Singer-songwriter Belle Plaine– AKA Melanie Berglund– got a later start in her music career after experiences in other creative areas but that journey has given her a unique perspective as she writes her songs.
“I’ve always sung, I started taking voice lessons at five years old and I took lessons until I was 18,” Plaine said, recounting her early music experiences. “Then I went to jazz college in Edmonton at Grant MacEwan College (now university) so my connection to music was found through classical lessons and some piano lessons.”
She adds that she was influenced by country music as it was her parents’ preferred genre on the radio, that interest in country was then fused with her jazz influences from college.
“When I got out of Grant MacEwan at 20 years old, my confidence as a musician had taken a hit because the people around me were just so incredibly talented and young,”
Rather than launching a career as a performer right out of school, she ended up behind the scenes for a while. She was an engineer in the recording industry for a while and was in the theatre industry for a few years.
It was her own competitive spirit that made her believe she could do better than songs she was listening to.
“I got into songwriting and it was competitive for me,” she said. “I heard some songs that some folks wrote, I’ve always been connected to literature and writing from my early years and I thought ‘I could write a better song than that.’ So that’s how I started writing, when I was traveling I was writing songs to document what I had created.”
From there she started on a path towards more performing.
“I started to do some really chill gigs but I had a lifetime of performing in my hometown and some recordings that were just made for family,” she said. “So I was in my mid 20s and I came back to Saskatchewan after eight years and started working in professional theatre as a lighting technician and I was watching these actors on stage every night creating stories and careers and seeing them improve over four years, developing from baby artists into really powerful capable performers.”
It was watching that development that spurred her into launching into the unknown of a music career.
“I came to the realization that I had to quit the job, I had to lose the stability, I wasn’t able to stop dreaming about being on stage,” she said. “So it was the theatre that convinced me that I needed to be in music full-time. That was in 2010 and it’s been a full-time music career since then.”
She says she chose the stage name Belle Plaine, after a small town in Saskatchewan just east of Moose Jaw.
“I grew up on the prairies, on a farm near Saskatoon which was a very rural upbringing,” she said. “I wanted something that connected to the plains and femininity and that had a connection.”
Her style of music is a combination of that old classic country her parents played on the radio and the jazz she studied in college.
“We do a mix of country eras, perhaps is the best way to put it. I enjoy the current world of Americana with Gillian Welch and Neko Case and that level of songwriting is what I aspire to create for folks,” she said. “I have an incredible band behind me with a guitarist and bassist and a drummer. So we’ll be a full sound with lots of harmonies and lots of storytelling and sharing about the connection of the songs I’ve written to the prairies.”
She says while it’s not always intentional, the prairies are a permeating theme in her lyrics.
“I don’t think it’s been intentional that I set out to invoke the prairies in my lyrics,” she said. “But it’s something that comes up in my writing. It’s also a connection to home in general. As a touring artist I have to find home wherever I go, or some piece of it. For me that has long been in the material that I create. So, instead of writing about relationships or breakups or love or that sort of thing, I’ve chosen to write more about where I’m from and a bit about my outlook on life.”
Plaine’s most recent album “Malice, Mercy, Grief & Wrath” released in 2018 and she says she has a backlog of songs written and demos recorded which may materialize into new recordings in the future. She says she is taking her time to create a new album that comes from what she wants to put out, rather than being obligated to pump out music without as much consideration, under the terms of a record contract.
“As much as I would like to be in a position where I have broader audiences across the US, Europe, UK and Canada– which is where I focus my efforts for my career. I don’t want to be pressured into creating something that doesn’t feel aligned with my life, my health, with my family,” she said. “That’s all really important to me that, I think, comes from starting a career in my 30s and not in my 20s and having a bit more perspective on who I was when I got on the road in the first place.”
Belle Plaine takes the stage at the Townshend Theatre as the fourth act in Tour De Fort’s 30th anniversary series on Friday, January 19 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available online at tourdefort.com or in person at Ski’s Variety or the Fort Frances Public Library Technology Centre.
