It isn’t often that you can say you’ve met a vegetarian who was raised on an Alberta cattle farm, or commerce graduate who decides to become a singer and yoga instructor, training with monks in India.
But Amy Thiessen is anything but average.
“I’m dynamic,” said Thiessen, as she discussed some of the odd parallels in her life on a late Friday afternoon. She is taking a break from booking shows to chat about her latest release, In Between Goodbyes.
“I have a certain nature that is very much bread from growing up on the farm,” she said.
She discussed the vast amount of space she grew up in and her desire to get away from the farm – leading her to head to Europe when she was 18.
In that vast amount of space, Thiessen said she had a lot of time alone, and because of that, she became very self-reflective.
This self-reflection is something she said she sees as a factor in the connection between her songwriting and passion for yoga. She said it is not uncommon for her to spend two to three hours a day in self-reflection, whether that is journaling or studying psychology and philosophy.
Trying to self understand is something she said she “nerds out on” mostly because she wants to understand herself better in this world in order to do her work – whether it is teaching yoga or performing the songs she has written.
“Some of the songs that I’ve written lately, they are so vulnerable. They are really those insecure kind of places inside of you, like your little child inside of you,” said Thiessen. “If I’m going to go out and sing that in front of people, I need to have some sort of stability. So my journaling and that kind of stuff is more like an anchor so that I don’t get to lost in it.”
She said that the majority of the music she makes comes form those places, and when she reveals them they become less scary, admitting that it might sound corny.
Thiessen is writing about those places more confidently than ever before on her latest full length that was released in May 2014. It is an album she describes as a lot more polished than her last, but still really raw and emotive.
She worked with producer Russell Broom, who she described as an intricate part of her life for the last few years.
Thiessen said they worked together a lot, developing her songwriting, something she said she is incredibly proud of on this album.
“The first time he heard me sing he said ‘you could make the phonebook sound nice, but good singers can be lazy songwriters,’” Thiessen said, adding that she wanted to be pushed into progressing her songwriting a lot more.
This push also helped her develop a certain style to her voice that she describes as a bit haunting.
“I don’t know what it is. It is a voice that comes out. It is more apparent in the stuff I am writing now,” she said. “I have a voice that can be ridiculously big. I can go so loud. One of the ways I might skirt around being vulnerable is being loud. I’m learning how to pull back and allow that more vulnerable voice through.”
You can catch Thiessen at Legacy Guitar and Coffee House Aug. 9; visit legacyguitarhouse.com for tickets, which are $20.
