Louise Burns
At all of 25, Louise Burns feels a bit like a music-industry veteran, complete with the baggage of jaded bitterness. Granted, it's been a decade since Lillix, the girl band she co-founded in Cranbrook, B.C., signed a deal with Madonna's Maverick Records and moved to Los Angeles. The deal eventually blew up along with the record company - and so did the band (which still exists, but with some different members, and last year put out a new CD, Tigerlily).
Now, Burns has hit the road with her first solo album. To say Mellow Drama is a departure from Burns's Lillix days would be a bit like saying Madonna is well-known in the music industry. There's no hint of teenybopper in this nostalgia-steeped record (which includes 11 original tracks and a cover of Leonard Cohen's The Gypsy's Wife). In mid-June, the record made the Polaris Prize long list, calming Burns's fears, to some extent, of being dismissed out of hand because of her past.
"I'm not used to being received in a serious way, because with Lillix, we were a teen pop band and how serious can you take that?" Burns said recently over coffee in Vancouver, where she lives. "We worked our butts off and we did our best, but still it was teen pop music."
Mellow Drama came very much out of Burns's experiences with Lillix - which in the space of an hour-long conversation, she described as frustrating, disheartening and brutal. "It left a sour taste in my mouth. I was a very angry teenager about it. In my early 20s, I was really lost. What the hell just happened? But I was lucky enough to channel that to music."
Burns was in Grade 7 when she was invited by Tasha-Ray Evin to play bass in a band she was starting with her sister. The girls started writing - with Hanson and the Beatles as their inspirations. Taking a cue from the Beatles, they dressed for their first gig - at a community centre - in business suits they bought at the mall.
"It's really funny in retrospect," says Burns, "because the older I get, the younger I was."
Eventually, the band was offered a record contract in Cranbook. Burns's father sought the opinion of an entertainment lawyer. He happened to choose Jonathan Simkin, who would later start up 604 Records. Simkin offered some advice, and asked for a demo.
"I put it on and by song No. 4, I was like holy [cow]" says Simkin, who still manages Burns. "I called one of the parents and said, 'Come on, honestly, did the girls write it?' And they were like, 'Every note and every lyric.' And I said, 'If that's true, I am interested.'"
Simkin invited the band to Vancouver, recorded a new demo, and shopped it around. Maverick asked for a showcase, then offered a deal on the spot. The girls moved to L.A., sharing an apartment - while their parents rotated as chaperones.
Early on, the band was called to a Maverick office, ostensibly to meet a potential producer. But when they arrived, there was Madonna.
"She's like 'hey girls,'" says Burns. "I think we were so young and naive that we weren't nervous." The band played an acoustic set for their superstar boss (who ultimately split with the company she co-founded) and she left the room singing their songs. "She was a very cool lady … and was really nice to us, which I guess is kind of uncommon."
But it wasn't long before things began to sour. The band had to work with "hot" producers not of their choosing; the music-making overshadowed by the drive to score a hit record, says Burns. "Ultimately, it was just a rushed, stressful process that did not end in art. It ended in mediocrity."
In the push for publicity, the girls were made to wear schoolgirl uniforms for their first promotional shoot, and to dress like punk rockers for another. "I just remember sitting there wearing a tie thinking this is the worst moment of my life," says Burns. "I'm 16 years old and I can predict how this is going to be perceived."
Two of the girls were sent to weight-loss camp.
"They wanted us to be the band that made them money; that's all they cared about," says Burns. "And we just felt really betrayed."
Once the record, Falling Uphill, was out, there were nasty reviews. "I think one of the most frustrating things was people not believing that we wrote our songs," says Burns. "We were called manufactured. They said that we were Avril [Lavigne]wannabes. … All that honest hard work we put into it was just dismissed completely."
While on tour in 2006 with their second album, Inside the Hollow, the band was dropped by the label (which was itself crumbling) and that's when Burns decided to leave.
Back in Vancouver, she immersed herself into the rock and punk scenes. "It was scary at first, because I thought 'oh God; people are going to look at me and say why's that idiot from Lillix hanging out here at this punk show?'"
But Burns quickly became a sought-after musician, playing with several bands and rediscovering her love for music. With the financial security of her Lillix earnings, she began university, took on some day jobs and finally, two years ago, started writing what would become Mellow Drama, released this year on Simkin's new indie label Light Organ Records.
Musically, it's an ode to girl bands of the 1950s and 60s. Lyrically, a major theme is the dark side of being a teen pop sensation.
"A lot of the record's about self-doubt: I can't do this, I'll never do this, I'm going to be working a job I hate forever and I'll always be living in the past," says Burns. "I think that fear drove me to make the record more than anything. I didn't want to be a has-been. I didn't want to be somebody who was living in the glory days of my youth."
Louise Burns performs in Edmonton on Thursday (at Brixx) and Friday (at Broadmoor Lake Park), followed by other dates in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia. For details, see louiseburnsmusic.com.