Ken Wallis Chats With Erin McCallum

By Ken Wallis | The Sound Cafe Journal

Photo Credit: Ken Wallis.

Erin McCallum’s slogan is Big Voice, Big Sound. And that really is an understatement. When Erin belts it out time seems to stand still.  Coupled with brilliant songwriting, any Erin McCallum album is guaranteed to be riveting.  

And all this is just scratching the surface.  When you see Erin perform live, you’re witnessing raw talent that has been honed into an iconic blues artist.  She is definitely one of Canada’s premiere female vocalists.  Ken Wallis interviewed Erin McCallum for the radio show BluesSource Canada.  

The following are excerpts from that interview, edited and amended for brevity and clarity. 

Ken Wallis

Erin McCallum has just recorded a new album and we thought it would be interesting to walk through the steps it takes to get an album onto a disc and out to the public. Erin, how do you go about putting an album together? I assume it's got to start with the creative.

Erin McCallum

Absolutely. Everything starts with an idea. And depending on what you want your final product to be, it can change how exactly you go about it. Everything starts with an idea, and fom that idea, you have to figure out a way to share that idea, because there's no album that really happens in a vacuum. There's a process involved to all of it. By that, I mean, sometimes you end up figuring out how to chart a song, or play a song on an instrument - or nowadays there's a lot of people that are working with AI assisting devices, so, you have to find a way to get your idea in a place where you can share it.

Ken Wallis

In the case of your album, how did you come about your idea and how did you bring it forward?

Erin McCallum

I'm constantly writing, and what I did was I tried to pick songs that I thought were suitable for the band, and I charted them out. The other thing I did was I learned how to play the songs on one guitar - and, in the case of this album, I co-wrote a couple songs with guitarist, Teddy Leonard - where I could bounce an idea off the person I think I'd be working with the closest. There was at least enough of a foundation there for me to take those charts, strengthen those ideas, or pick a different song.

That's the other thing - not all songs make it to the next step. And that was enough of a foundation to send those charts and those song forms to other people that that we would ultimately be working with. So again, still in the idea phase - it's great to have a song - but then you start thinking about, ‘is this a song that could speak to lots of people’? ‘Is it a song that fits with the other songs’? ‘Is everything that needs to be in the song correct’? ‘Is the form correct’? ‘Does it need a different arrangement’?

So you sort of hash those things out. That process evolves, pretty much until the day you get to recording. So it’s still ideas, and then you develop those ideas.

Ken Wallis

How do you come about creating your music? Do the lyrics come first?

Erin McCallum

I'm a lyrics first approach on all of it, so that's how I start.

Ken Wallis

So let's go to the next step. You've got the music out to the other band members. I would assume that your next step are rehearsals before you go into a recording studio.

Erin McCallum

Yeah, you want to make sure everybody can at least walk in with a sense of what's going on. So, in the case of where I just recorded for this album, the process was a little different from what I normally do, and there actually were a lot of charts. I had pre-recorded some, and I brought songs to Teddy Leonard in the original idea process, and I made a recording of me and a guitar. In those co-written songs, Teddy and I sat there with an acoustic instrument and I sang the songs, and we were able to send a sound file to the musicians we'd be working with in the studio. But in lots of cases, there are rehearsals. And in some cases, you just go in as well prepared as possible.

Ken Wallis

And how do you select the songs? I know some artists record more songs than fit on the album, and then they make the decision. Others decide, okay, we're going to do eight, 10 songs. That's it. How did you go about this with your album?

Erin McCallum

I think the songs chose themselves in this case.  You don't want to have an entire album with the same tempo, or the entire album with the same groove, or in the same key, or anything like that. That's number one. You don't want to have an entire album where maybe you're addressing with the same message or the same topic. So, those things kind of inform what stays and what goes. There's also the other element of when you're working with other people to develop songs, you want to make sure that they like them. because people play songs better when they like them.

Ken Wallis

Let's jump to the studio. You're in the studio now. Tell us how that unfolds.

Erin McCallum

Well, taking those ideas and sort of documenting them - that's the point where it really turns into a song that you're recording, for the record. In the studio, what normally happens is there's somebody engineering, operating the process of the actual recording, there are the musicians, And lots of times, there's a producer, and the producer puts a separate set of ears on the process where they go, ‘hey, I think this needs something, or what do you think about adding keys or, another letter of instrumentation?’’.  

And, so, that happens in the studio. Because the way you document it, you can play a song 100 times, and that's just the moment you documented it in the studio. A lot's captured in the moment. And that's a lot of the process too - just documenting it, making sure that it's a good form. Some people will pay attention to how long the songs are so that they're palatable for radio and market and all that stuff too.

Ken Wallis

In the case of your new album, did you have the band play the entire song, all of them, or do you lay down vocal tracks and other tracks? How does that work?

Erin McCallum

Well, many times what happens in the studio is, there's, let's call it, “round one” of the recording process, and bed tracks are laid. And that's where the main idea is to capture the low end, be that the drums, the bass, maybe the rhythm guitar - that low-end instrumentation. Everybody plays it at the same time, but it's not the final take, usually.

