She learned to swim and began touring the world, soon as a member of the primary troupe.
She played Celtic music to 6,500 excited music lovers at the Kremlin Palace and as part of a months-long Celtic Christmas celebration at the heart of a Nagasaki theme park. She travelled across North America, Europe, and Asia, and watched crowds whooping it up at Las Vegas St. Patrick’s Day celebrations or travelling from far and wide to remote Siberian cities, just to hear some Irish music. It underlined the “mind-boggling, insatiable appetite for Celtic music,” she saw in the world’s music fans. Her work with the touring company led to roles in advertisements and in theatrical productions like “Ireland Rises,” dedicated to the 1916 Rising, which featured one of her compositions, “Kilmainham Lullaby.”
Touring and playing traditional music urged Meg to grow as a musician, but she wanted to write music of her own and hit the festival circuit. “I quit my well-paid touring gig and started going to every club and concert I could,” she says. She met Australian folk rockers Pierce Brothers one night, and they decided they would invite her to play with the band at their upcoming Sea Sessions Festival show. Meg took the opportunity and the show was a success, but in the process, she lost her day job.
It was a blessing in disguise. “I had a week to pay rent,” she recalls. “I spent two entire days playing fiddle with a loop pedal arranging live covers in my living room. When I finally had a set prepared I went and busked on Grafton. I made enough to pay my rent and more in a few days on the streets of Dublin, and I never looked back.” Busking became a standing gig and a valuable laboratory, a daily showcase of her prowess and creativity as a musician. Meg tried different things, and learned exactly how to get and keep a group of passersby engaged. “I reinvested some of my earnings into my rig, until I had a massive pedal board and a huge amp,” she says. “I treated it like a pro gig and cranked the noise, created a scene.”
She also created her own sound, one that reflects the years of playing Celtic folk while weaving in a fresh, bold attitude. “Playing fiddle acoustically was not enough to pull a crowd and earn an income. The fiddle isn’t a chordal instrument and it’s hard to sound full enough when you’re on your own on the street, and unlike the guitar it can’t accompany while I sing” Meg notes. “I had to use tech to bring the sounds that I heard inside my head out. Looping lets me build a soundscape which I then use to accompany my voice.” This soundscape does more than draw a crowd. It won Meg a spot in Irish national TV’s popular Late, Late Show, when Jay of Dublin-based rock group Kodaline passed by one afternoon and asked her to join the band on air.
The sheer joy of good company and natural beauty inspired LaGrande’s first single, “With The Dawn.'' It's a breathy, exuberant tribute to a night spent playing music in the sands after the Willy Clancy festival near the picturesque town of Lahinch, where La Grande now lives. Captured in its accompanying video directed by Roisin El Cherif (Vikings, Fantastic Beasts, Game of Thrones), It's also a love song to one of Ireland’s cultural hearths, the coast with its North Atlantic gales, its crystalline waters, its imposing cliffs.
LaGrande channels them all in the curling reels of her fiddle and the airy urgings of her voice. “There is such profound beauty here,” she reflects. “This part of the world evokes storytelling. It begs you to live in the moment, aware that time moves on.”
