Eleanor Buckland Laura E. Partain photo

Back last month, I missed the opportunity to run a story on singer/songwriter Eleanor Buckland to promote her performance at One Longfellow Square on Nov. 11 — that show was a CD-release gig for her debut solo CD, “You Don’t Have To Know.” She does have three earlier releases as a member of the Boston-based folk/rock group — formed in 2014 — known as Lula Wiles, but when I listened to her solo work I knew I wanted to let you folks out there know about it and, of course, her. The opportunity to chat with Buckland came up and I discovered that she and the other two members of Lula Wiles (Isa Burke and Mali Obomsawin) had first met at a fiddle camp up here in our fair state, talk then turned to her first solo offering.

Q: I’ve listened to this album at least five times this morning before you called so I could familiarize myself with it and I have to say, Eleanor, it is just a beautiful album, I’m very taken with it.
Buckland: Thank you so much.

Q: Now does this, I hope that this is not the case, spell an end for your group?
Buckland: Well, for now, yes. We’re taking an extended hiatus, and really an indefinite one, because we all want to be pursuing these other musical projects at this time; so it just felt like it’s the time for us to part ways, but you never know, right? For now, though, we’re doing our own things.

Q: For complete transparency, I’d never heard of Lula Wiles before and so I googled the name and have been watching videos of the three of you, because a touchstone for me throughout my career as a music journalist has been vocal harmonies, no matter what the genre.
Buckland: That was definitely a touchstone for us as a band when we were doing Lula Wiles: singing three-part harmony, we just loved doing that together. And I think in the folk tradition that Lula Wiles was coming up in, and making music in for a few years there, there’s like such a strong connection with what three-part harmony is and what style it should be in. But for me, I also was very influenced by pop music when I was younger, so on this record there are some songs where, yeah, there’s three-part harmony but we tried to approach it from a pop perspective rather than like folk or Americana.

Q: Now this is a solo record yet the vocal harmonies are very prevalent on it.
Buckland: I wrote a lot of the harmony parts on the record even if I didn’t sing them, and so did the singers that sang them on the album, that was a collaborative thing, but I do sing a lot of the harmony parts, as well, and that’s kind of decidedly more indie or pop rather than folk. You don’t often find the lead singer overdubbing the harmony parts on their own albums in the folk and Americana world. But I just love that sound on my record, it’s like suspended disbelief in some ways, so you go, “Oh yeah, that’s the same singer, but it’s cool!” Yeah, vocal harmony is what it’s all about (laughter).

Q: You know, the last track on the album, the title track, when the harmonies kicked in, it literally, and I’ve seen this expression many times and only experienced it once or twice, it took my breath away, seriously!
Buckland: Well, that’s so amazing to hear because we were really going for that with that last song. For me, what I wanted to get from that track was the feeling of just being so overwhelmed with all of your feelings and emotions that you’re plowed over by them. There were five of us singing with keys and guitars, but also woodwinds with sax and flutes going on, as well, we wanted to create this wall of sound that totally encompasses and surrounds the listener. We wanted it to come out of nowhere because up until that point, you’ve got this kind of alt-country/Lucinda Williams-esque track happening and then these sounds come in. And also harmonically the chords are really quite out there compared to the harmonic place that we’ve been in for the whole beginning of the song, because it’s about not knowing, it’s about questioning so much, not knowing, and being overwhelmed by that, but accepting that I don’t have to have all the answers, you don’t have to have everything figured out, and that the journey there, in living, is what life’s all about.

Q: I’ve got to say that as I’ve been listening to the album, I’ve been trying to correlate your voice  to other singers that I’ve interviewed over the years and just this morning it came to me: Paula Cole. You both believe in what you’re singing, the passion and the emotion are there, and truth is present to all who hear you.
Buckland: I’m honored to be compared to her.

Q: Now, before we end this interview, can we talk a little about your connection to our fair state? Where are you from in Maine?
Buckland: I grew up in Farmington, my mom is from Farmington, she grew up there, too, and my dad is from the Boston area, they met down in Boston, too. I have three siblings and my dad’s side of the family is quite musical, and playing music as a family was a big part of my childhood. But then I also was really inspired by, and a lot of my musicality was stroked by, the music department in the Farmington and Mt. Blue school system. I played violin in the orchestra, I took lessons, I was in the a cappella group, I was in the fiddling group, so music was just a huge part of what I was doing. It felt like such a big part of me.

Q: Is there anything, Eleanor, that you’d like me to pass along to the folks reading this article?
Buckland: Well, I hope that people will listen to the record with an open heart and I think that in the current climate, literal climate but also political climate, as well as the fact that we’re in this pandemic, I think supporting artists is really important and doing what we can in that way. But I think also think that art is really powerful and music is really powerful for connection, and I hope that these songs and this music can be a way to feed and fuel connection, and heal people’s hearts, if it can. eleanorbuckland.com

Lucky Clark, a 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award winner, has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.