Rochelle Mills

I wondered if you could tell me when you first knew that you wanted to be a musician.  I first knew I wanted to be a musician when I was in high school. I didn’t really grow up playing music at all but then, my dad got me a guitar and I learned some Zeppelin songs. Then I started going to a church when I was in high school, because there were girls there, it wasn’t for Jesus, I don’t think! They had a bunch of people from their band leaving and they were like, you’re very extroverted, we think you’d be good up on stage. Next I was the new band leader, here’s some CDs, learn it. Once I started getting into the music in that way, I really enjoyed it and loved it. I was probably in my 20s when I decided I wanted to really pursue it.   What sort of music did your family make you listen to on long car journeys, and what are you choosing to listen to now?   That’s why I do country music because of my family. My dad was a bit more rock n roll but we have a couple of cabins up in northern British Columbia here. We’d be up there in the summers, and it was always country music playing; Dixie Chicks and Brad Paisley, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson and 90s country legends that I grew up singing to. In the truck drive, on the boat, it was always country music playing.   Can you tell me about your experiences with the Canadian country scene?   I started releasing music, and it was just before the pandemic hit, so I didn’t really get to experience a lot of the industry yet. I’ve been to the Canadian Country Music Awards, and I got to play this last year on the awards, but I didn’t really have much experience of the whole industry. Country music is massive over here but the family is small. We’re a pretty tight knit community and everyone’s been so supportive – we want to see each other succeed. Nashville is very similar, people are super supportive there as well, it’s just the pool’s way bigger. I think there’s like 30,000 songwriters or something like that down in Nashville.   So when it comes to your own songwriting, where do you draw inspiration from? And is the process for you always the same? Do you have a sort of a secret to how you go about writing?   If I have a secret, I don’t even know it yet! I think a lot of my content is pulled from my breakups. It’s about pulling things out of life experiences, there’s a lot of songs that aren’t really about much and I think country music is supposed to be about telling stories. I have a song called ‘Sometimes I Do’ and when we released it to radio, we’re having interviews and everyone asked what’s the song about, I was like, nothing. And that’s okay. It came out right after a song of mine called ‘Fighting’ that was super deep and about mental health. You can have the songs that mean a whole lot and the songs that don’t really mean much, but you still got to tell a story with it.   I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about the story behind ‘Pillow Talkin’ because that was your debut and you made a little bit of history with that track, didn’t you?  That song changed my life. I was in Nashville, just writing every single day. We were actually writing a song called ‘I Would Be Over Me To’. Myself, Mitch Merrett and Kelly Archer. I know that she’s just this phenomenal writer. At the end of that write, she pitched me ‘Pillow Talkin’. She’s like, I got this other song that I think you should listen to. She plays it and I’m just like, damn, that’s a great tune. I just knew the song was a hit no matter who’s gonna sing it. That one was going to be my foot in the door song. Then we kicked the whole damn thing down. I remember hearing that song for the first time on radio, when I was on a construction site, working, and we just had the radio going on. They’re like, alright, we got this new artist from Surrey, BC, Tyler Joe Miller with his debut single ‘Pillow Talkin’, I’m like, What the hell? So that song was the start of everything. It was the first song by an independent label, to go to number one in Canada. So that was pretty damn cool.  Tell me about your latest single ‘Wild As Her’?  Kelly had sent the song over, because she’s a writer on it as well. I’m listening to the demo, and I’m like, sounds pretty cool, I like this. I wasn’t thinking about who’s singing this song. My manager calls me and he goes, what do you think about that Morgan Wallen song? I was like, What do you mean? He says, the ‘Wild As Her’ song that we sent over. That’s Morgan Wallen singing it, he’s a writer on the song. I was just like, I don’t know if I can do that song justice! I haven’t done a love song, I’m like, notorious for not really doing them. But this song is sort of halfway there.   Can you tell me about the charity work you’ve been doing?  I’ve got a nonprofit called The Climb outreach society. I actually was working for a church at the time, they were doing this trip down to Guatemala. I just had some vacation time I had to use and I’d never left North America before. I just fell in love with the place and the work that they were doing down there is unreal they will build homes, schools, get clean water into villages that don’t have it. We do baby rescues for kids that are malnourished,

