CORNER BROOK, N.L. — Lorna Lovell may be a little late entering the music scene at the age of 46, but she’s making sure not to waste anymore time.
Lovell will perform at the Rotary Arts Centre in Corner Brook on Aug. 24 and has her first album coming out early this fall.
Music has always been a part of the Corner Brook woman’s life, having grown up in a musical family in McIver’s.
Her dad, Gordon Lovell, was a songwriter and singer. She grew up with him playing guitar, the mouth organ and organ, and with her mom, Dorothy Lovell, singing harmony.
“Mom was always singing. She knows a song for every occasion, everything that happens,” said Lovell recently.
Her dad died in June 2018 and Lovell said he was definitely her inspiration.
He wrote gospel and folk music and Lovell said she was a teenager before she realized he wrote one of her favourite hymns.
“And all of sudden I started realizing all these songs that he’s playing around the house is stuff that he’s written and I was just so impressed.”
While Lovell dabbled in writing short stories and poetry, she didn’t write her first song until 2007.
“I was a little bit intimidated by songwriting,” she said. “I just really didn’t know where to start. It’s not something they really teach in school.”
But one day she just wrote a song.
Fast forward a few years to 2012 when Lovell started writing more and more.
And over the last couple of years, the legal assistant by day has been performing her music at open mics and events like the Trails, Tales and Tunes festival in Norris Point.
Singing gives her joy, she said.
“I feel more like me when I’m up on stage than anywhere else and in any aspect of my life.”
She laughs when describing herself as “no spring chicken,” but adds, “it’s never too late to start.”
She married and had two children at a young age. Now divorced and with grown children, she said, “I actually have the time.”
Her desire to take the leap into music was also inspired by her father.
“My dad had dementia for the last 10 years of his life and I think that really kind of woke me up,” she said. “Him forgetting things and especially the thought of him forgetting his music was just so devastating to me.”
Thankfully that didn’t happen.
She recalls playing one of his songs at the hospital and him saying next, “I believe I wrote that.”
Still it made her realize she had to get her act in gear to record his songs and her own.
It took her a couple of years to find the right producer in Clint Curtis of Sevenview Studios in Springdale, and the album named for the title track “Whenever I Sing,” is almost ready.
The album features 10 original songs by Lovell. She said they are modern country songs with some added folk and gospel flavours.
Lovell will be backed by a band of local musicians, Emily Webb, Robyn Terry, and Branden Ryan, for her show at the Rotary Arts Centre. Noah Hamilton will open the show.
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Twitter: WS_DianeCrocker
