Reconciliation and deep healing is a process that takes more than years. Past trauma is forever there, burying deeper or surfacing, depending on the day. Healing occurs, but the scars remain. Music can help the healing, and for many artists, writing songs and putting these buried truths into words and melodies is therapeutic.
These truths are self-evident on the latest from Burnstick, the husband-and-wife folk duo of Plains Cree singer-songwriter Jason Burnstick and Métis singer-songwriter Nadia Burnstick. Made of Sin, the pair’s sophomore record, is marked by two souls in love and showcases the healing power of music.
Based in Manitoba, the pair met more than a decade ago and immediately bonded over art. As Nadia notes — a fact she shares with every interviewer — “we wrote a song together on our first date.”
Made of Sin follows Burnstick’s JUNO-nominated debut Kîyânaw (Cree: Us) released in 2019. The nine new songs tug at your heart — art for art’s sake. These cinematic soundscapes feature Jason’s carefully curated production and soulful playing of a 100-year-old Weissenborn lap steel guitar that guides this healing journey. The songs are filled with joy and despair, reconciliation and ruminations. At their core is a message of love and hope.
Amplify chatted with Burnstick, via Zoom, mid-morning on the summer solstice. From their home studio in St. Claude, Man., where Nadia notes “some of the magic happens,” the couple shared the inspiration behind a few songs from Made of Sin, how this album was their first true collaboration, and how music helps heal.
The title track, “Made of Sin,” is a heavy place to begin, but it’s so poignant and powerful. As a Sixties Scoop survivor, listeners journey with you as you find healing and understanding of your own childhood trauma. Why did you feel the need to write this song, Jason?
Jason: Honestly, I don’t ever want to write songs like that. I don’t even want to think about it or talk about it, but sometimes it hits you so hard you have to. You have to acknowledge it and process it all over again. That song was the first one that came to this project and came out of the 215 [unmarked graves of Indigenous children discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in 2021]. That news was disturbing and profoundly affected me. Since then 11,000 more graves have been discovered. As artists, we often process our feelings through our art and through our music. This is therapeutic. I just felt I had to say something, write something, and do something because I carried that heavy feeling around for a long time after I heard about all these unmarked graves and I could not shake it.
Did writing this song help you come to terms with this trauma?
Jason: Some people think you’ve moved through it and you are okay now, but that is far from the truth. It’s a lifelong battle. Talking about stuff that happened when you are little when you are an adult, you have to process it constantly. Life now is amazing. I have a great son, beautiful wife, and we get to make music together and talk about stuff that we are feeling and that is what matters.
Nadia, talk about your songwriting process and the challenges of writing with someone you love?
Nadia: We know each other so well that we always know when what we’ve written is true or we feel something from it. If I present a song idea to Jason or he presents something to me, it always feels right or wrong immediately. We constantly push each other to make art that is real and true to us. Music has been a part of our relationship ever since we met. But Burnstick is a different thing. Even on our first album, I brought my songs, Jason brought his, and then we put them together.
So Made of Sin was much more collaborative than the first Burnstick record?
Nadia: Definitely. We worked on a lot of the songs together, which was challenging because we come from different musical backgrounds and different ways of writing songs, but we pushed each other so hard I feel like we got the best out of each song just by working on them together. I have my own studio on the other side of the house and I sometimes write there and then come to Jason’s studio and we bash ideas out together.
Time is a theme artists return to often. You explore this idea in “Hand’s Tied.” What was the inspiration behind this song?”
Nadia: It’s about the fleeting nature of time and also a nod to Jason’s mother, who is no longer with us. She told me a story the first time we met that I’ll never forget. It’s not the story that is important, but the fact she was a storyteller and that she is no longer with us. We both miss her dearly and one way to remember her and share her memory with our son is by telling her stories. Jason started that song and came to me with the melody and lyrics and I added to it. It all comes back to not taking for granted every single moment we have with the people we love because time goes by really really fast and you don’t realize this until those people you love dearly are no gone.
Talk about the cover image, the album artwork, and the black and white photographs that correspond with each song. It’s such a beautiful curated package that is so much more than your typical liner notes.
Nadia: Gabrielle Touchette took the cover image of hands tied together facing outward. The meaning is that we are all connected, but those relationships can be really hard. That image worked so well and was so impactful, I felt that it looked like the cover of a photography book, so I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have a photo attached to each song that emphasizes the story that song is telling.
Jason and I thought of — and curated — all the images; then, I took the photos and we put them all together in a booklet. Each song features the song lyrics with a photograph beside it. The final photo at the end of the album is of a pair of hands, untied and intertwined. Following the whole album of stories this represents the progress we’ve made — or want to make — to better understand each other.
Jason, with all of the efforts made in Canada towards reconciliation with Orange Shirt Day and so many Indigenous artists now sharing their music and stories, do you feel we are making progress?
Jason: If you asked me as a kid whether I would ever get a chance to be a part of the JUNOS, and see my music celebrated on TV networks and other media, that would have been an unrealistic dream. I never saw a lot of other Indigenous people on TV growing up. Now, there are so many Indigenous artists out there and the artistry is incredible. Just to be amongst them as peers is such an honour.
Have I seen things change? Sure. For the better? Sure. Do we still have a ways to go? Yes. But it feels like there is a shift and I do hope it’s for the better. I remember when we had Orange Shirt Day in our area last fall as part of this reconciliation and it brought back all of those feelings of trauma I had as a kid. But driving through Portage la Prairie and seeing everybody — not just indigenous families — wearing an orange shirt, it really warmed my heart. It feels like we are going in a good direction.
