For Christina Maria, her most recent European tour was a little bit like going home.
“My mom has 72 first cousins, many of them in Holland, so a lot of family comes out to my shows and that’s something really special to me,” the Swiss-Canadian explained.
Maria released her second album, Straight Line, this past February.
The tour’s European setting is fitting, given the international production of the album, which she said shaped her sound and the record as a whole.
Maria reminisced about growing up in Surrey, a small suburb of Vancouver, describing how her parents surrounded her with the sounds of Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Supertramp.
She said her mother, a choir singer, served as the inspiration and motivation she needed to pursue her dreams.
Following a brief stint working at Swiss Chalet, Christina used her first paycheque to buy a guitar and the rest was history.
Maria described her introduction to music as something spontaneous. “I started because I just had to,” she said. “It was just like a gradual evolution of my life. It wasn’t a decision or anything.”
Before Christina’s big break she was busking full time — an experience she says she feels ambivalent toward.
“Every time I busk I think about how busking is the most beautiful thing and the ugliest thing in the world,” she said. “You’re open to everything and there is such a vast spectrum of emotion and people. I mean, I always play for myself, but when no one’s listening I always know that I am.”
Fast forward to 2009 and Maria has produced tracks in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto, though she said that in the end she doesn’t prefer any particular producer.
“We had sessions that would go by really fast and we had some tough songs that we had to get through, but at the end I love them all and I am so lucky to have had producers who were mentors in helping me get what I want from it,” she said.
Working with notable Canadian musicians such as Hot Hot Heat, Mother Mother and Sam Roberts, Christina was fascinated to learn how different producers used different tactics while cutting tracks, with each production team bringing a different aspect and different set of musicians.
“[It was] going to be really different from song to song but since I was so hands on in studio it brought a sort of unity to it all,” she said.
“Kind Friend,” one of her tracks on Straight Line, was written about an acquaintance of hers who had spent time in jail. Drinking in her friend’s bar after hours, she began talking with a young man who began to tell her that he had spent time in jail for murder.
After waking up to the first nice day after a long winter, Maria said she had “thought about how it’s amazing what you can find out about someone and what people are hiding.”
“I never noticed what he had to be thinking about all the time, and having that different perspective made me write this song,” she said.
Maria continues her tour throughout Canada this fall only to travel back to Europe this November. You can catch Christina performing solo at Zaphod Beeblebrox’s Oct. 4.