Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
by Wes Smiderle

Nothing to Fear but Doubt
Singer's dream is delayed, not dead

Ottawa folk singer Chris MacLean figures she's just about tamed all those nagging self-doubts about her decision to pursue a music career.

"It's all just shadow boxing," she says. "There are obstacles sometimes, but they're not necessarily as insurmountable as we might think."

MacLean has overcome her share of very tangible obstacles, including a lengthy struggle with Crohn’s disease. These days she’s hard at work balancing a full-time job as a Web designer for Mitel with efforts to build momentum on her budding music career.

Last year, MacLean released a full-length debut album call Learn to Be Loved, produced by Ian Tamblyn and featuring guest vocals by Mae Moore. MacLean showcased her talent at the Vancouver Folk Alliance last month and now performs several gigs a month, including a show Saturday night on the NAC’s Fourth Stage.

MacLean also hopes to start her own singing and songwriting workshops, although she describes it more as “healing” work.

“I’ll just mix and match the stuff I’ve been doing on my own that has allowed me to travel a long way personally and do things that a few years ago I would have thought, ‘Oh I’d never be able to do that.’”

Maclean sees similar reluctance in others as well. “Some people at work look at me and say, ‘Wow, I’d really love to do that.’ And I can hear it in their voice that they don’t think they can,” she says. “I can hear that because I remember feeling the same way myself.”

Although she worked as a singer-songwriter when she was younger, MacLean’s dreams were pushed aside by marriage and motherhood.

“In earlier years, I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence and, like a lot of people, I started out with a lot of ideas but not necessarily a lot of direction,” she says. “Then I got married, had kids and thought, ‘Well, I guess I can’t do that now.’”

About 10 years ago, she became seriously ill with Crohn’s disease and spent months in the hospital undergoing several major operations.

Her brush with death was a turning point. “I’d always said some day I want to be a song-writer,” she says. “I realized how stupid it was to say ‘some day.’ You gotta do it.”

Shortly after the breakup of her marriage seven years ago, MacLean got her hands on a broken second-hand guitar. She took it to the Ottawa Folklore Centre to get it fixed and was soon strumming away. It was an encounter with her old friend Mae Moore that eventually coaxed macLean back onto a live stage. The two reconnected in 1997 during Moore’s Ottawa stop on her Dragonfly tour.

“Then a couple of years ago she was playing the Tulip Festival. We were sitting there listening to the performance and she said, ‘You could do that too, you know.’ She’s been very supportive.”

Moore offered up guest vocals for Learn to Be Loved and a joint west coast tour is in the works for June. Since the release of her album, MacLean has been enjoying increasingly significant milestones. Her visit to the Vancouver Folk Alliance last month February was her first time attending an event of that size.

“It was overwhelming, but I learned a lot,” she says. “I actually did a lot of playing there.”

MacLean was part of an Ottawa contingent that attended the folk industry showcase. Aside from performing a couple of “guerrilla showcases” of her own, she spent a lot of time just wandering around and playing with fellow musicians.

The highlight of the weekend was an impromptu Saturday night jam session outside the fifth floor elevator of her hotel featuring musicians from Russia, Iran, South America and China. “People just kept coming and joining in,” recalls MacLean. “There was one woman from China playing a one-stringed instrument with a bow. We stayed up all night. It was an awesome time.” MacLean has not expectations of a big break and realizes the value of persistence in the music industry.

“Even now, there’s days where I think, ‘What the hell am I doing? I have some nerve thinking I can be a songwriter.’

“But that’s just an old tape running in the back of my mind. It has no meaning, really.”