Scarlett Jane is actually a duo and not a person as the name might suggest, but in many respects Andrea Ramolo and Cindy Doire function very much as a single entity.
The two Toronto country-pop sweethearts have
been BFFs for the better part of a decade, after all, and have spent so
much of the past 10 years joined at the hip through thick and thin that
they now instinctively finish each other’s sentences like an old married
couple. They’d even toured together extensively — pretty much the
ultimate test of any close relationship — for years as solo performers
so they could hang out as a pair as much as humanly possible before
finally taking the obvious step and forming a band together in 2012 as
solace from a couple of simultaneous, ugly breakups with their
boyfriends of the time.
“It’s all the stuff that comes with marriage and no sex,” laughs Doire.
“We collaborate on all the writing and we sing
together on every song, and why we call the project Scarlett Jane is
because Scarlett Jane is one woman who epitomizes the both of us,” says
Ramolo. “We are one voice, we are one head, we are one heart because we
live life so closely together as friends. The first album was kind of
like a therapy session for us to get through that period in our lives.
We were even living together at the time.”
Scarlett Jane’s dark-shaded debut LP, Stranger, is very much a double-breakup album, then. And, as time goes on, it’s proving a highly successful one, at that.
Originally released in April of 2012, the
record is enjoying renewed life this spring thanks to a remixed version
re-released this past March with distribution through Warner Music
Canada that has suddenly given Scarlett Jane’s harmonious
women-done-wrong confectionary belated traction with such outlets as CBC
Radio, iTunes and CMT. The duo currently has a bona fide radio hit in
Quebec, in fact, with its French-language single “Mon Coeur Se Brise,” a reworked version of Stranger’s “Aching Heart.”
Jen Squires
BFFs Cindy Doire and Andrea Ramolo finally joined forces a couple of
years ago as the country-pop duo Scarlett Jane, and it appears to be
working out for them.
Scarlett Jane has a fortunate hook-up with former Tragically Hip manager (and Canadian Idol
judge) Jake Gold last summer to thank for its recent ascent to
“bubbling under” status. The ferociously hardworking band was doing fine
on its own, of course — it managed to mount a well-received, 37-date
tour of Europe at this time last year purely under its own,
road-hardened power — but having a believer with big connections and big
ideas in its corner has definitely given it a leg up towards that
elusive “next level.”
“It was a transition for us because we did
everything on our own — marketing, publicity, booking tours — but now,
in that realm, we have to sort of take a back seat,” says Ramolo.
“Everything that Jake has suggested we do —
including the remix of the record and the translation of the song —
we’ve always been, like: ‘That’s a stupid idea. Why would we do that?
Why would we remix the album when we can record a new one? Why re-record
a song in French when we can write another one in French?’” laughs
Doire, a Franco-Ontarian from Timmins who’s already released one
Francophone album. “So we’ve kind of fought him along the way every time
he proposed something like a couple of teenage girls. ‘This is
ridiculous.’ But what’s been really exciting and great about Jake so far
is he’s always right.”
After living with Stranger — which,
both Ramolo and Doire stress, they were both completely happy with in
the original form overseen by producer Stew Crookes (of One Hundred
Dollars) before the new, more radio-friendly “shine” was applied — for
two years, Scarlett Jane is itching to record some new songs.
They’d just returned from a meeting with an
unnamed producer in New York at the time of this meeting, in fact, and
promise several new songs in the set list for this Thursday’s gig at the Drake Underground.
“We’ve just relaunched the album so we’re
gonna give that a life and breathe new life into it because everyone’s
excited about it,” says Ramolo. “But, I mean, speaking to you completely
as artists right now, we’re dying to put out new music right now. We’re
dying to play new songs.”
In the meantime, Scarlett Jane will do what
Scarlett Jane lives to do: hit the road as hard as humanly possible for
the summer, further hardening the friendly bond behind it in the
process.
“We get better and better at fighting. As far
as what I want from a relationship, now that I’ve been working with you
for a good few years, I’ve developed some really good communication
skills. Watch out,” says Doire, adding with another laugh: “We’ve had
some real movie-scene moments where it’s, like, ‘Is she gonna punch me
in the face or are we gonna make out?’”
“It’s true. We demand honesty from each other
in a way that you’ll only get with a lover if you’re lucky,” says
Ramolo. “We own a life together, we own a business together . . . This
is what we’ve created together and we’ve put so much into it that it
matters, so when sh-- comes up we have to deal with it because it
matters.”
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