What happens is it serves as like a ghost track for people to have as a reference as you add more instruments. Say on day two, somebody gets called for a piano and they haven't heard the songs and they haven't been in the studio. They'll have a reference of everything that happened on day one in their ears, and that makes it a little easier for people to sit with the song and have a better feel for what it is. So, it's usually a multi-step process.

There are albums that are recorded completely live off the floor, and the one we did is pretty close to it. What people will hear in the album we just recorded is take one of the low end for sure, and guitars as well. I sang my tracks after the fact. So other than that, it's a pretty honest recording.

Ken Wallis

So here we are. We've got it all recorded. What happens next? There's terms that people probably don't understand out there like mastering and mixing. Can you explain what the next steps are for the album and how it gets to pressed on a CD or vinyl?

Erin McCallum

Okay, so once you've documented the ideas, I'll call them songs okay, there's got to be some kind of order to this where it goes from being a bunch of songs to becoming an album. So what happens next is post-production. And that's after the songs are recorded and you're good with the musicianship and how that's all gone down. It's documented. It's on the record.

You do things like: you get a mix, so everything sounds nice together. And, you send it out to be mastered.  I always liken what mastering is to, if you have a block of wood, what mastering does is it puts a nice finish on it to bring the grains out of that wood. In addition to that, it makes all the songs the same volume, track to track. They sound well next to each other, that kind of thing. And then, depending on what you want to do with that product, there's still a whole lot of stuff to do after the fact.

After that process, you still have to think about things like registering your songs with an institution like SOCAN or ASCAP or BMI. You have to maybe think about, now that you've documented it, how are you going to distribute it? A lot of songs are a digital release now, but there's still a process that goes with that too. You have to be able to tell the world about it. So that's its whole other process as well.

Ken Wallis

How do you decide the order of the tunes on the album?

Erin McCallum

That's an interesting thing. In this day and age, it's an interesting thing because there are a lot of singles being released. I'm of the opinion that the concept album - the album you sit with, where the whole album tells a story - is not anywhere near as common as it was 20 years ago. So I'm not going to say it (sic. the song order) matters less.

You wouldn't want to have necessarily 2, 3, 4, 5, let's say slow songs next to themselves in an album, because there are people who like to listen to the whole thing. That matters. You have to think about if people are listening to the first 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 10 seconds of a song, how it's going to “get them” on the first song. Maybe the last song is your acoustic song, something to wind down to. So it matters. It really matters.

And I think, Ken, you might know from being a radio guy; you don't have all the time in the world deciding what goes on the radio. You don't have all the time in the world to sit and listen to every album that's sent to you. So, you know, maybe the first 10 seconds make a strong impression.

Ken Wallis

I guess the last question I have is how do you go about selecting the title of the album? So many artists pick a song and that's the title of the album. Others come up with other themes.

What did you do in your case? And we won't ask you to reveal the title of your album because I know that's a big deal that you want to promote later, but how did you come about selecting the title for your album?

Erin McCallum

Sometimes they come easily, and sometimes they require some thought. Lots of times, people will come up with a title track. They'll know completely, ‘oh, the name of this song is informative. This is the strongest song. This is the song that represents, my overarching M.O. as a musician.’, and sometimes not. In this case, with the album that was just recorded, it did not come easily because all of the natural titles were taken. And, that's not a copyright infringement….but, if you're trying to share it with the world, you do have to think about if somebody types this (sic. title) into a search engine, are they going to find my stuff? Or, does a  super famous artist have, let's say, a title of the same name or a song of the same name?  You don't want to be eclipsed if you're trying to share it with the world. So, a little bit of research goes into it, if you're really looking to hit a large target audience.

Ken Wallis

Erin, it's been great chatting with you again and I can't wait to hear the new album once it comes out.

Erin McCallum

Thanks, Ken. It's always nice to have a chat.

About The Writer.

Ken Wallis has been a cornerstone of Hamilton, Ontario’s media and music scenes for decades. He began his career at CHCH TV in 1973, producing arts and cultural content, creating revenue-generating campaigns, and even directing a segment with Sophia Loren.

After 13 years in television, Ken joined Mohawk College, retiring as Associate Dean of Media and Entertainment after 28 years. There, he championed Hamilton’s music and arts communities, producing concerts with legends like Jimmie Vaughan and Larry Carlton, supporting the Hamilton Music Awards, and collaborating with Boris Brott.

Ken’s passion for blues led him to host BluesSource Canada on INDI 101.5 FM, the show aired for close to ten years globally on our sister platform, Blues and Roots Radio, and was featured here at The Sound Cafe as a podcast for five years. The radio show continues today on INDI 1015 FM and now is syndicated on Blues Radio U.K. and archived on Mixcloud.

Ken also established BluesSource Entertainment, promoting live blues in Hamilton. He serves on blues boards, contributes to The Sound Cafe and and has contributed to Hamilton City Magazine, which documented performances through concert photography.

Most recently, Ken co-founded the Escarpment Blues Society with Juno Award-winning Steve Strongman, serving as President to support local musicians, promote music education, and strengthen Hamilton’s live music community.

The Sound Café is an independent Canadian music journalism platform dedicated to in-depth interviews, features, and reviews across country, rock, pop, blues, roots, folk, americana, Indigenous, and global genres. Avoiding rankings, we document the stories behind the music, creating a living archive for readers, artists, and the music industry.

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