MANSFIELD — Next weekend Canadian singer Michelle Willis will be performing live in an intimate downtown venue, as she stops off in Mansfield on her U.S. winter tour.
It’s been a busy time for the singer/songwriter, who’s recorded with Iggy & the Stooges and toured with David Crosby of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Her debut solo album “See Us Through” hit the stores last year, and she’s recently been recording with Belgian jazzman Éric Legnini for his upcoming release.
I caught up with Michelle by phone as she drove between shows in Asheville, North Carolina, and Roanoke, Virginia, on a call which quickly descended into a mess of distortion and cutouts among the North Carolina mountains.
A later attempt caught her just before going on stage in Roanoke, and gave me a quick window to ask her about how she got started and what she’s planning.
Raised in and around Toronto, Michelle was born in Great Britain. I asked her what part.
She sighed.
“People from Britain always laugh when I tell them.”
Go on, I said.
“Middlesbrough.”
Naturally the knee-jerk comic response would have been to let out a loud guffaw at this point, but I’m better than that.
“My dad was English, from Yorkshire,” she explained. “My mom was Canadian. I was less than a year old when we left.”
Was that when you moved to Toronto, I asked?
“Yes, we moved a lot but it was always around Toronto. And by the way you’re not saying it right. I know it’s because you’re British but please don’t sound that hard second ‘T’.”
I gave it another shot. Torrono?
“Much better.”
I asked about her family in Torrono. Was it a musical upbringing?
“I had a lot of cousins and siblings, and yes, we were very much a musical family, always singing.
“I played the flute in elementary school, but I wasn’t a natural flautist. I sang in the choir. I was the lead alto in Mozart’s Requiem.”
Later, Michelle would be drawn to jazz. I asked her when that took hold.
“It’s hard to know when it hit me,” she said. “I don’t remember listening to jazz as a family.
“But I remember one of my cousins got me into Louis Armstrong. I had a complilation CD, Greatest Hits, something like that, and I wore it out.
“And at 16, I loved Harry Connick Jr. His singing, his piano-playing, his arranging, everything.”
Michelle went on to study jazz piano at Humber College in Toronto, and started performing live as part of a Sunday afternoon jazz trio.
“We played Nat King Cole arrangements,” she explained. “I sang and played piano.”
I told her I loved the ambience created by simple live jazz music and someone singing at the piano. It’s like you imagine live music should be, in a smoky bar in a old black and white movie.
“Yes! Well, after graduating I started playing piano bars,” she told me, “and that’s exactly the kind of ambience you’re talking about. There aren’t that many of them left. When you get a residency at one, you keep hold of it.”
Lately, Michelle has been keeping up a busy tour schedule, and the last 12 months have seen her on the road more often than not.
At the end of 2016, she toured with David Crosby on his “Lighthouse” tour. Earlier in the year she played with jazz ensemble Snarky Puppy at shows in Australia, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan.
I asked her what the audience was like in some of these far-off locations, and wondered how familiar they were with her material.
“It’s funny,” she said, “when we were flying to Taiwan I was shown this YouTube video made by some fans there. It was an exact recreation of one of my videos.
“You know, I thought it was some kind of prank someone was playing on me. But it was for real, and it was so touching. I got to meet them at the show. They were lovely!”
Michelle’s current tour is called “The Light Keeps You Going.” For the final leg (which passes through Toronto and snakes down through Cleveland, Mansfield and Columbus before finishing up in Boston, Mass.) she will be joined by Snarky Puppy trumpeter and singer/songwriter Mike “Maz” Maher.
“We’ll be playing our own sets,” she explained, “but we’ll back each other up. I’ll play keyboards and backing vocals during Maz’s set.”
“We’ll have a great backing band, too,” she said. “David Cutler on bass, Jason “JT” Thomas on drums and Bob Lanzetti on guitar. I’m really pumped about it.”
I asked if she’ll be playing regular keyboards or the “pump organ” that she sometimes uses.
“I do play the pump organ!” she said. “But I won’t have it on the tour.”
What is it, exactly?
“It’s portable,” she explained, “like a harmonium. You pump it with your feet and it’s got this breathy sound, like a choir.”
As she prepared to go on stage and we finished up our conversation, Michelle talked a little about her current whirl of activity.
“There’s so much going on. On the one hand, I’m doing everything I want to do, and that’s very empowering. It makes me feel proud of what I’m achieving.
“But on the other hand, being on the road so much can make you feel uprooted. It’s easy to lose sense of yourself.”
Michelle writes her own songs and I asked if being on tour was a good time to work on new material.
“Well, that is the dream,” she said, “play songs and write late in the evening. But it’s so difficult.
“There’s always the feeling that there’s never enough time: are you ever going to get a proper night’s sleep? I mean, honestly, my life on tour … it’s an administrative nightmare.
“But I’m happy to be on the road. You get these long driving days, and sometimes that’s wonderful. You’re away from a lot of things. It’s a gift.”
Michelle Willis and Mike “Maz” Maher will play at City News & Suzy’s Smoke Room, 100 N. Main St, Mansfield on Saturday March 4 at 8 p.m. For this stop on the tour there will be no cover charge or advance ticketing, but any donations tossed in the cigar box will be more than welcome.
