Amid the chatter of those enjoying a warm summer evening at Brasserie Benelux, I sat down with Montreal based artist Avery Jane to chat about her new single “Outside”. Avery Jane’s music is a wonderful mix of rnb/pop with strong folk roots as she plays her shows with only her voice and guitar. Her songs and performances are bolstered by her sunny disposition that lights up the room. Later in the night, she took to the stage and performed a full set of her recent works featuring an acoustic version of Outside and wrapping up by singing You Are My Sunshine with the audience. Avery was this month’s featured guest of local production studio Musicopratik who organize regular events at the brasserie. With her infectious enthusiasm for her new release, it was a delight to discuss her music and future plans in this interview. 
MUSIK MIRAGE: So for those of us who don’t know you, how would you introduce yourself?
AVERY JANE: Hi I’m Avery Jane, for those of you who don’t know me I am a singer/songwriter from Victoria, BC. I moved to Montreal about six years ago, and in 2019 I started performing in the city and now I make folk inspired, pop-rnb music. And that’s my whole shtick! (laughs)
MUSIK MIRAGE: So tell us about your new single “Outside”
AVERY JANE: My new single comes out tonight at midnight actually, which is very exciting! It’s the second single in a line up of singles that I’m hoping to release this year and it’s a song that I’m really, really excited about actually. As soon as I wrote it I played it for my producer and he just stopped what he was doing and said “This. We need to stop everything else we’re working on. We’re working on this one right now” And we both just ran with it, and we recorded it. We just had so much fun and we were so so excited–it seemed like it just came so easily. There weren’t a lot of times in the recording/making process that we had any hiccups or any like ‘oh, what do we do here?’. It just seemed to fall into place. It’s about an ex and myself running into each other at a Montreal dinner party, honestly. It’s something pretty relatable to a lot of people, especially who speak English in Montreal. We all know each other, we’ve all been to the places, all your friends are friends with your friends and their exes friends and your exes friends; and it’s a bit like that here. So, that’s where this song came out of, and yeah! It’s really, sort of, bringing my sound into the artistic vision that I am hoping to reach in the next year or two. But yeah, the pieces of the puzzle are coming together and I feel like this song really feels like it’s the step in that direction.
MUSIK MIRAGE: You mentioned that you haven’t been as excited to release a song since your debut. So what about Outside gave you that spark? And how did it feel for you to listen to it once it was finally complete?
AVERY JANE: I feel like the way that I make music and we make music, Koyo sur le Prod and I, is I’m incredibly involved in the entire process so I feel like it didn’t have that ‘aha’ moment where I finally heard it all together because I’m there for a lot of the process. The final mix definitely is like a ‘snaps that big snap into place’ kinda thing. I think I had that feeling that you would expect me to have hearing the final result every single time I heard the song grow and progress. It just got more and more exciting every time, which was really fun. But yeah, I’m the most excited for so many reasons, but I really am just proud of it. I’m very very proud of it.
MUSIK MIRAGE: So what is your creative process when coming up with new music? What inspires you to write a new song?
AVERY JANE: It changes. It changes song to song, for sure, but in its essence my music is always myself and my guitar. I am super open to try and change that and try different writing processes but so far the thing that just comes naturally is I sit down on my living room floor and I just have a feeling in my head and I start to play whatever chords I want, and it just kind of falls out of me, you know? Sometimes only half a song does and then I stop there and try to go back and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. This song was a little bit different which was fun. I started with the bassline, rather than a chord progression and I was just playing it on my acoustic guitar. In the actual final product there is no guitar, which is super weird for my music cause it’s all very guitar heavy – because it is, you know in essence me and guitar- and like, that’s how I’m able to play most of my songs. But yeah this one started with the baseline which was really interesting. So that’s my creative process and then I take it to Koyo and we build the song around it. Often the format will change, some of the lyrics some of the melodies. I usually have a full song and then it becomes the produced song. (laughs)
MUSIK MIRAGE: So your songs are quite grounded in your personal experiences, and Outside maintains that style while getting a bit moodier as you said and we can hear that in the little excerpts that we’ve heard so far. So, what has your journey been like finding your sound? Are you still developing it?
