Vancouver’s Beloved Vocal Duo Deliver a Lush, Groove-Driven Anthem of Collective Resilience in the Face of Long-Term Struggles – A Rare Co-Write With American Troubadour Johnny Irion
Vancouver’s Reid Jamieson – a vocal powerhouse hailed by the Globe & Mail as “gorgeously sun- struck acoustic soul” – releases his new single “Blue Jeans” today via Reid Jamieson Music. Self produced and written by Reid Jamieson and his longtime songwriting partner and wife Carolyn Victoria Mill, “Blue Jeans” represents a rare co-write for the duo, joining forces with American folk artist Johnny Irion (US Elevator, Sarah Lee Guthrie).
The track is a lush, groove- driven slow- build that arrives as an anthem of solidarity for anyone who has carried a long and wearying load. The duo describes “Blue Jeans” as a musical prescription for post- pandemic depression – and a song that speaks to the broader collective weight many have been carrying since the world shifted beneath everyone’s feet. From the lockdown to divisive politics, from war to more personal struggles, many have been down so long, must have cried the blues right out of our collective jeans.
“Sometimes you don’t need solutions,” they reflect. “You just need to know that you are not alone.”
Warm, aching, and ultimately cathartic, “Blue Jeans” is available now on all major streaming platforms.
Known as Reid Jamieson & CVM – this creative couple have spent two decades building one of Canada’s most distinctive independent catalogues. Winners of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and first- place finishers in the Vancouver Folk Festival’s Pickin’ a Folk Star competition, the pair are celebrated for their uncanny vocal harmonies, swapping lead vocals with ease, and an ability to render big human themes in deceptively intimate arrangements. A former CBC Vinyl Café regular – Stuart McLean once said of Reid “He stole the show” and “blew me away” – Reid has also recorded alongside Cowboy Junkies and performed and recorded with Mary Margaret O’Hara and members of Blue Rodeo and Be Good Tanyas.
It all started with a chance meeting of US Elevator’s Johnny Irion (with his then wife Sarah Lee Guthrie) at the Vancouver Folk Festival in 2013, and a shared love of 60s folk rock and the rich harmonic traditions of that era. A remarkable songwriter in his own right, Johnny has worked alongside Pete Seeger, Jeff Bridges, and Wilco, as well as appearing in Twin Peaks – this cat gets around! Some time ago now, Johnny sent the duo a small melody fragment and a single, irresistible line – the image that would become the song’s emotional spine: “Must have cried the blues right out of my jeans.” Reid fleshed out the tune, CVM shaped the lyrics, and together they built something that aches with recognition. “The pain I’m in – my oldest friend / Like a second skin – so worn in,” Jamieson sings, in a verse that captures the strange, bittersweet familiarity of long- carried grief. And yet the song tilts always toward the light, toward the comfort of knowing one is not alone in our long-term suffering. A long time in the making, now felt the right time to address their mental health in song. The result is a recording that feels timeless: lush vocals riding a driving groove, deceptively upbeat considering the lyrical content. The production self- contained and wholly the work of Jamieson and CVM, built in their home studio with the same intimacy and rigour that has defined their catalogue across more than two decades.
The single arrives as the duo enter one of their most creatively fertile periods. Their acclaimed original album Me Daza – recorded in Ireland with producer Kieran Kennedy and featuring the posthumous vocals of Corkonian legend Fergus O’Farrell – drew praise from Folk Roots Radio as “brilliant” and “the best thing Reid has done in his career so far.” Following up on the 2023 launch of their folk opera The Pigeon & The Dove, a genre- defying piece about pigeons and the causes of housing insecurity, winning the prestigious Social Impact Award at the Vancouver Fringe Festival, they are currently deep into recording an album of the original songs from The Pigeon & The Dove, inspired by the many roads one can take to end up on the street (slated for release in late 2026). Having had ‘just about enough of being Canada’s Best Kept Secret’ – they say with characteristic wit – the dynamic duo remains cautiously optimistic about everything that comes next.
Hi, Reid and Carolyn! Good to meet you! Care to introduce yourself to the readers for those not familiar with your music?
Hey there Canadian Beats! Thanks for all that you do to keep the music playing. You will be conversing with me (CVM) because Reido is a honkin’ big introvert who truly struggles with the outward facing side of making music.