When did you first know that you wanted to be a musician?  When I was around 11 or 12 I started getting into music in a big way, before that it was whatever my mum was playing in the house, usually Motown or Northern Soul. When I first received a tape of Pearl Jam and Nirvana in 1992 from a friend in school, it lit a bonfire in me that has never left. I then started to join the dots back to music before Grunge and started tracking down old vinyl’s of Queen,/AC/DC and Aerosmith in local second hand shops and music shops and I’d listen to them time and time again, pouring over every liner note and taking in every note of music. A few years later Britpop hit in the UK I was utterly in love with it, it was everywhere at the time and all these incredible bands and all this new music inspired me to pick up the guitar and start writing my own music and I’ve never looked back.     Tell me about the formation of The Far North?  I was in a lightly successful band called The Fireflys from 2007-2019 and we played what some might call Americana music on our latter 2 albums and I really wanted to lean into the genre more because as a songwriter it’s probably my most comfortable wheelhouse to write in. However, the Fireflys were first and foremost a rock band and it wasn’t really fair on the other members to keep scratching this itch I had musically to play a more Country style of music that my head and heart belonged to. Ultimately, I had to go my own way and branch off on my own because I had 30 or more songs in my back pocket that I was dying to record and perform under a new name. I had the name “The Far North” as far back as 2015, I was thinking about the solace and safety of what music brings me and imagined a place where all I’d have was my acoustic guitar, and that place was the far north. So I made a note in one of my journals and it said “a good band name if I ever branch out on my own”. I was thumbing through my journal for inspiration a few days after The Fireflys called it a day and there it was – “The Far North”.   When it comes to songwriting, where do you draw inspiration from lyrically?  When I sit down to write it’s always the strangest thing because it either happens or it doesn’t, and by that, I mean it’s genuinely the luck of the draw in terms of a song arriving almost fully formed. I’ll sit there with my guitar and I’ll play G-D-C which I’ve played a million times before but for some reason I’ve never played it like this – the feeling, the vibe is there and I know I’ve got something. Lyrically I’ve never written lyrics down beforehand and tried to marry them up to music, instead I’ll press record on my phone, if I’ve got the chords and whatever comes out tends to be the finished lyrics there or thereabouts. A lot of my lyrics are about love and loss, hope and fear so I guess like everyone else these feelings must be pretty near the top as they keep coming out in my writing.    My favourite song off your album is ‘When We Were Young’, can you tell me a bit about the story behind that track?  ‘When We Were Young’ was one of the first songs I wrote that was comfortably in the Americana/Country genre, and along with ‘Branches’ was the song that made me actually realise that I was a good songwriter with something to sing about. I was thinking about my old neighbourhood a lot during this time and how strange it is that one minute we’re 10 years old playing out with our friends, the next we’re in our mid-thirties with all the stresses that adulthood brings and wishing it was the good old days again. I wanted it to sound a little melancholy but also uplifting, like that sense of nostalgia we all feel that is sometimes sad and sometimes happy, and I think I blended it nicely on this one and I got to do a little play on words with my love of Neil Young too on the title!    A few silly questions, what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever written a song about?   I’ve written a song called “Angels Of The North” that will end up on my second album eventually. It’s about the UK’s asylums in the 1930’s and what went on in there, and it’s from the perspective of someone who’s in there and dreams of the day they can get out. It’s a little eerie and strange but definitely a subject not too many songwriters have written about so I thought I’d shine a little spotlight on it. It’s quite a departure from my usual songwriting, so I’m intrigued to hear what people might think of it.   If you were to describe your personality as a flavour of crisp, what flavour would you be?  Well I’m Vegan so it’d have to be something that didn’t contain any animal cruelty, and I’m obsessed with the sea and all things nautical so I think sea-salt is a pretty good call. Although, my love for a cup of tea is also well known amongst my family so maybe Earl Grey flavoured crips – has anyone invented them yet??   What’s next for you?  I’ve written the bulk of album 2 already and I’m in talks with the label about putting out an E.P in the Autumn so along with the shows I’ve got coming up I’ll be really focused on that.   The E.P will definitely have a huge Country and Americana sound but I think it’ll be a bit louder than “Songs For Gentle Souls”

An array of stars queue up to help acclaimed singer-songwriter and guitarist, Molly Tuttle, out on her latest record ‘Crooked Tree’. The album was co-produced with Jerry Douglas whilst the likes of Billy Strings, Margo Price and Old Crow Medicine Show join her to help bring these songs to life. This record is one of her best to date as she meanders through the world of bluegrass. Her songwriting is refined and whilst it stays true to the genre, it also pushes the boundaries. My favourite on the record is ‘Flatland Girl’ which she performs with Margo Price. The pair’s voices seamlessly blending together. Meanwhile, the title track allows Tuttle’s voice to come into it’s own on the chorus. The level of musicianship cannot be questioned with a line up such as this but it may be one of the most cohesive recordings as the complexx arrangements compliment each other without getting in each others way. Though the focuss may seem to lie with the musicians in some ways, Tuttle’s storytelling lyricism shines on songs like ‘She’ll Change’ and ‘Goodbye Girl’. The mood shift in ‘Castilleja’ is appreciated as the intensity builds. To conclude, there is nothing not to like about this album. Music fans can just sit in awe as they admire the quality of every aspect from the songwriting to the production.