By Jim Barber
Trigger warning: The topics of violent death and suicide are discussed within the contents of this feature article.
It was an album born out of profound loss, a desperate, primal outcry of despair, cauterizing in its emotional intensity – a powerful vehicle for catharsis but also, ultimately of the resiliency of the human spirit.
Boundless Possibilities was the record the helped propel the already rising star of Indigenous singer/songwriter Celeigh Cardinal to new heights of recognition, respect, acclaim and popularity. Released in 2024, it earned her two Juno nominations (for Adult Contemporary Album Of the Year and Contemporary Indigenous Artist of the Year), as well as winning Indigenous Songwriter of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards and Songwriter(s) of the year along with pals Joey and Dave Landreth for the single ‘Light of the Moon.’
The Deluxe Edition, released digitally in July, includes a hauntingly beautiful, stripped-down acoustic version of ‘Light of the Moon’ as well as a delightfully upbeat remix by Ballsy Banos of ‘Show You How to Love Me.’ Other highlights include Cardinal’s evocative versions of classic rock standards such as Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,’ Aerosmith’s ‘Cryin’’ and Paul McCartney & Wings’ ‘Let Me Roll It.’ There’s also a new live recording of fan favourite ‘Don’t Waste Your Love on Me.’
Initially, Cardinal had the notion to take some live recordings from home and release them as an EP. Her publicist and partner in creative crime, Beth Cavanagh of What’s The Story?, believed her friend and client need to think bigger.
“It was actually Beth’s idea to release the deluxe version of the album because it celebrates the album. It reminds people of the album and because I was thinking about doing live versions of the songs from the album, it sort of made sense to add those on. So, it was celebratory. It was also Beth’s wonderful strategic planning that helped bring it all together. It keeps the songs fresh too. It’s really hard these days to put out an album because that means all of the content is now out there. And with things the way they are today in the music business, with people wanting singles, you need to keep feeding the algorithm, keep releasing, releasing, releasing. I did that leading up to the album but once the whole album’s out, it’s out and now there’s nothing. So, re-releasing it in this way will help to keep it relevant – keep me relevant – because we can forget things so quickly,” Cardinal said.
“And in some cases, these new versions are quite a bit different than the originals. They have different spirit, which is nice. A couple of the songs, ‘Light Of the Moon,’ and ‘You Make it Look Easy,’ are songs that I wrote with the Bros. Landreth and the acoustic versions that I released of those songs for the deluxe version are so similar to the demo versions that we wrote together. After we wrote those songs, me and Joey and Dave say in Joey’s living room and with Joey playing acoustic guitar, we just sang three-part harmony, and it was beautiful. So, I sort of wanted to recapture that demo feel, the feel of something that had just been written.”
As stated above, Boundless Possibilities lived up to its name in terms of both critical and popular acclaim, bringing in entire new audiences to be enraptured by Cardinal’s compelling songwriting and otherworldly voice. But my goodness was it a monumental journey to get there, filled with unimaginable heartache. And while most people would want to avoid having to return to that headspace, Cardinal believes there was a purpose to her pain, and that continuing to talk about the environment and atmosphere around Boundless Possibilities’ creation is healing for all concerned.
“I started working on it in 2019 and it really took up a lot of my time. It has a lot of emotional labour in it because it’s a journey of grief that I was walking from 2020 actually to the present, if I’m being honest. And it speaks to those experiences, and I don’t want it to just fade away. I’ve heard some great feedback from folks who have listened to the album who were on their own journeys, and they heard themselves in it. And, you know, music is supposed to be therapeutic; music is medicine and anytime somebody is going through something, and I can do the thing that I do, and it helps, it makes it feel really purposeful in what I do. So, I just wanted to continue to share it. There are songs I hope people find if they need them, and I have to do my part by helping them find it,” Cardinal explained as she discussed the horrific circumstances which she endured … and continues to process to this day.
“At the end of February of 2020, a friend of mine died by suicide. I had started writing an album called Euphoria in 2019 and I was so excited about this album. I’m a migraine sufferer, and as soon as I would start to come out of a migraine and feel sort of baseline – what most people feel on an average day – as soon as I would feel that sensation, it feels euphoric. And I wanted to capture the idea of this feeling, this being euphoric and how, because you’re sick you appreciate the wellness afterwards so much. But my friend passed, and she came to me in a dream the night after she passed. And there was sort of a spiritual connection between us that happened, which shook my life up significantly. I was already dealing with grief, but I was also dealing with some guilt and some shame about things that had transpired in our relationship in the past. We hadn’t actually seen each other for about 10 years. But, she had asked me to come play a show two weeks prior to her passing. On Feb. 14 I went to play the show and she came up to me afterwards and said the words, ‘I forgive you,’ to me. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but when she died two weeks later I realized that she wanted me to know that she had forgiven me and that what happened didn’t have anything to do with me. She had her own struggles with depression, but it was still really difficult to process her death. She had children. She had a family, so it was devastating, and I had my own conflicts with it.
“Of course, then COVID hit, and the world had shut down right after my friend passed. And now I was at home with all this, and I did start writing about my experiences with her and I wrote the song, ‘I Want to Mean It, Part 1 and Part 2.’ Part 1 is the story of us and Part 2 is supposed to tell the story of the dream I had where, in the dream, she walked into my bedroom, sat down on my bed and we talked, and then she went away. When I woke up in the morning, it felt more like a visit than a dream.”
Already reeling from the sudden death of her friend, with the entire world becoming one big Emergency room thanks to the global pandemic, Cardinal’s life was already an emotional tumult. But tragedy had not yet finished with her.
“Then, in June of 2020, my son’s father was murdered. So, I was reeling. I was a mess. I wasn’t writing anything for this album that I had planned on writing. It was so traumatic. It was devastating and there isn’t a lot of closure with it because it was murder, and we still don’t know what happened. It’s unsolved. We don’t have any reasons why it happened. My son was 17 at the time [he’s now 22] and everything just stopped for us, everything. Everything had already stopped because of COVID but now we just stopped. It was really, really hard. I got back to writing to process these feelings because I was actually feeling very numb. So the way that I reach my feelings is by saying them out loud, or I have to write things down, so that’s what I started to do, just to get to the sort of root of what was going on and how I was feeling when there were times when I just wasn’t feeling anything,” she said.
“There’re a lot of songs on the album that deal with that, and ‘The Only Way Out’ is the song that I wrote about my son’s father and it’s very much the story of our beginnings, because I was very young. I was 19 when we were together, and we were only together for a couple of years, and he dealt with addiction, and I tried to help him, but I couldn’t. I ended up having his baby and having to walk away from him. So here I was processing things from when I was like 20. And along with my friend and the pandemic, it was grief beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in my life.
“But it was also the year that I won a Juno. So, I had this huge roller coaster of 2020, and I feel like my nervous system is still sort of settling in. Luckily, I found a great therapist – I actually went through three different therapists since 2020, but I think we’re on our way with the one I have now. We’re still in the healing journey because it’s hard when there is no closure of the death. What I’ve found is the importance of living the most joyful life possible in honour of these people who are passed. And I want to share their stories, both on and offstage. I want them to sort of shine through me. Often when I’m onstage singing, it doesn’t always feel like it’s coming from me. It feels like the energy is sort of coming through the top of my head and going out my fingers and through my voice. And I still want their energy to be part of that with me.”
Her Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year was for the acclaimed 2019 album Stories From a Downtown Apartment, which also garnered her two Western Canadian Music Awards for Songwriter of the Year and Indigenous Artist of the Year. It’s unimaginably difficult to even try to fathom the cauldron of conflicting and swirling emotions roiling within Cardinal. ‘Exhausting’ doesn’t even begin to tell the tale.
