Kate Weekes

Few albums arrive with a backstory rivalling that of Rideau Roots, the gorgeous, sonically sprawling, and very of-the-moment fifth album from singer-songwriter and wilderness guide Kate Weekes. In May 2022, Weekes fulfilled a long-held dream: she and a group of fellow artists paddled the famed Rideau Canal along unceded traditional lands from Kingston to Ottawa, reflecting on their settler status and the majesty of their surroundings as filmmaker Stephen Fuller captured footage for later release as music videos. Song ideas sparked by that “canoe-based musical residency” were recorded with longtime Weekes collaborator, producer and multi-instrumentalist James Stephens at Stove Studios in Chelsea, Quebec, resulting in the dynamic “contemporary original folk” that is as much Weekes’ trademark as her sparkling banjo and crystalline voice.

 Unique is the individual whose email signature reads “singer/songwriter/wilderness guide.” And yet with her gorgeous, sonically sprawling, and very of-the-moment fifth album Rideau Roots, Kate Weekes has wedded those seemingly disparate attributes together in a remarkable way.

During her many years as a Yukon-based guide and recording and performing artist, Weekes had dreamed of undertaking what she termed a “canoe-based music residency” that would allow her to paddle a waterway while letting her songwriting imagination soar. 

Though she had hoped the adventure might happen “out west or up north,” the pandemic had other plans, pinning Weekes to her Quebec base, where she revisited the residency idea. “I grew up on the Rideau in Smith Falls,” she says, “but I had never paddled it before. It seemed like an opportunity to finally do it. 

“I planned to go alone or with one other person to find inspiration for new songs. But by early 2022, collaboration with others seemed possible again. And it just kind of spiralled from there.” 

And so, over two weeks in May 2022, Weekes and two small collectives of songwriters, musicians, and spoken word artists all based near the storied Rideau — including her father, musician Alan Weekes —paddled the canal from Kingston to Ottawa. As they did, they reflected on “questions of personal and cultural identity and sense of place [including] the colonial impact of the canal in the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and the Huron-Wendat.”

As Weekes and company traversed the spectacular landscapes, videographer Stephen Fuller captured footage that would eventually be fashioned into three music videos supporting the new album, itself to be based on song ideas Weekes cultivated during the canoe trips. 

These she developed in January 2023 during a writing residency at the Banff Centre. Rideau Roots — produced, engineered, and mixed by longtime Weekes collaborator, multi-instrumentalist James Stephens at Stove Studios in Chelsea, Quebec — is the dazzling result.

“When I would talk about this album, people would often say ‘Oh great, canoe songs!’ But this is not an album about a canoe trip. I mean, it is. But it isn’t pretty pictures of what we saw when I was paddling,” Weekes says.

“Wrestling with that dichotomy of expectations — my own as well as those of others — there were bigger issues I wanted to address. These songs are lyrically dense, and I rewrote all of them numerous times as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say.”

On Rideau Roots, Weekes says a lot. Take the album’s sparkling title track, sustained like much of the album by Weekes’ now-signature banjo and bright, clear voice, which explores a central theme. “Settler’s Day was the big celebration where I grew up and we celebrated our heritage without question,” Weekes says. “I was horrified to realize this was the only narrative I had until I started preparing for the Rideau Roots trip.”

The cheery, folksy, violin-boosted “Through Space and Time,” co-written by Kate and Alan Weekes who duet on the track, is a tender rejoinder of past and present. “My dad paddled the Rideau 50 years ago by himself and it was him who taught me to paddle,” Weekes says. “This was our first trip together since I was a kid.”

Another standout on Rideau Roots, albeit one that was especially challenging to complete, is “Twenty Years,” which captures Weekes looking into her own past “so I can stop driving down that road. I kept trying to rewrite this song and almost didn’t put it on the album” she says of the softly swaying, jazzy track propelled by, of all things, steel drums. 

It’s a surprising choice even for an artist who routinely (but seamlessly) incorporates instruments like sousaphone, djembe, and cowbells into her sonic weave. “I had been to a concert at the National Arts Centre where there had been a steel drum player,” Weekes recalls. “It felt like the perfect fit for these songs.”

Steel drums also make a cameo in the brassy, buoyant, and lyrically fantastical “River Styx” chronicling “a stretch of the Katarokwi River where there are dead heads from when the forest was flooded. I imagine the locks on the canal as the gateway to the Greek underworld, and us passing through in our canoes with coins on our eyes.”

Gently propulsive album opener “Trace a Constellation” — ironically, the last song she wrote for the album — “is related to the Rideau but it’s also directly tied to our contemporary political situation,” Weekes says. “As Canada entered a trade war with the U.S., I contemplated the political parallels in the mid-1800s that led to the construction of the Rideau Canal.”

Weekes continues: “I like making music that is hard to categorize, and I am reluctant to narrow it down,” she says when asked where she would expect to find Rideau Roots filed in a bricks-and-mortar shop. “But my default is contemporary original folk in the broadest sense of the word. I do think this album speaks to the current moment.”

Years in the making and the fulfillment of a long-held vision, Rideau Roots is now ready for its proverbial closeup. “I think this project really intrigues people,” Weekes says, adding that the beforementioned videos crafted from the canoe trips spotlight the songs “Rideau Roots,” “Through Space and Time,” and “Nowhere to Land,” a rousing, percussive instrumental.

“This album feels good already. And I’d like to be able to do this again, especially now that I know the parameters and logistics of this kind of trip.”