By Curtis Gordon

Cassidy Houston, a health promotion student in her final year at Laurentian, recently released her debut EP, Faces.

Much like Houston’s wide-range of musical influences, the album has something for everyone – there are elements of folk, rock, and pop.  It involves themes of love, heartbreak, expectations, and transitioning into young adulthood.

Houston’s journey with music began when she started playing the piano at 3 years old.

“When I was 8 or 9, I finally got the chance to start taking singing lessons,” Houston said.  “From there, it was something that I just didn’t want to stop.”

She taught herself to play the guitar and ukulele and started to write songs on her own. In the past 4 years, Houston says she has been looking at music more seriously. 

“I like to hear my own voice,” Houston joked. “I’ll walk around the house and I’ll just be singing, and that’s kind of how it’s been my whole life.”

Houston grew up listening to many genres of music. Her love for music was shaped by a diverse background of artists, including Stevie Nicks and Chantal Kreviazuk. 

Houston also credits The Dala, a folk music duo based in Ottawa, as helping her develop her love for folk music. 

Each summer, Houston participates in the ‘Live from the Rock Folk Festival’ – in her hometown of Redrock, Ontario.  She is now on the board of directors for Folk Music Ontario.

Creating the Album

In September 2019, while attending the Folk Music Ontario Conference, Houston became inspired to make an album. For a number of years, she had family members and friends asking her when she was going to make an album.  

“It was never actually my plan to do that,” Houston said, but she was then persuaded by a number of her friends to go forward with her album.

Houston enlisted the help of musician and friend Jean-Paul De Roover to produce the album.  The album was recorded in Thunder Bay in August of 2020 (Houston emphasized that all social distancing and safety precautions were taken during recording and production).

Houston was supposed to have started recording Faces in April of 2020, but due to COVID-19, the recording process was pushed back and eventually happened in August. 

Houston describes the process of making her album as very meticulous, as she was fully involved in the mixing and mastering process required to polish the album after it was recorded, before its release. 

“It was a lot of back and forth,” Houston said, explaining how they would change “this little sound here, this little section here needs to be heard louder.”

By November, all of Houston’s material was sent to Duplication, the company that made her CDs.

“When I set out to do the project, I wasn’t necessarily making the music for anyone else,” Houston said.  “I have lots of family members and friends who wanted to be able to listen to me at home, but when I went in to do the actual album, I decided I wasn’t doing the album for anyone but me.”

“I had a really strong idea of what I wanted on there.” Houston said that one of the major themes on the album is personal growth and the challenges of entering adulthood.

“I knew I wanted this album to be a reflection of the past couple years. I’ve done a lot of growth, really just figuring out who I want to be, and how I want to be in the world, so I really wanted to make sure that this album represented that.”

Houston is very clear that she throws her emotions fully into her music. “I go based off of my emotions.  Whether it’s love, hate, despair, confusion.  I kind of wanted to be able to show that in each of my songs.”

“Something that kept coming up was feeling. I want you to feel how the song sounds.  That was the whole idea of the project, which was that I just wanted it to have some sort of feeling attached to it.”

Album Breakdown

The EP opens with a song called Forest Down. Lyrically, the song reflects on lost love.  

Houston says that the song was written about a friend going through an abusive relationship. She had originally written it on guitar, but “it didn’t match the emotion that I wanted the song to have.” 

After deciding to remake the song on the piano, Houston decided that this track would open the EP.

The second song on the EP, Faces, describes the uncertainty of young adulthood.

“When I first wrote Faces, it was this really sad song, on this really sad key,” Houston said.

“The song is actually about losing friendships. It happened at a time when it was my first summer away from home, and I felt sort of alone.”

Houston says she came to realize that adulthood sometimes involves losing childhood friendships, and that’s okay. She then chose to remake the song and give it a more upbeat tone. 

“And then I just changed the song.  You can’t be sad that this ended (the friendship), you have to be more happy.  And then it was one of those things where I’m like, okay, I’m on my way, I’m figuring out what adulthood is, I’m figuring out what life should be.”

The album’s third track, Phenomenon, is a love song. 

“This was the first love song that I had ever written for somebody and played for them,” Houston said.

The song has a music video to accompany it and was shot mostly at Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, in Thunder Bay.

The album is given a major jolt of energy with the rock-influenced fourth track I Told You, a darker song about heartbreak. 

“That’s definitely how I felt about I Told You, it’s something that’s more rock-driven,” said Houston.

Houston said that it was her oldest song, written a couple of years ago. The song “always stays current to me and my feelings.  It’s one of my favourite songs of my own,” she said. 

The EP concludes with Mind Falls. This was the final song Houston recorded for the album.  She said that she “felt like something was missing.”

“I would say I’m an activist and a feminist, but I still do give little pieces of myself up, when I probably shouldn’t, and I was really feeling the weight of that when I wrote Mind Falls.”

“It’s a song that shows me not just that I’m weak, but also that I’m powerful in my weakness.”

Future Plans

Houston says the pandemic has made it harder for her to promote this project. 

“That’s one thing that’s kind of halted my ideas of where I’d like to go and the direction I’m heading in.”

Houston says she typically would have recorded an album and then sort of had a tour planned but said “that’s not quite as realistic in our current situation with COVID.”

Houston does not have plans to pursue a major record label contract right now. She prefers her independence and being able to pursue music on her own time. 

“I’m really content to sort of just doing my own thing, own my own time, with who I want to do it with,” Houston said. “It’s really hard for me to say where I want to go because I have so many ideas.”

Houston has already been looking forward to her next endeavor. “I do have a couple projects that I’m already planning that I want to work on.  There’s a couple songs that really speak to me, and I want to make sure that those get done.”

“I want to make sure that I continue to encourage the progression of femme [female] folk in music. In the future, I’d love to do a project with only people identifying as women.”

The album was officially released on December 17, 2020, and is available on all major streaming platforms.