Madviolet Worry The Jury CD

Brenley and Lisa...Providence, destiny, karma, kismit: Call it what you will, there's an undiluted element of it in the Madviolet story. Brenley MacEachern and Lisa Marie MacIsaac use those terms when recounting how two small-town girls with shared Cape Breton roots hooked up in Toronto four years ago. That same certain something explains the series of happy breaks that led to working relationships with premier U.K. producer John Reynolds, Sinead O'Connor's backing band and Indigo Girls manager Russell Carter. And it's clearly alive in the camaraderie and connection the duo feel when writing together, performing live and racking up the miles in their beloved, anthropomorphosized tour vans (first Charlie, now the sleek, late-model Blanche).Whatever it is, it's ingrained deep in the musical DNA of Worry The Jury, Madviolet's debut full-length CD. Led by the rousing opening track and first single, "Light It Up," the album documents a six-week recording blitz in London, England that Brenley calls "absolutely magic, a dream creative experience."John Reynolds, best known for his central role on O'Connor's classic albums and whose dazzling C/V includes work with U2, Peter Gabriel and Simply Red, helmed the warm, intimate sessions at his Notting Hill home studio 18d (formerly Ghost Rooms). His close-knit circle of musicians - among them guitarist Jon Klein (Siouxsie and the Banshees) and bass players Claire Kenny (Indigo Girls) and Matthew Seligman (Tori Amos, The Soft Boys) - served as Madviolet's backing band. Vocal tracks were recorded in the same tiled bathroom where O'Connor sang "Fire On Babylon." Among the guests who dropped in for a taste of Reynold's post-session cooking was his neighbor Brian Eno."We got over being starstruck pretty quickly - it was such an everyday, down-to-earth atmosphere," explains Brenley, an equally earthy type raised in Kincardine, Ont. Not that there was any shortage of pinch-me moments. "One day I looked up from recording a part and theres Sinead sitting in a chair and listening," says Lisa, the youngest of Cape Breton's celebrated MacIsaac family of fiddle players and the quieter, charmingly sardonic one in Madviolet. "That was a bit freaky."Fate showed its hand long before Brenley first met Lisa in 2000 and invited her to join her trip-hop band zoebliss. It turned out that their fathers had known one another as teenagers back in Creignish, Nova Scotia. Lisa went to school and played hockey with Brenley's cousins. Although the young Brenley spent her summers in Cape Breton, she never crossed paths with Lisa, who by the age of 12 was winning local Miss Congeniality crowns and playing fiddle at country fairs.Brenley formed Zoebliss in 1997 and recorded two well-received independent albums that earned her comparisions with Beth Orton and Portishead's Beth Gibbons. A second-stage Lilith Fair gig in 1999 was a definite highlight, in part because she met Reynolds, then touring with the Indigo Girls.Lisa, meanwhile, had moved on from teaching step-dancing to become a first-call touring musician gracing stages with her brother Ashley, Bruce Guthro, Mary Jane Lamond, Gordie Sampson and Adam Gregory, among others.After meeting by chance in Toronto bar The Green Room, Brenley and Lisa became fast friends and were soon forging a creative partnership after band rehearsals. "I was comfortable enough to bring out songs that I'd never play for the band," explains Brenley. "The tunes were a little more folky, even a bit country-oriented, and that was a total change from what Zoebliss was about."Destiny rode in again when Lisa was invited to London to audition for The Alice Band, the girl group English music executive Rob Dickens was assembling for his Instant Karma label. Brenley tagged along and contacted Reynolds, who invited her to cut a track with his band Ghostland. Neither venture panned out, yet a new chapter in their lives was underway when Reynolds promised that if the two formed a band, he'd produce them.