Folk art

Images from childhood linger in the back of our minds, waiting to haunt us when we least expect it.

That’s certainly the case for Keri Latimer of the Winnipeg folk-rock band Leaf Rapids, whose youthful memories inspire the group’s new album Velvet Paintings, which comes out Friday.

“My parents had these two velvet paintings in the basement of the house that I grew up in. One was a crying clown and one was a laughing clown and they both were super-creepy and they always freaked me out,” says Latimer, who, along with her husband, Devin Latimer, drummer Joanna Miller and guitarist Chris Dunn, will perform songs from the record Friday at the Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club.

“I really hated them at the time, but they stuck in my memory and they were featured in this song I was writing about … It’s cheesy and low-brow, kind of like us.”

The title track has a vibe reminiscent of the Band. Its lyrics reflect upon some of the difficulties Keri Latimer had writing the songs for the album.

“When I get my shit together, I’ll be a force to reckon with / possessor of self-discipline, not dreaming the day away,” she sings on Velvet Paintings.

While some people were able to use the COVID-19 pandemic to get busy on renovation projects, take up gardening or learn a language, the 54-year-old gained little inspiration from the down time.

“What I wrote was just dark or I didn’t have anything inspiring. I was working at it; it was laborious,” she says.

“I think I’m just deadline-driven. Don’t overthink things, remember what you did when you were young and you weren’t trying to do things. Thank God it all clicked into place.”

While the Latimers have been at the heart of Leaf Rapids for the group’s first two albums, 2019’s Citizen Alien and the 2017 debut Hat Party, Miller and Dunn have officially joined the band and play a bigger part on Velvet Paintings.

Giving them a greater role helped take the pressure off, Keri Latimer says.

“Right now, I feel like this is my favourite iteration of this band. I’m so enamoured with Chris and Jo and we’ve all become such great friends. It feels less about me and more of a group project, so I feel more motivated to put it out there,” she says.

The four pose together on the album cover for Velvet Paintings, and Winnipeg photographer Aaron Ives created an image that doesn’t just look like it has a soft texture, but also shows how tight the quartet has become since they teamed up for Citizen Alien and the new record.

“You could see the influence that they were bringing,” says Devin Latimer, 59, who grew up in Lynn Lake, not far Leaf Rapids, the northern Manitoba mining community from which the band gets its name.

‘It made the band evolve the way it has and this time it’s very much a mutual project.”

Miller can be seen behind the drum kit for a multitude of local performing acts, whether it’s with Dunn and bassist Gilles Fournier in the group Knob and Tube, who open Friday night’s gig; alongside Sean Burns and Lost Country; backing bluesman Big Dave McLean; or even at Rainbow Stage productions.

She takes on new roles — lead vocalist and songwriter — on the song Night Shift, an experience she describes as “exhilarating and terrifying.”

The track refers to the howling foxes who prowl near her South Osborne home by the shore of the Red River, rather than the party-goers who hear her perform at city nightclubs.

“I hear them mostly, the foxes. It’s horrifying if you don’t know what it is. It sounds like a screaming child but it echoes down by the river so you can hear them in the distance,” Miller says.

“The line ‘I wait for the birds and send them off into their day,’ was probably sitting in the notes in my phone for a year or two. Foxes and owls, we’re all up at night.”

While bands use vinyl, social media and streaming services to get their music to listeners these days, in the love song Silver Fillings, it’s dental work that becomes a conductor for radio waves, a notion that had been percolating in Keri Latimer’s mind before she eventually brewed a song about it.

“It did on Gilligan’s Island — suddenly radio was coming out of Gilligan’s jaw,” Dunn says laughing.

A different type of sonic phenomenon, the theremin, is what Keri Latimer has also become known for, besides her songwriting and vocals.

It’s an electronic instrument with two antennae that create an electrical current; the current makes sounds when connected to an amplifier.

The performer changes the theremin’s tone by disrupting its current with her hands.

She began using it two decades ago when she was part of the band Nathan, and while it features on only a couple of songs on Velvet Paintings, it brings a jolt to Leaf Rapids’ shows.

“We were looking for a theremin player and there was nobody, and then we were looking for a theremin and weirdly found one, all lonely in a Mother’s Music corner, covered in dust and half-price,” she says.

“It’s the only instrument I can jam on — though nobody wants to jam with a theremin.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall