Jess Moskaluke is a name you need to get familiar with - this Canadian singer has everything it takes to become a superstar, and is already making waves with new album 'The Demos'. Jess was kind enough to join me for a Zoom interview where we spoke about why moving to Nashville wasn't an option for her, getting advice from none other than Shania Twain, and a chance meeting that led to her hit duet with Travis Collins - enjoy!
Ciara’s Country (CC): I am so excited to be joined today by Canadian artist Jess Moskaluke! Jess, thank you so much for joining me - your songs have been such a staple of my playlist this year, so it is an absolute honour to be speaking with you today.
Jess Moskaluke (JM): Oh my gosh, the pleasure is all mine! I’m so happy that you’ve been adding the songs to your playlists – thank you so much!
CC: Where exactly in the world are you right now?
JM: I’m in Rocanville, Saskatchewan in Canada, so a small town in North East Saskatchewan, just above the American border.
CC: I’m so glad you said that, I can never figure out how to pronounce Saskatchewan!
JM: Most people can’t, it took me like 31 years!
CC: Good to know I’m not the only one! I know home is something that’s really important to you – your song Mapdot has been hailed as an ode to small town pride. Can you speak a bit more about why home is so important to you?
JM: I think that everybody’s home is important to them in some
way, but for me, it’s always been solidified by the fact that people have been pressuring
me, encouraging me and challenging me to move away from this place, and I have
a really hard time doing that. As I'm on the road so frequently, anytime I'm
not on the road, I want to be by my family and my friends, so the thought of
traveling even more on my off days to do that just didn't make sense.
The pandemic has really proved you don’t need to – I mean, in this interview, we're speaking from across the world to each other right now, so it’s clear that you can work from home, do things remotely, and be in a place that you love and that ultimately makes you happy. I get so much more inspiration from living life in a true real way than immersing myself in Nashville, Toronto, Vancouver, or wherever the city might be, so I'm really happy here.
CC: Can you give some more specific examples of how your home has inspired you?
JM: I should mention that my town is tiny - you probably know that by listening to Mapdot, and when I say tiny, I mean, I think there's about 800 people in Rocanville where my husband and I live, so actually tiny!
I definitely think that there is such a thing as being famous in a small town - everybody is famous in a small town, it doesn't matter who you are or what you do. I think that really prepared me for the music industry - it encouraged me to constantly put my best foot forward, to treat people with kindness and respect, no matter how they treat you. That's been really crucial to me and really prepared me for this business as well.
CC: Was there a lot of support from people in your town when you started out?
JM: Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in a different town to the one I currently live in, but it's in the same area and people in both my hometown and the town that I live in now have been nothing but incredibly supportive. You know, always cheering me on from the sidelines.
CC: How lovely! As well as Mapdot, another of your songs which I completely fell in love with was Halfway Home - I think it really blends pop and country so well, which is right up my street. If it's not too ambiguous a question, how did you find that kind of sound?
JM: I feel like finding that sound has been my aim for my whole career. Shania Twain has always been my number one girl - she's my favorite artist of all time, and I always loved that she didn't just stick to one genre, she did what made her happy. She challenged those genre borders and was constantly reinventing her own sound.
I always wanted to do country, and I’ve always had some pop influences, but I didn't realize just how much pop influenced my sound. I think that's always just been what I've naturally wanted and tried to do, and also been sonically attracted to myself, so I think that's just naturally what comes out of me!
CC: I, for one, love it! You mentioned Shania there – would she be a dream duet for you?
JM: Sure. I mean, why not? Actually a couple of years back, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Shania at the Canadian Country Music Association Awards. Myself and two of my really good friends who are also female country artists here in Canada had an opportunity when Shania was hosting the awards to pay homage to her, and she joined us on stage.
CC: Incredible!
JM: I know, I’m dying now and I was there! She came the day before and we did a bunch of rehearsals, and she was really complimentary. The thing that I remember the most was she was encouraging each of us to play to our strengths. We were singing her songs in front of her with her coaching us – you’d think that someone like that would just want us to stick to what she did because she did it so flawlessly, but she really encouraged each of us to own our individual talents and make her song our own.
CC: Oh my gosh, I love that. Getting the inside scoop into what it's like to meet Shania Twain, who doesn't want to do that?
JM: I know, they say you should never meet your idols, but if your idol is Shania, you should definitely do it.
CC: Okay, adding that to my bucket list! Of course, I can't mention your music without talking about your latest single Leave Each Other Alone with Travis Collins. Before covid, I lived in Australia and attended C2C Australia, so I was so thrilled to read that your partnership with Travis actually started there.
JM: That's so crazy. Oh my gosh, I love that full circle moment! Travis and I met in Australia during festival season there - it was my first trip to Australia ever, and we got connected via email prior to my trip there. I wasn't able to bring my own band to Australia so I needed to find a readymade band in Australia that could do the pop country sound that we were talking about earlier and would be happy to learn my songs.
A friend of mine from Nashville, who originally grew up in Australia, said ‘My friend Travis has a really killer band that would just crush your songs and probably would love to play with you’. That was Travis Collins’s band, so I was playing with his band the whole time that we were in Australia, and then later we got to mishmash our voices together on a song too! He and I just got on really quickly.
CC: Honestly, that sounds like fate - everything worked out so perfectly and you ended up with this brilliant song, which we're playing all over the radio now.
JM: You know, it's funny that you mentioned fate, because I had written that song maybe a year, if not longer, prior to meeting Travis. I was writing the song with some songwriters, and we knew that it could be a duet, but we wanted to be really cognisant of the fact that it might not be a duet. We wanted to write it lyrically so that it could be sang from the perspective of one person or two without having to change lyrics or anything around too much.
Usually, when I write a song, if I'm writing a duet, I typically have a specific person in mind, and I'll write it in their key, I'll write it towards a topic that I think they would sing about, and I didn't get to do any of that this time. I just kind of thought, well, maybe this will be a duet, maybe it'll never see the light of day.
I met Travis and thought, gosh, I love this voice, and I would love to work with him in some capacity. Then when we were recording my album The Demos, I thought that song needed to be a part of it, and what if Travis would do this song? Obviously he did and so many stars aligned over the last year that I can't imagine that happening any other way.
Jess and I had so much to talk about that I had to split our interview into two parts! Stay tuned to my Twitter @CiarasCountry to be the first to know when Part 2 is posted, where we talk more about her new album, how she spends her free time, and what artists she thinks you ought to listen to. Thanks so much for reading!
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