Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your childhood impacted your musical direction?
A: I’m a singer-songwriter, poet, and mother, living in Canada’s southernmost city, Windsor, Ontario. I grew up in a quieter place with a lot of natural beauty, the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, on Canada’s East Coast. A lot of factors fed into my decision to pick up the guitar for the first time as a young girl, but the biggest are these three: my dad played music pretty much every weekend at family gatherings so guitars and music were always around, my grandfather was a record collector who curated a charming and nostalgic soundtrack for summers spent at our family cottage in the woods, and the local all-ages music scene in the early 2000s was an exciting place to be. From my parents’ influence I developed a love of singer-songwriter music, from my grandfather came my love of jazz and retro pop, and from my community came my passion for music that was dramatic and gritty.
Q: How are you planning on growing your fan base and sharing your music with the world? What message do you have for anyone who is about to discover “Crissi Cochrane”?
A: Oh, I like this question. Although I use the words “growing my fan base” when writing grant applications and such, I’m pretty content to have an underground, grass-roots kind of music career, and expand slowly but consistently. I just don’t feel like myself if I’m not creating things, and part of that process is releasing what I create into the world, where it can live a life of its own and be found by anyone who needs it. I’m very excited to continue releasing my new EP “Fire Sign” one track at a time (which is new for me – usually I drop things all at once), along with lots of video content and other pieces to help each song on its adventure into the world. For anyone who is about to discover my music, I would say, I hope that my songs create a space where you can meet yourself in a new way.
Q: Who is the most inspiring artist for you right now? And where do you find inspiration for making music?
A: I have adored East-Coast singer-songwriter Rose Cousins since I was a teenager living on my own in Halifax eighteen years ago. It feels like she emerged with a fully-formed gift as a musician and songwriter, and the way the depth of her artistry continues to evolve over time is awe-inspiring. My songwriting inspiration comes in a few ways: either there’s an idea that’s jumped out at me from my daily life that is clamouring to exist outside of my head, or there’s a challenge I’ve been issued to write a song on a certain topic, or I’m because doing some inner emotional work and songwriting helps me access things that are a little buried in my subconscious.
Q: Can you tell us about the story or message behind the song, “Black Wasp”?
A: This song was born out of a challenge. I was talking with my neighbor about the things that refuse to grow or refuse to die in my garden, and I said “you’ve got to be hardy to survive around here”, which also felt like a revelation about the general feeling of parenthood, or the weight of responsibility of being in one’s thirties, or just the state of the world. She said, “that sounds like a song!”. The song turned out to be a moody and tense expression of resilience and survival, that also picked up on my daughter’s intense fear of wasps and my refusal to kill them. I was also reading “Women Who Run With The Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and its ideas about accepting cycles of life, death, and rebirth really resonated with me. Sometimes I have a lot of different bits of inspiration piling up in my head, and I might funnel a lot of them into one piece of writing, like a song or a poem. “Black Wasp” is definitely one of those. (There are a few posts on my Instagram that go into the inspiration in more detail!)
Q: How would you describe your sound in one word for potential listeners?
A: I think I’m going to go with “surprising”, because I think there’s always a little something different or unusual or imperfect about my sound. My music is never only one thing, and it’s not always the most predictable or formulaic.
Q: Did you face any challenges while writing or recording “Black Wasp”?
A: One challenge was the fact that once the song was fully produced, myself and producer Adam Rideout-Arkell realized that the song was just a tiny bit too slow. Rather than re-record everything, we sped up the song in post by about 3 beats per minute. With most instruments, you can get away with this seamlessly, but people are very attuned to abnormalities in the human voice, so it was a bit of a challenge to catch all the artefacts in the vocal stem. There are still some moments that sound almost distorted or affected in the second pre-chorus, but I feel like the effect adds something complementary to the sound.
Q: What is the message of your music? And what are your goals as an artist?
A: That’s a really great question. I would love to feed all my music into ChatGPT and ask it to tell me what it thinks my message is (possibly while it pretends to be a Jungian analyst). I’m probably just trying to assert my personhood and validate my experiences. I think I turn to music a lot when I feel misunderstood, by others or by myself, and it’s a way for me to know myself and get to the root of things. Hopefully it achieves a similar introspective effect for the listener. I think my goal is just to continue creating for my entire life.
Q: Who is your dream artist to collaborate with? (dead or alive)
A: It would have been cool to create music with Elliott Smith. It would have been awesome to sing back-up on his recordings or at a show, or to be someone to whom he would bring a new song for feedback.
Q: What is your advice for people interested in pursuing music as a career or for those trying to enter the industry?
A: Have multiple sources of income (merch, live performances, commissions, teach lessons, do studio work, write grants, license your songs, etc etc etc). Stay friendly and humble. Align yourself with other musicians – there’s strength in numbers!
Q: If you could go back in time and give a younger you some words of wisdom, what would they be?
A: Whether you will be destroyed or rescued seems like a thing that’s out of your control – but the thing you water is the thing that grows.
