It’s been a decade since Caroline Brooks, Kerri Ough and Sue Passmore went into rehearsals for their first show.
It was a Christmas gig at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel and the three solo artists knew even before the concert started they would continue to work together as a folk/country trio.
“Something just clicked,” Passmore remembered. “You sing with lots of people and it’s not always so easy but we had a lot of fun and, from then on, the ball started rolling.”
Passmore, who went to school with Ough and met Brooks through a mutual friend four years earlier, said The Good Lovelies was buoyed by its debut EP, Oh My! released in 2007.
And, in 2010, after it beat out Great Lake Swimmers, Annie Lou, Carolyn Mark and NQ Arbuckle and Madison Violet for Best Roots and Traditional Album of the Year (Group), people started to take note (they were also nominated for a 2012 Juno for their follow-up CD, Let the Rain Fall).
“The perception of who you are and what you’ve done changes,” Passmore said of the country’s highest music accolade. “It’s not tangible but it makes a difference about how people see you.”
This Saturday, The Good Lovelies will take to the Evergreen Cultural Centre as part of the Music on the Grill series to play tunes from their latest album, Burn the Plan, released last year.
And Passmore said they look forward to returning to the Coquitlam venue, having performed there in March 2012. The stop is part of a small summer tour that will see the Lovelies entertain at the Harrison Festival of the Arts on July 17 before heading to Kansas for two dates later this month.
Still, the musicians are already thinking about their next album.
Typically, they start writing alone before joining forces. “Before anything goes onto a record, we’ve all had our fingers in there,” Passmore said.
Since they banded in 2006, their influences have changed. They try out new styles like story songs (The Doe is an example on Burn the Plan).
“We each have different ideas of how to elevate the sound. At the end of the day, we want to see what we can do to have a record that’s unique and bring variety and not have 10 to 12 songs that all sound the same.”
• For tickets for the BBQ dinner and/or show with The Good Lovelies, Three Worlds and the Leo Bae Quartet, call the Evergreen Cultural Centre (1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam) or visit evergreenculturalcentre.ca. Music on the Grill is sponsored by Greenline Dental.
