It has been more than three years since I interviewed Willow about the release of their EP ‘The Southend.’

Maureen Fox explained, “it was right before COVID when we spoke.  We’ve had a bit of an adventure and then about a year later, Noel had to move to Gold River to be with  her family. So we asked the beautiful Kelly Beamish to join us. Kelly brings this fabulous voice into the mix that has been really fun because her voice blends so well with ours.” 

Kelly Beamish: “Hi.” 

CC: When did you join Willow?  

Kelly: “2021 I think. Yeah, like March.” 

Andrea Blaseckie explained, “I have a clip of ‘Joyful,’ which is the latest song that was recorded here on Quadra Island and it has all four of us in it.”

Andrea later emailed, “It’s a song I wrote after I found a bag full of little notes that people had written to me for my 21st birthday. When I turned 21, I was travelling with an international performing group where I was mainly a backup singer. That morning we were enroute to Leipzig, Germany. The rest of the cast surprised me with this little bag full of birthday wishes and kind words and insights on how they saw me.” 

“I hadn’t seen that little bag of notes for over 25 years and I happened upon them at exactly the right time that I needed to find parts of myself that I had forgotten. It was a great reminder of the innocence and blind faith of my 21 year old experience, the hope that I saw within the world, the difference I believed we all could make, my growing sense of self confidence and self worth, my shyness and yet there I was travelling the world singing songs and performing to audiences anywhere from 25 to 30,000 people. Joyful was a song I wrote to my 21 year old self. To all of our 21 year old selves. To remind us all of who we may have been then and the threads of that version of ourselves that is still within us now.” 

Maureen Fox explained, “It is on our agenda to get some really good recordings coming up. So you’ll hopefully be hearing from us in that way not too long from now.” 

To which Trinity Gogolin added, “We have a lot of new songs, at least 10.”

Several of the group promptly responded: “More than that”; “She’s saying this year”; “last couple of months”; “in the last year that we’ve started practicing.”

There will be three opportunities coming up to hear these new songs:

• Aug 5 – at the Southend Farm Winery Concert Series on Quadra Island
• Aug 12 – at Lovefest on Cortes Island.
• Aug 26 – at the Comox Valley Market Exhibition Grounds, Courtenay, BC

Maureen: “We were really happy to visit Cortes so often over the years and, as everyone on Cortes probably feels, there is a little sadness that the Gorge is not happening this year because of their renovations.”

Trinity: ‘We have a lot of fans on Cortes. Summer is so lovely over there. I’m hoping we can play a little music at Love Fest and find a place to jump in the ocean.”

Willow was founded 10 years ago. 

Maureen: “Andrea and I would’ve been in the initial manifestation,  but it’s evolved into many different versions. Actually Andrea’s most recent original song is about the band.” 

Andrea: “I wrote the song about this band. It’s called Annie’s jig, but we haven’t recorded it yet.” 

Trinity: “Andrea always writes complicated songs.” 

Some of the others echoed this sentiment, “Yeah.” (Laughter)

Andrea’s voice changed, as she held back her laughter: “It’s not that complicated.” 

Trinity: “For me, it’s pretty complicated.” 

Maureen: “It took you a long time to write that one dear.” 

Andrea: “Yeah, I didn’t believe you when you told me that until I went back and I looked at  lists of things  from  six years ago, and it was listed as one of the songs we needed to practice.”

Maureen: “It used to be your sea shanty.” 

Andrea: “It was my shanty. What had originally happened was my son Misha, when he was growing up, he would listen all the time to heavy metal, death metal from all over the world! He would play it really loudly and I guess I absorbed some of it. I came up with this really cool, awesome riff and I was like playing it over and over and over again for probably a good year.” 

“Then I was like, Misha,  ‘Listen to this riff I’ve just come up with!’” 

“I played it for him, and he is like, ‘Mom, that’s a riff from an Icelandic Death Metal Band.’” (Laughing)

“I was like, ‘Oh no. I’ve been working on this forever!’”  

Andrea’s voice suddenly grew serious, “So then I had to come up with a new riff, which I did.  It only took me six years exactly. Pretty fast for me. Super proud of that riff. It’s gonna blow you guys away and even if it doesn’t, I’m still really proud of it.” 

Maureen: “We’ll play it at Lovefest. When we’re singing it, we remember how much we care about each other, and it just has that sense of enjoying ourselves.”

CC: What else are you bringing to us for the first time? 

Maureen: “Well, Trin – her favorite thing appears to be making us embarrass ourselves by trying to sing in foreign languages. (Chuckles) We have a beautiful Yiddish folk song, as well as an Italian folk song, that will feature the concertina on them as well as Trinity, and Kelly’s lovely voice is doing a much better do job than I think Andrea and I do on the words.” 

Andrea: “We don’t actually know what the words are, so we just use vowels. These guys know the words” 

CC: Tell me about the Yiddish song.

Trinity: “It’s a really old love song called Tumbalalaika. It’s a young man who wants to get married, but he doesn’t want to marry a dumb girl. So he comes up with a riddle and if the girl can answer his riddle, then he’ll marry her. He found a woman who could answer the riddle.”

