When singer-songwriter Abe Drennan released his album Iglu Sessions in August, it was an overdue end to an unexpected journey.
The local teacher started writing four years ago, believing it would be a six-month stint to create the album when he applied for NWT Arts Council funding. Roughly four months in, he realized the songs weren’t ready.
“Four years later I got it done,” he said. “I had to go back to the drawing board.”
Drennan said the music lacked perspective. He believes he found it in tips from local musicians and his producer, which offered some guidance that made him revisit his ideas.
“There were things in the songs that I had just accepted as being ‘okay,’” Drennan said.
Once these moments came to his attention, he realized they fell short of perfection. He felt he was moving forward in the process without being able to confidently say these songs were ready. He dived back into the album’s song writing, asking himself what exactly he wanted to say.
It could be frustrating.
“(There was) a lot of feeling I wasn’t ready,” he said. “It was bit of a blow actually. Like, … I really have to push myself here.”
It was one of the most challenging things he’d ever done musically.
“It just pushed my boundaries. And ultimately it ended up stretching me in ways I never could have imagined,” Drennan said. “I’m so grateful I could have that support around me to produce the songs I did.”
Eventually, granted he would never think the songs were entirely perfect, they were at a point where he was comfortable sharing them.
The songwriting behind them was a vulnerable process, where he attempted to identify his feelings and emotions authentically, without having it “masked,” he said. For him, that also had to be balanced with accessible, enjoyable music.
Honest feedback from the people around him helped ground this process. He said at points he was frustrated because he didn’t want to hear praise, but wanted clearer sounding boards.
“Don’t tell me what I want to hear,” he said. “I don’t care, you can offend me. I’m not going to waste my time on a message or a song, if it doesn’t have, for me anyways, something that’s going to stir my heart,” Drennan said.
For him, songwriting has always been a therapy. He first discovered this in his 20s, when he found the creative process could allow him to express his emotions without bottling them.
In the album, that often takes the form of Drennan presenting an issue or challenge and working to a more hopeful resolution through folky songwriting and confessional lyrics.
That took on added resonance when Drennan’s life as a teacher intersected with his music. His Grade 6 class at the time wrote the album-closer, “There for you,” and recorded it as a choir in Iglu Church. He promised them it would appear on the album, and it became “a natural fit” to finish the record, he said.
Using a portable studio, all the rough tracks were recorded in the church, earning the album its name. Drennan kept the setup simple: one mic placed as high as he could get it to capture the “space sound,” which is a resounding reverb that reappears through the record; and a second mic more intimately set near the vocal or instrument.
After all of this, it was “surreal” when he finally released the album in August.
“I had heard the album so many times. I had done so much work on it. I was so ready to be done,” Drennan said. “It was relief, it was joy, so much stuff mixed in there. But ultimately gratitude. What got me most was how so many people were willing to give their time and perspective and all I had to do was ask.”