May '06
EDEN MUNRO / eden@vueweekly.com

PRACTICE? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' PRACTICE!

Romi Mayes's music built on Spontaneity and 'mojo'
Romi Mayes likes to play live. She's done plenty of it over the past few years, spending eight years travelling the country and singing her songs before ending up back in her hometown of Winnipeg.

There have been plenty more live shows since then, and Mayes even recorded an album that retained the spontaneous spirit of a live performance, with the whole band gathered in a circle around a single microphone.

"The album was kind of a one-mic living room session," Mayes explains. "It has the same sort of sound as a lo-fi live recording. Everyone plays together and performs at their best without dividing into different rooms."
It was while Mayes was performing solo in support of that album that she first hooked up with her current musical partner, Dan Walsh, formerly of Fred Eaglesmith's band. Their initial meeting was a low key affair at Fred Eaglesmith's Northern Picnic, where Mayes was sitting around a campfire with a new guitar when Walsh asked if he could try it out. She agreed, but only if he would play the show with her.

"Sunday morning rolls around, one hour of sleep, just finishing the heel of a bourbon bottle, and we get on stage," remembers Mayes. "We hadn't even practiced. From jamming around the fire he got the gist of what I was about, and we jumped on stage and did this amazing set. It was one of my favourite sets of the whole year. So we got off stage and looked at each other and said 'okay, we're going to play some more music together.' In his words, there was 'mojo.'"

It's that willingness to head out for the edge, trying new things without knowing where they'll end up, that fuels Mayes' raw "country bourbon bluegrass." "The best stuff's going to happen when it's not already written in stone," Mayes says. "That's what's fun about playing with different people all the time, because you jump on stage and there's the potential for success. Who knows what's going to happen?"

Mayes is once again putting that theory to the test, heading out for the first time with Scott Nolan and his band backing up her and Walsh. Still, her next album is not far from her mind, since this tour is all about spending some time with the band before heading into the recording studio.

"We could have just stayed home and worked on it," Mayes observes, "but once again, going back to the live show, that's where you're really going to know what works and what doesn't."

When Mayes and the band return to Winnipeg, they'll be joined in the studio by Texan guitar legend Gurf Morlix, who used to play with Lucinda Williams and has produced many remarkable albums. Mayes' excitement is clear when she talks about the upcoming sessions with Morlix.

"The cool thing is that it wasn't a label with a lot of pull that set it up for me," she says. "It was literally just Dan sent him some stuff and said, 'hey man, just check it out and let me know what you think.' And next thing I know Gurf was calling me on the phone saying that he was really into producing the next album.

"Then, when I was down in Texas, I went over to his house and we worked on some tunes," she continues. "While I was there, I was comfortable, but the whole experience seems surreal to me, because Gurf Morlix was a name I thought was 10 degrees of separation away from me, and there I'm having a beer with him and talking about my album."