Maureen: “Trin looks so shy and sweet (Someone starts laughing), but when she’s singing those songs, she puts in this amazing extra …”

Someone interjects “porish?”

Maureen: “… push, It’s great.”

Trinity: “It’s only because they told me that I have to do something.”

Andrea: “We have a few new acapella songs that are based off of Irish origin.”

Maureen: “They feature Kelly’s voice on both of those acapella pieces.”

Andrea: “We’re going to do the ‘Star of the County Down,’ another Irish ballad that’s new on our roster too.” 

CC: Do you sound a bit Irish when you sing it? 

Andrea: “I would think that Kelly does, because her voice sounds very pure, very clear, which is the way I interpret a lot of Irish music when people are singing it, especially those ballad type songs.”  

Maureen: “She does a little flourishing in those really sweet improvisational trills. She’ll put in the little bit of the accent.”  

 Andrea: “I like the Irish ones. I think we all have Irish heritage, all four of us do.” 

It was too difficult to identity their voices amid the laughter and banter that followed:  

“When Noelle was here, they all had a Ukrainian heritage.” 

“We all have Eastern European roots.”

“Oh, Eastern European.”

“You’re the Ukrainian.”

There have been a lot of changes since COVID. 

Maureen: “It’s been a couple of years that have been difficult for so many people over the pandemic and the reduction of music opportunities and all of the things that have gone along with that.”

“We are so grateful for our fans and people that really appreciate us and have given us messages, sent us anonymous gifts of money to support us and lots of encouragement. It’s just been so lovely to feel loved and supported and recognized as meeting a value and a need for our community of people that we love singing for.”

“When COVID hit, we were releasing that album and had a bunch of gigs ready. Instead we had to move inward to ourselves as a band and really work some of our skills that we didn’t have previously. We started with really working our bluegrass stuff and added lots of new elements that we haven’t had in our previous CDs. So we have excitement around the folk songs from Europe.”

Andrea: “We’ve incorporated a lot more Celtic based songs as well. So a lot more bluegrass and a lot more Celtic, but also all the originals that we’ve been playing. Now, how many songs is it that we play again?” 

Maureen: “About 45.” 

They had a busy season last year. The highlights were playing for the  Victoria Folk Music Society and trekking in to the Read Island Beach Fest. 

Maureen: “It has been a little slower so far this year.” 

Trinity: “Maureen’s moving to a different house on Quadra.” 

Maureen: “Andrea was in the Quadra Theatre play ‘Chicago.’”

Trinity: “I was away in Asia.”

Maureen: “So a slower start this summer to our season of gigs, but we’ve still been playing together and really that’s the joy.” 

Andrea: “We play together at least once a week,” 

CC: What makes you want to get up in the morning and play? 

This produced a round of smiles, exchanged glances and laughter.

CC: Why is it important?

Their speaking voices intermingled: 

Maureen: “Look at these ladies? Wouldn’t you love to just be with them? (Someone chuckles) They’re beaming, enjoyable and we have fun.” 

Andrea: “We laugh a lot.”

Kelly: “We have a lot of jokes.”  

Trinity: “We have a lot of therapy sessions too.” 

Andrea: “In fact, every time before we even start playing or practising, we probably talk for at least an hour.” 

Kelly: “We have to check-in.” 

“Check-in,” echoed Andrea.

Kelly: “See how everyone’s doing. Therapy and music is food for the soul.” 

Andrea: “Yes, and really GREAT THERAPY as well!” (Laughter) 

Maureen:  “We’ve been lucky enough to have these opportunities to play together. And when we play together, it’s not like we’re trying to necessarily do a cover. We’re co-creating; changing all the time; we’re listening to each other. We’re trying out all different ideas and that exploration together …” 

Trinity: “… And collaboration …” 

Maureen: “ … Requires a lot of beautiful connection, but also a vulnerable intimacy that is just a joy.” 

Trinity: “When we do perform live, I think that’s what people see. They see our energy, and I think that’s what draws people to our music.”

I asked Willow if they had a favourite from ‘the Southend’ that we could close this interview with.’

Maureen: “One of our fans is three years old now.  He sings along with the recording of ‘Aint Gonna Let Nobody,’ and asks his parents to put it on repeat. So it might be our most popular for a three year old!”

The podcast contains an interview with Andrea Blaseckie, Maureen Fox, Trinity Gogolin and Kelly Beamish of Willow. 

Music Credits for the podcast

• Willow emailed Cortes Currents an MP3 Recording of Willow, ‘Joyful.’
• ‘Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round,’ is taken from the EP – Willow, ‘The Southend, Recorded by Ron Obvious of Dragonfly Studios and released December 16, 2019.

Links of Interest

• Willow’s Facebook page
• Willow’s Videos on Facebook (includes unrecorded songs)
• Willow: The Southend – Cortes Currents (Nov 18, 2019)

All photos courtesy Willow’s Facebook Page

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