“I was not in a great headspace because I was processing all of this. Once I won the Juno it was … and I don’t even want to say bittersweet, because it was very sweet. It was sweet in the sense of how I won it. I also get a lot of social anxiety and was so nervous about going to the Junos. I flew from Germany to Edmonton and Edmonton to Saskatoon within a few days. I was actually sitting in a hotel room in Saskatoon when they said the Junos were going to be cancelled because of COVID. I was so relieved and I was just so excited to go home. So, I won the Juno sitting on my mom’s couch in her living room. And it was the best way, under the circumstances to have that sort of huge milestone happen,” she said.
“I’d been talking about winning a Juno since I was 11 or 12. It’s something I’ve always wanted, and being able to do it surrounded by family was even more special. My world’s changed significantly since then. I’ve been to more of those award shows, and I get it, and I’m more comfortable now. Winning the Juno also kept me on people’s minds. While a lot of musicians were not performing at all [during the pandemic] I still was. I kept busy for the rest of 2020 and 2021 to the maximum that it was possible. I remember driving from Edmonton to Winnipeg to go play a showcase that was just being recorded. But it was also pretty grueling because I was working a lot while I was also dealing with all this grief. I was constantly pushing past it and when I look back at videos of me from that time, I can see there a lot less light in my eyes. And I can tell that I am pushing through. But it helped me be able to afford to feed my child and my dog and pay my rent. So, I was truly blessed, but at the same time, so much was going on – I had to compartmentalize a lot. And that unpacking has been happening since 2023.”
Cardinal re-iterated that it’s still important for her to talk about the tragic deaths of her friend and son’s dad, and that it started when she first began sharing singles from the original Boundless Possibilities release.
“I’ve been having this conversation, in one form or another, for the last couple of years. And it’s funny because it’s different every time. I never tell the stories the exact same way. First of all, I don’t want to do that. I want to speak on how I’m feeling in this moment and sometimes that leads to things being a little rambly, but I don’t really care. I’ve been telling these stories for so long. By 2024 I was like, I gotta get this album out. It needs to be done. I need it out because I’m telling these stories, and it’s important to the healing process but we need some closure here.”
Music as medicine is not an uncommon notion, and has been referenced by numerous other artists in articles on www.musiclifemagazine.net, including most recently by Indigenous artist Mimi O’Bonsawin. So, what does Cardinal mean by music being a form of medicine?
“For me, it’s a couple things. It’s actual medicine for my body because of the way my body shifts when I start singing – I actually start to breathe differently. I start to hold my posture differently. We all have physical traumas that happen over the years, and we carry them. When I sing, it’s like my body resets and gets into the best position possible. And my body just knows that that’s the thing to do. So, there’s the physical aspect of it. Mentally, it’s the release; it’s an actual release of feelings. It’s sort of like inhaling the good, exhaling the bad. It’s a release to the point where I have to be careful when I’m onstage that I’m presenting something totally balanced, because it’s easy to just release, release, release. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around somebody who sort of just vents and vents all the time and you’re soaking up their energy. It is important because you do need to let things out, but on stage, that’s where I have to make sure that it’s balanced and that I’m helping people have a balanced experience and not feeling too emotionally exhausted,” she said, adding that certain parts of her singing performance also have positive benefits.
“I feel my body heals when I sing low notes. It’s sort of a vibration throughout my body. It gives me a sense of claim. I feel it in my nervous system. And it’s also medicine because music is a way of connection with people and connection and community is so important. I feel like my main community is, first of all the Indigenous musical artists across Canada. That’s my primary community. Those people understand my experience as an Indigenous artist the way nobody else ever has before because they also live it. But when you sit with any group of people and you’re sharing your feelings and you’re sharing songs and you feel an energetic connection with them, I feel that’s very healing, and it makes you feel less alone. I think that’s something that sort of continues on and that’s how you make quote, unquote, fans. It’s the people who feel connected to you, and connection is important.
“And I really felt, or actually didn’t feel that during COVID. I had this huge realization during the pandemic because I had to do so many performances on Zoom, or pre-recording them for a festival that they were playing online. Coming up with the energy to perform in a dynamic way without an audience was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life. Every room I play now is so different and I love that. It’s all based on the energy in the room, and it really is the energy from the people who come to the shows, the energy that they bring – I don’t want to say that I’m, you know, stealing their energy. I feel like we’re combining our energy and I like that. I need it. I need that energy too to perform because doing it on my own is just not the same.”
While the stories and the songs inspired by the tragic events of 2020 and its subsequent emotional and spiritual fallout will always be part of Cardinal’s setlist, she has recognized that another way to honour the departed, and to continue to heal is to start writing, recording and performing music from another set of emotional influences – from another emotional point of view.
“This album is still important and always will be, and its still important to sing these songs. But what I’m ready to do now is start writing songs with different content, different stories. I have been really thinking about how when I’m onstage the words I am speaking and singing are so powerful. And like I said before, the venting thing is important, the releasing thing is important but it’s also important that I’m presenting something balanced. So that means sometimes I can be a jokester when I’m performing because the content can be so heavy. I can be pretty silly and self deprecating. I’ll make fun of the band members. I want people to be laughing too and having a joyful experience at the same time as this other content. The songs that I sing over and over and over again, they’re like prayers. They’re like affirmations. They’re like manifestations because these are the things that I’m saying over and over again. So, I need to start writing things that are speaking to the good things, calling the things into my life that I want to call into my life,” she said.
“When I’m writing this next album, which I’ve just slowly been starting to do, that’s going to be a big thing for me. What am I calling into my life with these songs? What am I going to sing about for the next three years in front of people and share with them? What am I being really intentional about? And it’s got to be intentional. I can speak to the things that I want or desire or my good experiences without being inauthentic to what’s going on in the world. I do think it’s important that we know what’s going on in the world because the world needs to change even though, honestly, it’s so heavy that I’m not sure I can take it on. I never want to be inauthentic, and I don’t want to say everything’s going to be fine. But I do want to say that I WANT everything to be fine.”
What is definitely fine and a very positive development for Cardinal is her inclusion alongside fellow musical creators Sebastian Gaskin and Julian Taylor in the first-ever Artist In Residence Program at Massey Hall, through the Allied Music Centre, which was developed by The Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall.
“We built Allied Music Centre to be a creative home for artists, one where they can realize their full potential, from creation to recording to performance, all under one roof,” said Jesse Kumagi, President and CEO for The Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall in a press release.
The year-long program was devised in consultation with members of the Indigenous community with it’s goal to “support the participants’ creative and professional development, fostering meaningful audience engagement and access to the stages and creative facilities at Massey Hall and Allied Music Centre.”
Cardinal and her band launched the program with a show at the Allied Music Centre Theatre back in April.
“All three of us are in similar places in our career, but we have such different circumstances. Stephen McGrath at Massey Hall really wants to help me build up my team and get me the support I need to go to the next level, because as you can imagine, doing it all yourself, as I have been doing, doesn’t make a lot of time to be creative. So, this program is going to be about writing and recording and expanding the team. It’s going to help me build towards the next few years with support from them,” she said, adding that she will be back and forth from her home in Edmonton to Toronto for the program, which means larger scale touring is taking a bit of a back seat, at least for the next year or so.
“Back in 2014 and 2015 I was playing around 200 gigs a year or something like that, because I would run open stages and things like that – I was doing anything I possibly could to make money playing music. But I’ve tried to slow down over time. COVID stopped everything and then it started building up again. This year is a bit slower; I’ve mostly been doing festivals and theatre shows. That’s basically my bread and butter because I’ve be back and forth to Toronto more than usual because of the residency,” she said, adding that one day soon, she hopes places like Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto will be regular stops on her tours.
“I stood on the Massey Hall stage for the first time a couple of days ago. And I thought, ‘yeah, I’m supposed to play here.’ And I can’t wait until I do, and it will happen! It feels like it. I know it’s going to happen. It’s supposed to be. I feel it. All of my career has been this thing where I’m weirdly confident and I don’t know why. I think it’s because this is my purpose. It feels like this is the thing I’m supposed to do, and I will make it happen.”
For more information on the Deluxe edition of Boundless Possibilities, future touring plans and more, visit https://www.celeighcardinal.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