We are a married duo now living, loving, and creating in Vancouver BC. In years past, Reid was a regular on CBC’s Vinyl Café, has recorded and/or performed with Cowboy Junkies, Mary Margaret O’Hara, members of Blue Rodeo, Be Good Tanyas, Sarah Harmer and others. Together we won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, and wrote our way in to the Vancouver Folk Festival by winning 1st place in their Pickin’ a Folk Star contest. Our catalog is a pretty even split of originals and covers, from Cohen to Lennon, A-ha to the theme from Sesame Street. On the live front it is said that our unique harmonies and swapping of lead vocals make for an eclectic, entertaining, and sometimes heartbreaking variety show. We love a good house concert or festival, but are in no way road warriors. We recently stepped outside our comfort zone and wrote a dark yet funny original folk opera about Pigeons(!) and the causes of homelessness, premiering at the Vancouver Fringe Fest, and taking home the prestigious Social Impact Award. Right now we are hard at work recording an album of those Pigeon songs, each inspired by the many roads you can take to end up on the street. Y’all won’t wanna miss that.
“Blue Jeans” turns a simple image into something emotional and universal. Do you remember the exact moment when that Johnny Irion line first landed and you realized it had the heart of a song?
Johnny has such a knack for sunny folk pop, we feel lighter just listening to his cheerful hooks. And yet, that line had to come from somewhere. As a lyricist, it struck me that perhaps, there be another layer under all those daisies. A darker river that flows beneath the surface, especially for artists who need to be broken enough to write, yet still masking enough to perform. What would we do without the inspiration that comes from the broken bits? We often joke that Reido would be way more ambitious and maybe even famous if his dad wasn’t so danged supportive…
You and CVM have been writing together for decades. What does your songwriting conversation look like now compared to when you first started?
When we first got together back in 2002, I was working on the biz side of entertainment and did not sing nor write music. I only started singing with him at home because he loves to harmonize (no really, he used to harmonize with his mom’s vacuum cleaner when he was a kid). When making his sophomore album The Unavoidable Truth in 2004 with Josh Finlayson producing, he had me edit some of the lyrics to make them connect with people better. Reid is a talented songwriter, having penned some real gems in his early days, but his introverted ways meant that just as he was gaining more traction as an artist, he realized someone might actually be listening! He just didn’t feel comfortable spilling his creative guts anymore. Luckily the man poops a new melody every day, and loves making instrumental albums in his spare time – but we can’t let that golden voice go to waste now can we? Reid had done a couple shows, crooning old favourites with CBC’s Vinyl Café before we moved from Toronto to BC. Back in 2008 Stuart McLean called asking Reid to join him on a train ride across the country where he would tell stories and Reid would sing appropriate covers. I insisted that he squeeze an original song in there somehow, Reid said he didn’t have a train song. I said ‘Yet!’. And right there in that moment, I pulled up a piece of music he had laying around and started to sing lyrics I made up on the spot. Rail sounds like a train song, but really its about me trying to quit smoking, again and again (write what you know!), and not giving up on myself. “Put your ear to the rail, you can hear my love come down, where hearts and heroes fail, I won’t be turned around’. Even with him having the higher voice and me the lower, it was a challenge for him to sing the parts at first. Rail ended up winning us the grand prize for folk in the JLSC, appearing the the Vinyl Cafe broadcast and a tv show. We have been writing together ever since, with Reid writing about 80% of the music, and me writing 80% of the lyrics (and producing a bunch too).
Sometimes Reid will go on these songwriting immersions where he locks himself away to create 20 songs in a single day, often putting in ‘scrambled eggs’ lyrics (to paraphrase Macca), and then gives them to me to find the gems in. Sometimes I am singing in the bathtub about something I am passionate about, and he comes in with the guitar. My favourite is when we have to work with a theme or deadline. So lucky that we have a home studio where we can make and release a track from start to finish, all by ourselves. The thing most folks find weird is that I write songs using spreadsheets. I am such a nerd, I find it a useful tool for organizing thoughts, phrases, chords etc. These days songwriting happens as easily and often as making breakfast, it is (almost) our favourite way to spend time together!
This song grew from a melody fragment Johnny Irion sent years ago. Why did this feel like the right moment to finally bring “Blue Jeans” to life?
OK – you asked! Grab a dairy-free protein shake… plenty inspiration for this tune, so this could take a moment.
Let’s start with The Pandy (our nickname for the pandemic, we feel it helps to soften the blow that comes with each mention – credit to fellow songbird Spank Williams). It is our belief that pretty much the whole globe is suffering from PTSD due to the long-term stress and fear caused by COVID19. Human minds were not meant for that kind of sustained loss and uncertainty. And yet we dismiss the impact of this long-term marinating in doom. The hard to state fact is that we both experienced depression for the first time in our lives. And while we are doing our solid best to crawl back out of that hole, we realize acceptance must come before the cure.
