Folk/Roots Music PEI Award Winner Alicia Toner Releases Haunting “Time Travel”
There’s a certain irony to the chorus of Alicia Toner’s new single, the haunting “Time Travel”: “Only one thing left for you to do / travel back in time and tell the truth.” The lyric is directed toward an ex that the Charlottetown singer-songwriter struggles to forgive. But there’s another truth lurking beneath.
The song was released on her 2021 album Joan, which garnered seven Music PEI nominations, and took home the prize for Solo Recording of the Year, and two ECMA nominations, including the Rising Star award. But only now is the acclaimed actor and musician telling the truth about what the album is really about. It’s an uncomfortable truth, a painful personal story that Toner is ready to tell only now.
“It’s about the after-effects of an abusive marriage,” she says. “When I first released this album in 2021, I still wasn’t ready to speak to the level of trauma I had been through. It still felt much too private. Like it was just mine. Domestic abuse isn’t an easy topic, and I hid behind veiled references, so I didn’t have to face my own reality. Now I find the full scope of it to be important. What I went through is present in my daily life. It effects how I raise my daughter, how I interact with people, how I react to the world. But I’m lucky enough to have gone through this from a very privileged position and I have a small platform to be able to share my story. If that reaches one person going through something similar and inspires change, that’s important.”
Toner started writing the album a few months after escaping the relationship in question. It took her three years and a journey of self-rediscovery to channel the experience into ten songs that illustrate her clear, honest approach to lyrics and matching them to melodies that put her in the same league as Brandi Carlile or one of Toner’s childhood heroes, Jann Arden. Those songs are then delivered by a veteran of the musical stage, one who can quite easily communicate emotional depth to the back rows of a theatre.
“It started as therapy, as a way to let traumatic events come to the surface without having to discuss them,” she says of the writing process for Joan. “Topics range from dealing with anxiety in ‘Try Again,’ to the inability to forgive in ‘Time Travel’ to the grief of saying goodbye to what should have been in ‘Easier Today.’ There is even a song about cautiously falling in love again in ‘Tonight.’ What I ended with was a reclamation of myself. Releasing this album, making the videos, and playing these songs live has been a sort of rebirth and stepping into a power I’ve always had but was too scared to claim as my own.”
Knowing this backstory, “Time Travel” carries even more emotional weight as Toner sings in between heaving pedal-steel swells: “I want to say I’m sorry / for all the strength I lack / for failing to forgive you / because you can’t take it back.”
Watch the video for “Time Travel” below and learn more about Alicia Toner via our mini-interview.
Care to introduce yourself?
Hello. I’m a New Brunswick-born and raised singer/songwriter who has lived all over Canada and used to work as an actor. Now I call Charlottetown PE home. I love it here.
Tell us about the process of writing “Time Travel.”
“Time Travel” was written very quickly. I was sitting on my bed with a notebook, procrastinating from finishing a different song. The other song wasn’t coming easily, so I started to mess around with other melodies, and this song, “Time Travel,” tumbled out in about 20 minutes.
What’s it like being a musician in Charlottetown?
Just like everywhere else, it has its pros and cons. There is an incredibly supportive community out here that I wouldn’t trade for anything. That being said, it’s a small island, so you can exhaust your audience pretty easily. Luckily, we have a lot of incredible Festivals and venues all over this island and no end of talented musicians and artists to collaborate with. It’s easy to stay creative here.
Who was the first Canadian artist to blow you away?
The first image that came to mind after reading this question was listening to “Jagged Little Pill” over and over again in my room while I was supposed to be cleaning it and pretending my broom was a mic stand. So, Alanis, for sure. Special mention to Joni Mitchell, though. Even when I was really young, I wanted to sing like her before I knew what the words meant.
You’ve been making music for a while now, what’s one piece of advice you can offer to those starting out?
Don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice. I spent a lot of time thinking I needed to figure it all out myself or that asking for help would be bothering people. Everyone needs help, even the people you ask have needed it at one time or another, and generally, people are really happy to pay that forward. Also, be yourself and make things you’re really proud of. Oops, that was more than one. Pick one that applies to you!
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