Lethbridge songstress Alyssa McQuaid is excited about her brand new six song EP, “This Is Your Song.”
“ I wrote these songs just to go down to Nashville to record them,” McQuaid enthused, who officially released the CD in Lethbridge, Feb. 23 at Honker’s Pub.
While she has been to Nashville before for boot camps and to see her friend Kristina Wrenn, who also appears on the CD, she had never recorded there. So she took two weeks last May to record it.
“I took about three or four days to actually record it and the rest of the time I just hung out with my friend Kristi,” she said.
“The whole experience was very cool,” she continued.
She got to work with a talented group of musicians who have worked with people like Lady Antebellum and Patti Griffin. The musicians themselves had played with top 40 country band Thompson Square.
“My producer Josh Gwilliam gave me the option of recording it in Calgary or in Nashville. And I’d always wanted to go to Nashville,” she said adding she chose Nashville.
“ I was just so blessed. Everyone was so nice,” she enthused.
The songs on the Cd are very mellow and extremely personal.
“ On the other albums the songs were stories other people told me. These are my stories,” she said,
“ That was really a pretty big step for me,” she continued, adding this was also the first CD which she had co-writers— her producer Gwilliam and other producer Daron Schofield.
“ That was my first experience co-writing, so that was kind of cool, she said.
“ I wrote the songs so I could either play them by myself, with two or three musicians or a full band.”
In addition to four originals, she also added a couple traditional spirituals, “The Water is Wide” and “How Great Thou Art,” which she decided to add at the last minute.
She will play a few CD release parties in other cities and a few shows out East around Prince Edward island, but isn’t going to do a full tour.
“That’s all I can do right now. I’m still in school,” said the third year English major at the University of Lethbridge.
