Alex James Taylor: Congrats on Pomegranate, Tess, can you tell us about where this album started and how you wanted the album to sound and feel?
Tess Parks: Thank you so much. I have never been more proud of anything. Ruari Meehan and I have been writing songs together since 2017, and we’ve been friends since we met at a Neil Young concert in the summer of 2014. We’ve known each other for a long time now and he’s pretty intuitive, so he could clearly see that I was in a bad place and not making music anymore. He started sending me music he had written, in a very subtle way, just extending a hand and seeing if I would respond with anything. The first song he sent me was the first track on the album, Bagpipe Blues, in January 2020. I had written something and had a melody but just left it and then obviously 2020 was crazy and by November 2020 I had had several experiences that led to suffering from PTSD. That left me almost developing a stutter amongst so many other crazy symptoms where you’re like, “Wow, I can’t believe my body is shutting down and trying to protect me in all of these really irrational ways.” I wanted to be in silence – no music no headphones – needing to be able to hear if there was someone that was going to come up behind me, needing to make sure I wasn’t in danger. It’s really sad. I just started painting dots in silence every day, morning until night. Anyway, Ruari sent me Koalas in November 2020 and when I eventually listened to it, it was the most beautiful music I had ever heard. Words came to me right away. I will always love Ruari because he helped bring me back to myself and encouraged me to keep singing in a time when I really wanted to totally give up. So then we started sending each other songs from London to Toronto and every day we would be singing back and forth to each other – it was honestly so beautiful. It will never not make me cry thinking about how much this music kept me alive.

AJT: Did you almost have to coax yourself back into it? Were there particular things/actions you used to help this?
TP: I was always still creating despite everything. I found writing every day a very important way to process what I had experienced. Having love and encouragement from people you trust is really important, also. Having safe nervous systems to be around to co-regulate with. During the process of making this album, I was going for early morning sunrise walks with my mother daily too, rain or shine, which I think was so integral to my healing. Looking back, I can’t tell you how much this whole time period meant to me. I honestly feel like I had died and I was born again.

AJT: How do you feel now the record is done?
TP: A lot better! Every album takes as long as it takes to complete… This one ended up taking about four years. But Ruari is the heart of this album. He wrote all of the music, and I just feel honoured that he let me sing over the top. I think he’s such a genius. I have never seen someone so meticulously or passionately complete an album with such attention to detail and so much enthusiasm. I am in awe of what we achieved here together. And I am so fiercely proud to be who I am and where I am today and not where I was four years ago.

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