Originally Published: 2009-10-18

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A key collaborator on this record is co-producer Joanne Perica, a friend from Boyd’s Toronto days now living in New Canaan, Connecticut, a town Boyd now also calls home. “Joanne was very instrumental in helping me get settled here and in helping me produce,” says Boyd. Perica recalls their 18 months of work on the album as “an amazing, creative and painstaking process.”
Featured on the track “Let’s Go To The Mountains” is famed fiddler Oliver Schroer, a childhood friend who recorded his part just weeks before succumbing to leukemia. “Oliver is such an example of someone living life with such passion,” she says. “Right up to the end he was making music.”
Making the transition to singing was a real challenge for Boyd, given a longtime lack of confidence in her own vocal ability. ”I tried for choir at eight years old and was told I couldn’t sing, that I was growling,” says Boyd. “I was traumatized. I remember I dedicated my first Juno Award to my singing teacher for telling me that. In life sometimes people tell you negative things and I never believed I could sing. I lip-sync ‘Happy Birthday’ at family gatherings!”
One supportive fan of her songwriting early on was Pierre Trudeau, with whom Boyd had a long and well-publicized love affair. “He just loved my songs. He said, ‘Why can’t you make these hits?’ and I said, ‘Because I can’t sing.' Plus I was a classical guitarist and classical guitarists don’t sing.”
Boyd will soon release another new album, Seven Journeys - Music for the Soul and the Imagination, one strikingly different from LBSSOL. Jointly credited to Boyd and fellow guitarist/composer Peter Bond, it is an imaginatively atmospheric and primarily instrumental record. It incorporates new age, ambient, world and film music elements, with Ennio Morricone being one of Boyd’s inspirations.
After a protracted absence from the spotlight, Liona Boyd is definitely back.
Liona Boyd Sings Songs Of Love is now out on Moston/Universal Music Canada.

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