Fort Macleod’s Gillian Moranz has released a new EP titled Cue the Day.
Fort Macleod’s Gillian Moranz continues to bring her music to the world.
Moranz last month released her new EP Cue the Day along with a self-produced video.
“Releasing music is a different animal than it used to be, but it’s still really important for artists to grow their audiences and stay relevant in an ever-changing landscape of new music,” Moranz said in an interview.
Cue the Day is Moranz’s second EP release in less than a year. In 2021 she released Quiet.
Moranz worked for about a decade in live event co-ordination, but now works as an independent grant writer and artistic director, while focusing on her own music.
Moranz made that shift in her working life during the COVID-19 pandemic, which also provided some inspiration for Cue the Day.
Moranz explained that CD and merchandise sales used to be a major part of the process of releasing music but that changed with the shift to on-line streaming services.
Releasing a single, EP or LP allows people to engage with an artist’s music from anywhere in the world, which in turn builds an audience for live performances.
“It is also a great way to approach potential presenters, festivals or independent radio stations to generate performance opportunities,” Moranz added. “The equation is not as straight forward as it used to be, but releasing music is still a very important part of the artistic process of a professional musician and songwriter.”
Moranz wrote the title track in February 2020, shortly before COVID-19 arrived in Canada.
It turned out that Cue the Day helped Moranz deal with the feeling of hopelessness that came as the pandemic dragged on and the world struggled.
Cue the Day also inspired the other two tracks on the EP, On Your Way and Who Slipped In?
“As I worked my way through the process of understanding I needed to acknowledge different aspects of the experience, so these three songs became cornerstones that I wanted to release together,” Moranz said.
“At the end of the day, they were really just a form of therapy for me, like so much of the creative process often is, but it has been so incredible to release them into the wild and find that people are connecting with them with the same resonance that they were written.”
Moranz has lived in the Commercial Drive neighbourhood in East Vancouver for the past seven years, developing a deep connection with the people and area.
“I am constantly in awe of how fortunate we are to have such a rich, vibrant, warm, accepting, expressive community of friends, families, neighbours, and artists in our immediate vicinity,” Moranz said.
That connection with the people and places in her life, combined with her anthropology studies at the University of Lethbridge, led to the gem of an idea for a video to support the EP.
The video for On Your Way brings to life the concept of an alternative currency lemonade stand.
“The idea was to suspend how we understand conventional economic forms of value, currency, and exchange by claiming currency as anything we consider valuable,” Moranz explained.
“This concept fit nicely with the theme of the song so I put together a very simple shoot, made a few calls on social media, and was so thrilled to see how many folks came to exchange songs, jokes, poems, tokens, gymnastics, tongue twisters, silly walks, dance routines, etc. for a glass of lemonade.”
“I wanted to do something simple, community forward, and straight from the heart, and the alternative currency lemonade stand proved to be exactly that.”
Moranz is working on some other creative projects that she expects to announce in 2023.
The singer-songwriter will also be in the Fort Macleod area in May and in July and is setting up some performances.
You can find Cue the Day, the On Your Way video and Moranz’s other music at www.gillianmoranz.com.
