As the coronavirus pandemic enters its final phase in the U.S., Billboard is catching up with individuals we interviewed at the beginning of the crisis to see how they’ve weathered the past year.
This installment is told by STORRY, a Canadian singer-songwriter who scored her first Juno Award nomination right before the pandemic took hold. Amid COVID-19, she recorded and released a new album, Interlude-19, and moved to the U.K. in search of new opportunities. In April, she received a second Juno nomination for Adult Contemporary Album of the Year for her 2020 album, CH III: The Come Up.
In April [2020], I got out of my pull of depression. And I got this idea for this concept record.
I went with my partner up to this cottage that our friends had, because they had like a little studio, and it was isolated, so it was just me and her. And I taught her how to record me on Logic to record the vocals, and we had 10 days up there. So I wrote and recorded it in seven days, and then she conceptualized the videos for all 10 songs on the record as I was writing them, and then she directed and shot those videos.
I reached out to a bunch of friends, like instrumentalists and producer friends of mine. One of them is Junia-T, who has been making some waves in Canada as well. He actually produced three of the tracks on the record. And then a few of my other friends, like my buddy Tom, who I had produced the first album with, he did a bunch of the piano stuff, and he actually did a lot of the production for “Don’t Wait.”
Interlude-19 is about…this period in our lives that is like an interlude. It seems like it’s gonna last forever, but it’s really just a blip in time. And it also separates two times in our lives, because things are going to be different after this. It will have really shifted our world. But it’s this kind of limbo and this time of waiting and this time of internal reflection.
We released “For No One” around Pride. And then we released “Worth” about a month later. And then I released the full album on my birthday, Sept. 5. I had a great time making it and I got on a few more playlists, organically, on Spotify, which was cool. So we were able to get our listenership up a bit, but not what I think it could be. I’ve been trying to reach out to people, like managers and stuff, to build my team. I’ve been saying, “If I had a team, I could have the same amount of streams that I had in one year in one day.”
During the summer, I was able to catch the wave of livestream stuff. It was novel. People were like, “Oh yeah, I’ll tune into a livestream.” But I think people got tired of them. So my last gig was Oct. 1, and that was the last paying gig that I got.
I had been thinking about coming to London the year prior. I had come out here for six months, I really liked the vibe, and initially it was like, “Okay, well, the Canadian market isn’t really a market.” It’s so dependent on the U.S. And they don’t really champion their own people until they have made it somewhere else.
I didn’t want to move during a pandemic. But I needed to secure my pre-settled status out here so that I can potentially work here in the future. I had to come before Brexit and so that’s why I came this year. I’ve been literally just living off savings and being super frugal for the past five months. And it’s very hard because in the UK, every pound I spend is like 2 Canadian dollars.
I’m in a warehouse now, so I live with 11 people. It’s actually a community of warehouses, so it’s a huge artist community. I just met with a few people today, and one of them is a DJ, and another one works at this venue, and they’re like, “Oh, we can maybe give you this venue for free to shoot your little thing that you want to shoot.” So it’s been really cool having this kind of communal space.
I thought [the 2021 Juno nomination ceremony] was only going to be on CBC, so I couldn’t log in in the UK. And I was like, “Oh well, I’m not gonna get nominated anyway, so better just not be disappointed.” And then my partner was like, “Oh no, you can watch it on Facebook.” So we were just watching it on the laptop in [our] room.
When I got that nomination, I was shocked because I actually forgot that I had applied to that category. I cried. I feel like it’s breathed new life into [the album]. There is a bunch of merch that’s still in my mother’s house that hasn’t sold. I still haven’t made back the money that I had put into making this merch, because I haven’t been able to tour. There’s a bunch of vinyl records and sweaters and T-shirts that are still there. And it doesn’t convert the same online [as opposed to selling it at in-person shows]
Getting this Juno nom has really [been a] relief for me, so I can get bookings, so people can be excited about these projects that are already out and that most of the world hasn’t heard yet. So I’m really happy.
I’m excited…[to] do live shows again. That’s more than anything else. I want to hug my family and I want to play shows, and travel more. But aside from that, there’s a few things I am nervous about. There was a survey or something done where people had to rank careers from most important to least important. Doctors and stuff are at the top and artists are at the bottom, as the least important. I hope during the pandemic people realized that the thing that they consumed more even than food was art, to keep them sane. Our culture is built on art. And if we don’t have that, then we really don’t have civilization.
I hope that people realize that and that artists will start being — I don’t mean superstars, necessarily, people don’t need to be making millions of dollars like Beyoncé or whatever — but that indie artists can actually make a living and be sustainable businesses just like any other business, and that there can be some sort of formula. I hope for it to not be the Wild West anymore, and we can have an infrastructure that makes sense and [that makes it] safe for people to be able to do this.
As told to Chris Eggertsen.
