Meredith Moon – Constellations
Meredith Moon – Constellations
Format: CD – Digital
Label: True North Records
Release: 2023
Release date: April 21, 2023
It’s one thing to fall in love with old-time music and learn how to shred on clawhammer-style Appalachian banjo. It’s another to consciously live the life – hitchhiking and riding the rails while learning your craft and writing about your travels. The title track and first single from Meredith Moon’s new album, ‘Constellations,’ was written in 2017 about the wanderlust of her younger days – not that those days are done. Though she’s not hitchhiking anymore.
Meredith Moon isn’t someone living in the past. She’s a young woman. She comes from a musical family, but taught herself to play banjo when she was 21 by watching YouTube videos. Then she hit the road playing solo alongside a folk-punk band, tapping into a DIY network that enabled her to book her own tours: across North America, Central America and western Europe, including Croatia and the Czech Republic – many places that don’t often see a young female singer-songwriter playing Appalachian-style banjo. Bars, art spaces, house shows – it didn’t matter to Moon: “I booked everything through the travelling punks and the old-time scene – which are honestly quite similar.”
She put out two indie albums, one of which she was happy to bury, and the other she considers her proper debut: Forest Far Away, which came out in 2018. Constellations, her first for True North Records, was finished in late 2019 – or so she thought. For obvious global reasons, she kept it on the shelf for a while, a time during which she decided to sub out two old songs for new ones, recorded with a rhythm section. One of them is ‘That Town’, about the northern Ontario town of Wawa, best known for its enormous statue of a Canada goose. “It’s the town that all travellers get stuck in,” says Moon. “When you’re hitchhiking, there’s nothing between White River and Sault Ste. Marie. It’s rough territory. When I first went through there, I was stuck there for four days. I was stuck there once during a big snowsquall, too. But there are worse places to be stuck. It’s a vortex – but a nice vortex.” Amidst the eight new originals on Constellations are two traditional tunes arranged by Moon – ‘Soldier’s Joy’, and ‘Needlecase Medley’.
With the release of Constellations, Moon is willing to do something she consciously avoided ever since she started writing songs: acknowledge her pedigree, the fact that her father’s name carries a lot of weight in musical history. Gordon Lightfoot is her dad.
“I’m proud of how far I’ve come independently,” she says. “I’ve built an audience around the world of people who are unaware of my family relation – they just like my music. That was something I had to prove to myself. Now that I’ve done that, as my dad gets older, there’s a push to proudly share my family history.”
That said, Lightfoot took her on tour in 2022 for some Canadian dates. “That was my first time playing any shows with him,” says the songwriter who is now a decade into her own career. “He didn’t introduce me as his daughter. He completely understands and respects why I’d want that. He’d just say, ‘Give it up for Meredith Moon.’ That was really nice.”
So take the old man’s advice and put your hands together and give it up: follow Constellations until you find Meredith Moon. On her own merits.
Website: https://www.meredithmoon.com/
Tracks:
01. Starcrossed
02. That Town
03. Constellations
04. Brokenwing Bird
05. Your Cards
06. Soldier’s Joy
07. Lighthouse County
08. Mark Twain
09. Needlecase Medley
10. Slow Moving Train