By: Marc Z. Grub

Last Thursday, Lidia sent me an email to notify me that The Youngest (singer/songwriter Amy Learmonth) would be performing down at the Press Club that night. I packed my bags and headed over for an interview. I sat down and spoke to a great band called Pirate/Rock until she arrived at the venue. After her performance, we went down the street to a small café and engaged in an interview/conversation that lasted for something like a half-hour.

Marc: Why are you called The Youngest?

Amy: I’m the youngest in my family. My parents always introduced me as the youngest, like “and this is the youngest”.

M: So, you make music. Why do you make music?

A: Well, it’s something I’ve always done. My family is musical. I play my dad’s guitar and he taught me how to play guitar. I always had a piano; we always had instruments, so it was really natural. My dad always played Neil Young and Willie Nelson and when were [listening to the radio] he would ask me “what do you think?” and he’d ask me to pick out the instruments. He always encouraged music in me and I love all those guys [he listened to] like Neil Young and Dylan. When I was a kid, I was instantly in love with that stuff and I stuck with it through high school. I still am [into it] and now I’m more influenced by their influences like Odetta and bluegrass. I’m big into Joni Mitchell nowadays, even more like, reading her poetry and understanding it. And why I play music? It’s just where I go when I’m by myself. It’s hard to play live but I just kind of do.

M: You seem to have a special relationship with nature. For instance, your myspace background is a forest and your display picture is you on a rock by a river. I feel like this fits in well with your music and it seems to make sense. Can you tell me about this relationship with nature, if there is one?

A: Nature and weather make the best metaphors. You can explain a lot about life by looking around at what’s constant but at the same time always changing. Living in Canada, the changing seasons are very important for me-

M: Like, maybe you would say every season has its connotation to people? Like winter is associated with certain feelings and emotions and summer is associated with certain feelings.

A: Yeah, definitely. I know that I change a lot through the year like I become fall, and I become winter. Right now I’m definitely late summer!

M: It seems like the whole musical landscape has changed for female songwriters – at least in Canada – since Feist kind of hit it big. What do you think about Feist and how has she affected you?

A: I really admire Feist. She seems to put her heart into her work and she keeps getting better. I think she’s made a really positive impact and she’s a good role model for songwriters. I know I learned so much from being in different bands and from trying different types of performance art. I think Feist would say the same about her experiences.

M: On your myspace it says “Hi there. My name is Amy and I’m The Youngest. It’s a long story that I’ll tell you about some time.” So, what’s the story?

A: My parents told me I had a sister, not long ago, and she’s ten years older than me. It turns out she’s really awesome!

M: How did this affect your life and your music?

A: It’s very inspiring.

M: You were in a couple other bands and previous projects. Would you like to talk about how this affected you as a musician and you as The Youngest?

A: Yeah, sure. Well, Fox The Boombox was a really big one. It was like five girls and almost all of us lived together in one house and the one who didn’t live there had a key so…we had a shed in the backyard and we just wrote while we partied and we recorded it. It was so fun and I learned so much about recording and writing parts. I hadn’t been in a band like that before and it was an incredible experience. We challenged each other to learn new instruments and try new things.

M: How did you like the music you guys were making in that?

A: I totally loved it. I still do. It’s great party music. It’s such a great record [Side Parts]. Unfortunately we broke up but that was that. Then there was Librarian’s Touch, which formed out of Fox The Boombox, it was Lindsey and I. I played drums and she played keyboards and that was a really interesting time. It was winter 2006 and we just spent the whole winter in the shed writing tunes. It was musical therapy for us! I really wish that we would have recorded them but we didn’t. That broke up because I had to move home and we didn’t really restart it. Before that I was doing stuff like this MSTRKRFT thing that was a one-off kind of thing.

M: What was it? MSTRKRFT’s pretty big, what’s the connection between you and them?

A: Well, I’m friends with those guys, particularly Al-P. Al recorded the Fox the Boombox record actually. He did it in a really impressive way. He live mixed the record and we partied and did it live-to-tape in his studio over a couple days. We really bonded and then Al asked me to some vocals with Vanessa from No Dynamics. We went in one night when they were doing the MSTRKRFT record [The Looks] and we were on that record. We were on that song “She’s Good for Business” . That’s Vanessa and me.

MSTRKRFT - “She’s Good for Business”

M: That’s pretty great to have on your resume, “sang with MSTRKRFT”. They’re pretty big.

A: Yeah, they’re huge; they’re doing really well. Al’s really cool; I like him.

M: Final question: what is the future of The Youngest?

A: I’ve been writing all summer so now I’m recording. I hope to release a full-length record this fall, then tour and share it with people. Writing is a pretty solitary thing and now I’m dying to get back to playing with others. As for the future, I’ll always be writing this music. I don’t put pressure on it, because that puts pressure on my personal, real life. I’m trying to just do it as real as possible. It’s going to be slow. It’s really like; you can’t put any time limit [on it]. You can’t think about your age as being important. If you have a solo thing, you do it for life. The future of The Youngest is the future of me. The Youngest is forever.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 6:44 pm.