AVERY JANE: I mean, I definitely think, as most artists would say, my art is an extension of me and I’m ever changing, ever growing. I’m not going to be 24 forever. My life is going to change, my experiences are going to change. I really look at my music as a snapshot of the moment I wrote it and because the fun thing about music that we release in this day and age now is there’s a lot of work that goes behind each song. So Outside I wrote it in January and it’s coming out now. It’s changed and grown since then and I was really in a place where that song was me. I was in that head space. That was something I was thinking about and now it’s not really.
I don’t feel I would write that song today and so, in that sense, I’m a completely different artist then I was when I wrote that song but it definitely still – it obviously resonates with me, I mean, it’s not that long ago also but it’s something I’m still proud of. But no, my art is not fixed by any means. Who knows, maybe in 20 years I’m gonna be a full fledged jazz musician, I don’t know. Andre 3000 did it. He’s a flute player now. I don’t know. You never know. I feel like for my music to be genuine and truly rooted in me which I want it to be, that’s something I’m not going compromise. Well, I hope not! I don’t know the future but I hope not! (laughs) So I feel for it to be genuine it is something that I’m proud of in that sense, it’s going to change with me and grow and I don’t know where that’s going to go but I guess we’ll see. 
MUSIK MIRAGE: We look forward to seeing that! You’ve been quite busy with shows in both Montreal and Toronto and you’re now releasing this new single. Do you have any goals set for yourself this year? Is there any more music coming up we can look forward to?
AVERY JANE: So much! My goodness! (laughs) Yeah, I’ve been very busy. This is the busiest I’ve been music wise. I feel like I really tapped into the industry of music October of last year when I released my EP. That’s when I really started emailing people, you know. That’s when I went “Oh, ok, emails are 50% of making music!” I think before that my email inbox was just completely confusing and not organized and now my Google drive is spick and span. Everything is in folders. Since then a lot has happened. My goals have changed, they change pretty much weekly. My goal for Outside was to get, like on a statistics level, I wanted to get around ten thousand streams but my last single just reached ten thousand so my new goal for this one is twenty thousand! So, my goals are ever changing. Who knows, maybe in a month I’ll say “I want fifty thousand! I want a Platinum record?” (both laughing) Oh my gosh, no, my goals are really for this year just to keep growing and keep my momentum and keep making music as best I can.
I’ve got a lot of very specific goals up on my chalkboard in my house but as a general goal it’s just to keep growing and keep following the path that I seem to be going on which I’m really happy with. Maybe I’ll slow down a little bit but as long as I’m going up I’m really happy with my journey. My be all end all goals? I want to win a Grammy because I was voted Most Likely to Win a Grammy when I was in high school in my graduation yearbook. So that would be really sick some day! I don’t care if I’m 85 when I win it. I’m like, a Grammy’s a Grammy! Grammy’s a Granny! (Both laughing) And another goal is I want to be on Hot Ones. Like, that over the Grammy, to be completely honest.
MUSIK MIRAGE: You know what? Look, that would be a life changing experience!
AVERY JANE: Absolutely! And also, if I made it on Hot Ones, you know, I’d be pretty high calibre! There’s some pretty heavy rollers up there! So, Hot Ones, Grammy’s but for this song ten thousand to thirty thousand streams. (laughs) We’ll start there, you know, people enjoying it. I would like that. I think that would be great.
MUSIK MIRAGE: That would be great and maybe one day we will indeed see you on Hot Ones so look forward to that!
AVERY JANE: Thank you!
It was pleasure to feature this exclusive interview on Musik Mirage as Avery Jane is on her way to doing some great things in Canadian music and beyond! Just below you can check out some additional photos from the live interview and to see a previous concert review on Musik Mirage featuring Avery Jane you can find it HERE. Finally, to stay up to date on the singer you can follow Avery Jane on Instagram @AveryJaneMusic.
Interview & Photos By Lucia Vinson (@lvin.photography)
