SANDY BELL Releases Debut Solo Album BREAK OF DAY: Songs for Colin
Nova Scotia-via-Toronto singer-songwriter Sandy Bell’s debut solo album, Break of Day: Songs for Colin, is a deeply personal journey through grief and love. Written after the tragic loss of her only son, Colin, the album showcases Bell’s poignant songwriting and poetic talent. Produced by Andrew Collins, the album reflects a lifetime of experience and devotion to music. Set for release on November 1, 2024, Break of Day offers tender harmonies, haunting melodies, and heartfelt tributes to life, love, and loss.
First off, care to introduce yourself to our readers?
I’m Sandy Bell. I moved to Nova Scotia from Toronto during the pandemic but spent most of my career working in the music industry there. I’ve always expressed myself through various mediums. I sing, write songs, paint, photograph, write poetry,
But I’ve been singing the longest. I took voice lessons when I was 5 and sang in choirs and competitions all through my childhood. In my late 20s,I bought a drum kit and started playing drums. Then this acoustic guitar found its way into our Beaches home which I shared with my young son Colin and I started messing around on it. I found a simple progression I liked, sang a little melody to this, then adapted a poem I’d written for lyrics and just started songwriting. My second song Alberta Blue Sky, which is on this album, was all about my son. I wrote a lot of poetry too and was reading at coffee houses and publishing it, so I also began performing my fledgling songs out, solo. Later on, I started writing and recording songs with different music partners. I started a band called She after I put together an impromptu group of players to perform at a benefit at The Rivoli to raise money to fight the City in court to protect my natural garden, which they were threatening to cut down. And I was hooked. Fast forward a few years and I am standing in my kitchen with Colin, who is a teenager by then, making dinner and singing a Beatles song when he says “everything you sing sounds like country mom. You should just sing country.” It was a eureka moment. So, I answered an ad in Now Magazine looking for lead country singers and co-founded this band called The Wanted. We performed roots music with 3-part harmonies around Toronto and I started singing my songs. We got a residency at The Cameron House and played at The Gladstone Hotel and Moonshine Café, along with county fairs and corporate gigs. I thought we’d made it when we opened for The Good Brothers at the Port Perry fair, ha ha. We eventually recorded a self-titled album called The Wanted, featuring 5 of my songs. When my son passed away in a tragic train accident, my bandmates were really there for me. They pulled me off my ass and got me back out performing even though I told them I’m only going to sing sad songs from now on, and would break down on stage crying sometimes.
Break of Day: Songs for Colin is such a moving tribute to your son. Could you share a bit about what inspired you to express your journey through music rather than another medium?
Thanks. Yeah. When Colin died I was beyond devastated. I sort of left life for a while, but I did turn to music. I’d sit in my garden listening to my son’s music, which some of his friends compiled for me (so sweet), and to sad music in my collection. Colin loved music so much. He had a huge collection and was a musician, an amazing drummer, and ridiculously talented. His music partner and buddy Robbie played guitar and sang one of their favourite songs at his funeral, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. My employer Arraymusic had given me a couple of month’s leave after my son passed away and I wasn’t moving around much so I was at home with time on my hands, wracked with grief, thinking about Colin as if trying to remember everything I could would gather him back into me, listening to his music, with all this love for him and nowhere to put it, so I just started writing songs, naturally.
What was it like working with Andrew Collins and other seasoned roots musicians on this album? How did their musical talents help bring your vision to life?
Andrew Collins is a national treasure, I think. He deserves all the awards, and all the love. I respect everything about his musical styling and process. I asked Andrew if he’d work with me on this record because he’s a wicked player, and had produced some great albums, and I loved seeing him and John Showman and Max Heineman in The Foggy Hogtown Boys – who all ended up on the record, as I’d hoped. I had recorded before and been in professional studios – The Wanted had earlier put out our debut album. But working with Andrew was everything I’d hoped for that my earlier experiences weren’t. He was laid back, but efficient. I never feel pressured by a ticking clock. He listened and responded to my every suggestion and worry. He was never impatient. And I loved how we began with me singing and three players in the room laying down the tracks live off the floor, then embellished later on. Andrew knows what a song needs, where it needs it, and who to call to get it. But best of all it felt like a true collaboration, and I always felt like I was making the record I wanted.
I’m beyond grateful to the studio musicians for playing with such heart and skill. Kristin Cavoukian and Max Heineman’s beautiful harmonies are heaven sent! No one can play the fiddle John Showman — and his violin on the record still makes me cry. Richard Henderson’s lap steel solo on Break of Day is perfection. It blows me away that Champagne James Robertson heard me sing these songs once and then came at them like he’d played them his whole life, adding just the right edge — and beautiful harmonic overtones. Blair MacKay, from drumming for April Wine and The Array Ensemble to playing with l’il ol me for this record — I’m so glad he did. Burke Carroll puts the cherry on the cake on every song he lends his pedal steel chops to.
“Baby Blue” is a poignant reflection on your son’s struggles with mental health. Was it challenging to write this song, and what do you hope listeners take away from it?
Yes and no. It was a struggle and easy at the same time, I suppose. I mean how do you write about your child’s deepest pain? Or your own? Some things are beyond words, beyond art. But sometimes when you go into the creative process knowing you’ll fail, that’s a good place to start. Baby Blue just fell out of me. I didn’t set out to write this song. Our son’s mental health crisis struck him when he was 17 and it deeply afflicted our beautiful boy. It changed all our worlds forever. It was terrible and terrifying, especially for Colin. So after he passed, writing Baby Blue was hard, but necessary I guess.
In “Catch a Falling Star,” you seem to capture both Colin’s pain and your own. How did this song help you work through some of your grief, if at all?
Did any of these songs help me work through my grief? I’m not sure. They did help me process a monstrous experience if this distinction can be clear? With Catch a Falling Star I just started humming its chorus melody one day then the words attached right away, organically. I’d been reading Colin’s poems and there were some lines that left a deep impression, so I borrowed and altered these slightly – “you say: fighters die, babies cry, mothers sigh and zombies fry, but troubled minds bring the hardest times” and that became the verse structure. I feel like I wrote this song, and most of the songs on the album, in a kind of unconscious dream state.
Now that you’ve fulfilled this dream of releasing a solo album, do you feel a sense of completion, or
I do. I think part of me wanted a way for Colin to live on in the world when I was writing this album, and he does with its release. I’m so proud of him and of the album. And I’m very proud to put it out there, however long it took for me to let go of it, in his name.