L.A. Beat

Jill Barber dedicates her new tour to you, her fans, as she kicks off a busy October at the Geomatic Attic, Saturday, Oct. 5 when she plays the Yates Theatre.
The Juno Award Winner and multiple East Coast Music Award winner last played a Geomatic Attic show in 2014, but she swears she has been back since then.
“I was there with my son. But I know I came back with my daughter. Of course now they’re three and six, so they stay home. They’re retired and my husband holds down the fort,” she chuckled from her Vancouver home, where she is on a 10 day break in between touring legs.

“I just toured Ontario. Now I’m on a 10 day break. And then I’ll start again in Regina. That’s my reality now, so I don’t have to be away for a month at a time, she said. She isn’t wasting time at home, she is busy at work on a new all original French language album, which his a contrast from her straight ahead pop album 2018 “ Metaphora” which produced the number one hit “Girl’s Gotta Do.”

“Whenever I record a new album, I think a lot about what kind of record I want to make. I don’t just go ahead and do it, she said.
“Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of pop music and I think there are a lot of really exciting things happening in pop music. So it just felt right” said Barber, who is best known for playing piano and crooning sultry jazz music, though she sings pop just as well as jazz.
 She completed a full band tour of the new album when it was released last year, but will be playing this tour with her trio, drummer Morgan Doctor and pianist Johnny Spence, freeing her up to sing and play guitar.

“Only when needed though. I’m in the audience a lot,” she said.
The current tour, called “Dedicated to You,”  has  been a hit with audiences, who have an opportunity to share their stories about how Barber’s songs have affected them.
 “They have a chance to request their favourite songs, tell me their stories and have the opportunity to tell them over the mic at the show. though there is no pressure,” she said.
“It has been really meaningful and career affirming. We’ve had a lot of really special moments,” Barber continued.

“I’ve been playing for 16 or 18 years. It has been a lot of fun to play these songs and hearing what they mean to people,” she said, adding it is a lot of work, contacting people with their stories.

“I make a spreadsheet of the stories and songs and have a pretty idea of what the set will look like,” she continued, adding she technically takes requests right up until the day of the show.
“Some Lethbridge people have already contacted me,” she said. Fans can contact her through her website https://www.jillbarber.com/dedicatedtoyou to request a song and make a dedication.

“We’ve had some really profound moments. A couple of weeks ago we had four people request the same song and they all had different stories. It was really serendipitous. One young man spoke a beautiful dedication to his girlfriend and I played a verse. Another couple wanted the song to be their first dance. Then an older couple, whose husband had some serious health issues, but  came through, wanted to hear the song. And the last was a woman whose husband was no longer with us. She had half of the crowd in tears and the band had to take a set break to pull ourselves together,” Barber recalled.

 
“ The band has been amazing,” she said, adding they all have to know a lot of songs and being able  to pull them off in short notice.

 “One guy did request ‘Snowbird.’ He must have missed the memo that he was supposed to request one of my songs. But he had this really amazing story. I didn’t know it, but the band sat down and learned it and I looked up the lyrics. We pulled it out at the encore and surprised him with it,” she said.

 She is hard at work on her next album.

“I’m right in the thick of writing a new album. Guess who I’m writing with today? Randy Bachman. My French collaborator Heather is flying in from Montreal today and she has written a lot with Randy Bachmann. She asked if he’d be interested and he said yes. I’ve never met him before. We‘re writing an album of all original French language, ’60s style pop,” she enthused, adding she will enter the studio in October and ideally release the CD in the Spring.
Tickets are $44 for Jill Barber’s show at the Yates Theatre, which begins at 8 p.m.