It’s a special time to be a fan of Canadian women in music, particularly of Joni Mitchell, Nelly Furtado and Amanda Marshall who, as of recently, have all returned to the stage.
For Marshall, a Juno Award–winning singer-songwriter who reigned in the ’90s, it’s long overdue. In 1994, Marshall became an overnight national hit after her debut album dropped. (Even Elton John is a fan.)
But after over a decade of success, in 2002, Marshall became embroiled in legal battles with her record label, after firing her manager, that wouldn’t be resolved for 12 years, leaving the musician wanting a solid break from the industry. The musician disappeared from the scene for two decades after dropping three albums – 1995’s Amanda Marshall (which was certified diamond), 1999’s Tuesday’s Child, 2001’s Everybody’s Got A Story – and hit singles like “Birmingham,” “Dark Horse” and “Everybody’s Got a Story.”
“I went away — not intending to go away, but the circumstances presented themselves, and this whole legal quagmire became a chronic distraction,” she says. “I was up and down for a few years, but I was always writing and using music as a creative outlet, though without an intended focus or direction.”
Cut to the summer of 2017, when Marshall decided to do 10 preliminary shows — just to see “if there’s even still a demand out there.” Of course, the fans showed up. “It really reignited my passion for playing live,” she says.
By the time the pandemic hit, Marshall had finished work on her latest album, Heavy Lifting, which dropped in 2023 and went on to win the Juno Award for Adult Contemporary Album of the Year, and conduct a successful countrywide tour.
“It’s been an extraordinary year,” she says. “I came into this with no expectations, and I’ve been really overwhelmed.”
The support runs deep for this born-and-raised Torontonian, who grew up as an only child in North Toronto (which remains her favourite neighbourhood in the city). She studied music from an early age, attending the city’s Royal Conservatory of Music.
“That was a huge part of my early musical development,” says Marshall. “I started in a program called Orff, named after the German composer Carl Orff, when I was four. It [introduced] me to music as a language.”
Her big break came one day when she was performing at a bar on Queen Street West as a teenager, where guitarist Jeff Healey, who happened to be in the crowd, was wowed by her bold voice from the crowd and took her on tour with him.
FAST FACTS
Fave music venue: “We recently did the Budweiser Stage, formerly Ontario Place. It reminded me of when I was 14, which was the summer that I came of age and informally started my music career. That was the venue where everybody would gather. It was about the same price as going to see a movie. On a lot of Friday nights, we’d look through Now Magazine, see what the new movies were, and if there wasn’t anything interesting, we’d be like, ‘Well, I don’t know who Buddy Guy or Sandra Ray Vaughn is, but let’s go see what they do.’ You’d hit the lawn, get a big drink and some popcorn. That was how I was introduced to a lot of new music.”
Fave local concert: “I’ve seen so many amazing shows in Toronto, but the two that really stand out are Prince, twice. He had a lot of affection for the city and so there were a lot of Toronto-centric people at the show. Then I saw him again, years later, at Massey Hall, which was a completely different experience. We were in the second row, and it was him sitting at a piano, playing solo. It was so intimate.”
Fave T.O. neighbourhood: North Toronto
Go-to place to unwind: “I’m a mover; if I’m not walking my dogs, I ride around the city on my bike a lot, and that’s really my way of unwinding. I will ride to nowhere for a few hours all around the city. It’s very meditative – nobody can bother you.”
Now, alongside Marshall’s career-spanning fans who have grown up with her, is a whole new generation discovering her music for the first time.
She says, “I had underestimated how much of an impact these songs had on people. They’ve gotten married to these songs. They’ve had babies to these songs. They’ve lost parents to these songs. And — amid this weird generational turnover — seeing them bring their kids is shocking because I never know who is going to be in those first few rows.”
As a performer whose catalogue spans quite a timeframe thanks to that little break in between, each night of her tour, Marshall gets transported right back to the ’90s. Her hair too — her signature feature — remains just as lustrous as it was when she started. (Sadly, she’s got no hair-care secrets to reveal: “I’m sorry to disappoint, but it just grows out of my head [like that]. I use a good shampoo and conditioner, and I get it trimmed every once in a while – less often than my mother would like.”)
Naturally, then, she’s regularly asked if she ever gets tired of performing her older music.
“I really don’t,” she says. “I came up at a time when you had to be able to do it all, so we’re not running backing tracks. We’re out there playing and singing live. It presents the opportunity to be spontaneous, and I’m surrounded by a group of people who can zig when I zig and zag when I zag, which means we’re not doing the same show all the time, and that helps.”
In the time that’s passed, and in getting to rediscover the industry and her place in music today, Marshall feels it’s all been worth it. In fact, it’s all better than it’s ever been.
“It dawned on me that what I thought was the worst thing that had ever happened to me was actually the best thing,” she says. “Because when you are successful early in life, it stunts you a little bit. So, when life starts to throw stuff at you, you oftentimes don’t have the skills to cope with it. I’ve developed into the person I was supposed to be all along, which offers you a whole amount of ridiculous creative freedom. I’ve got nothing to lose.”