Over lockdown Reid lost his day job as a unionized server when the restaurant closed with plans to restructure, and another strike loomed. Having worked there for over a decade this was extremely stressful for anyone living in a rental apartment in Vancouver. On the music front, we lost so much time and money invested in our career when lockdown made it impossible to tour. Our expensive and tedious P2 visa that allows us to play in the US was rendered useless. We had just released our best record yet ( Me Daza, recorded in Ireland) and the planned trip to return and make hay of that magical experience with an international tour was cut short. We had also just received a grant to make several music videos to promote the album – videos that were impossible to film under lockdown (props to Creative BC for allowing artists to keep the money without matching it). By this time streaming had completely eradicated any way to make money from selling our music, sustainable touring was dead, keeping us from much needed connection. Twas bleak my friends.
During all of this, I was dealing with a chronic physical disability that includes nerve pain, making it hard to spend any real time on the computer. Enter perimenopause – the scourge of Gen X women everywhere who were ill prepared for the multi-pronged symptoms (both physical and mental), thanks to criminal medical negligence on behalf of our government and healthcare system. The shamefest where systemic sexism and ageism intersect in the entertainment world ain’t nowhere a gal wants to find herself. Oh and mustn’t forget the trendy late life ADHD diagnosis!
As things opened back up back in – oh who knows what year it was anymore – the restaurant returned to business as usual and Reid went back to work. Rushing around to make up for staff shortages and lost wages, he ended up suffering an acute injury to his right hand that would go on to become a recurring and painful part of life. This causes him to have to take weeks off at a time after a busy season – endlessly battling bureaucracy for wage compensation – and yet unable to use that time to record, as he cannot play guitar and heal at the same time.
And now we get to a particularly hard and unexpected blow… It has been four years since we started working on recording the world’s first full tribute album to…wait for it…Buffy Sainte-Marie. yep. We wanted to be for Buffy what Jennifer Warnes was to Leonard Cohen, introducing her dynamic catalog to those who didn’t think they were fans. Might very well be the most beautiful thing we have ever made. ‘Career suicide’ was the most common comment from industry friends when testing the waters. Couldn’t throw it away though, so we quietly let is slip out onto streaming platforms (on Feb 20 for her 85th) with no press release, no tour, not even a newsletter – for fear of being cancelled and eaten alive by trolls. Crushing doesn’t cover it.
Last week, our most recent P2 visa arrived 5 months late, which we kind of expected so we just didn’t bother hustling gigs and cancelled most of our plans. This week, Reid’s latest workers compensation claim got denied due to nothing that makes sense to us. We just can’t even anymore.
On a less serious front, but no less annoying, our only elevator at our building has now been out of service for a full year. We live on the 4th floor which, turns out, is one floor too many. Oh and did we mention AI stealing our jobs? or that Abomination south of the border? Gah! Depression reigns. Prescriptions were written, but not filled for fear of losing our muse.
Reaching back into the pile of unfinished songs that nobody had the energy for, Blue Jeans raised its hand and asked if it could perhaps be an anthem for those carrying their own long-term load. Sometimes you don’t need solutions…you just need to know that you are not alone. And you/we are not.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. We have truly wonderful humans in our lives – and we still have each other. Reido has been learning piano, and is loving it. I finally got some HRT and am sleeping more than two hours at a time. Aaaaand we have never felt more creative. We find ourselves cautiously optimistic about the future, and hope you are too.
You joked recently about being “Canada’s best kept secret.” If this song introduces a whole new audience to Reid Jamieson & CVM, what do you hope they discover first about your music?
Were we joking? Part of the problem with being all over the map (I mean dynamic) with our music, from social justice inspired originals to super sappy covers, is that it’s hard to get welcomed into any particular genre or cultural community. And quite frankly, we are just not that cool. Making music that makes people happy (or sappy) half the time, can put off some taste makers who might have been more intrigued if we stuck to our originals. It also doesn’t help that Reido is so obviously spoken for – that’s a buzz kill for many (Oh Yoko!). But seriously…if there is one thing we are confident about, it is that there is bound to be something that tickles your fancy in our back catalog. Wherever it is that someone finds their way in, a treasure trove awaits you! Go ahead and take a tiptoe through our musical tulips and let us know what tracks made you smile/cry/sing along.