Saltwater Heartwood
Saltwater Heartwood garners two Canadian Folk Music Award Nominations!
Wand's much anticipated fourth album after a ten year hiatus from performing and recording.
After a long pause from both recording and the stage, Saltwater Heartwood is deep dive into the myriad of transitions which saw Yael through motherhood, moves, and a creative hiatus. Her new album is a testament to her drive, passion and incredible musicality. Staying true to her roots, Yael continues to compose songs that showcase her innate sensibility when it comes to blending the worlds of folk, jazz, roots and blues.
The intensely personal and heartfelt subject of the new music builds upon her musicality and draws the listener into a sonic world of honesty and understanding. “My original intent for this record was to record these songs as a bookmark of the transitions that I underwent over the past 10 years. Transitions of home and community, my role in life, my relationships, even my age,” says Wand. “There’s a reckoning between who I’ve been and who I am becoming.” That reckoning comes across throughout the album, with Wand’s masterful ability to summon the emotional punch of a song.
“Very late in 2019, i persuaded Alan Kerr and Christina Zaenker to join me at Hidden Well Studio, Corwin Fox’s little gem of a creative space in Cumberland. The idea was to create a quick and raw recording of tunes i had been gathering: a collection of songs that documented 10 years and many personal changes. I imagined this recording would bookend my sabbatical from my musical career; it would be warm and sparse and charmingly rough around the edges like a live show with our trio of fretted and fretless instruments. We had a magical time laying down the instrumentals, and a little later in 2020 i came back to track the vocals. But everything went sideways in March, and the recording was put on pause for months.
“ive waited a decade to make this album - ive waited through becoming a parent, giving up my studio, postpartum depression and exhaustion, moving towns and homes, loosing guitar calluses for gardening ones, questioning if music-making has a place in my life, redefining myself, - so i could wait through a pandemic. ive come back to this record with so much excitement. im not rushing it. its far more than a bookend.”
Supported by Creative BC and the Province of British Columbia.
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