Canadian singer has been set to perform at Black Deer In The City festival at Tobacco Dock before its shock cancellation
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**This interview with Frazey Ford was conducted before the cancellation of Black Deer In The City festival, which will now not go ahead at Tobacco Dock on October 25-26. All those who bought tickets should contact the organisers for a refund**
“My mum sang all the time when I was a little kid,” said singer and songwriter Frazey Ford.
“She sang harmony so she got me to sing melody, probably from when I was three years old.
“Music was just part of life growing up in Canada.
“When I was a bit older, I went through a difficult period and it was the only thing that kept me tethered to the world.
“That was when I committed to playing and singing more intentionally.
“From my early adult life I had groups including an Al Green cover band.
“The Be Good Tanyas was one of the six or seven bands I had in my 20s and that one randomly took off.”
Having met on the tree planting trail, Frazey teamed up with Samantha Parton and Trish Klein to release three albums of gothic, folksy Americana in the noughties.
“I was planting cedar, fir and pine,” said Frazey.
“If you grew up in this part of the world, tree planting is hard labour in the forest. It’s kind of like a cult, an alternative lifestyle.
“You work hard for a couple of months, then you go to school or go travelling. It was a great way to get exposed to different things when I did it in the late 1990s.
“As a young person growing up in the mountains in a small community there were a lot of musicians but it was before social media and I didn’t know I could potentially make a living playing and singing.
“That wasn’t my plan. I just intended to find a job that would enable be to do art on the side – I knew I needed to write and play for my own wellbeing.
“It was a surprise when a band I was in took off, because it wasn’t what I had planned for at all.”
Frazey Ford: solo artist
Frazey has continued to find success as a solo artist.
Heading in a more soulful direction in 2010, she released the album Obadiah – her middle name, chosen by her brothers in honour of a pet cat who’d run away – following up with Indian Ocean in 2014 and U Kin B The Sun in 2020.
Ahead of her London show, it’s the second of these two records that demands most attention, following the decision to release an Indian Ocean Deluxe Edition on vinyl and digital last month, a decade on from its creation.
In celebration, three unreleased covers from the same sessions are also getting a public airing.
For Frazey, it’s an opportunity to look back on a “strange, scary and surreal” time where she got to make music with some of her heroes.
“For me, bands and projects are all about different sides of myself,” she said.
“The stuff I wrote for the Be Good Tanyas is not very different from my solo work – it’s just the instrumentation that changes.
“My parents were hippies so there was a lot of folk music around, but I also had a deep love of soul.
“When I moved away from the band, I spent more time exploring how to marry country and soul.
“More recently I’m influenced by funk.
“Sometimes things evolve and you don’t know what direction you’re going in.
“For Indian Ocean, a filmmaker and writer, Robert Gordon, reached out to me from Memphis.”
recording in Memphis
At that time, Robert was working on a documentary on Memphis soul, which focused on Al Green and long-time producer Willie Mitchell’s creative home base, Royal Studios.
“Robert had heard a song from Obadiah on the radio and recognised I was heading more towards soul and he emailed me to say he could set up a recording session with Al Green’s Hi-Rhythm Section – the musicians who played and co-wrote those songs I once covered,” said Frazey.
“I’ve always been obsessed with the sounds on those 1970s soul records.
“It’s the intimacy and sensitivity – the arrangements of the bands.
“You can hear everything separately but it’s all together at the same time.
“For the sessions, I didn’t just want it to be me with their sound – I wanted it to be a mid-point between the way I tell a story and the way they do.
“Indian Ocean was born of that collaboration and I felt we married the sounds together – it was such an interesting experience for everyone.
“It was so strange, scary and surreal – it took me a while to feel comfortable, but they were so kind and welcoming.
“They said they had always wanted to collaborate with a country-folk musician – something they hadn’t had the opportunity to do before.”
Recorded at Royal Studios with brothers Charles Hodges on organ, Leroy Hodges on bass and Teenie Hodges on guitar – the architects of Al Green’s sound – the sessions yielded more than just the songs on the original release of Indian Ocean.
“It was wild to be with them – overwhelming and magical,” said Frazey.
“Whatever I brought to them, they responded with a lot of emotional feeling.
“I always record more than I release, and Indian Ocean was a career-defining album, so somebody suggested I do a 10-year anniversary release.
“I was poking around and found tracks that hadn’t been released, so I thought we should put out these B-sides as part of that project.
“I don’t release a lot of covers or love songs but this is a triptych – a nice little package from that era.
“About six weeks after the recording sessions, Teenie – who co-wrote Love And Happiness, one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard and the reason I became obsessed with Al Green and his band – passed away.
“For this project, it was really special to go back to some of the memories of that time and to edit his parts and put out some more of his work posthumously.”
a trio of covers
The three bonus tracks listeners can now enjoy are covers of Otis Redding’s The Happy Song (Dum-Dum), Van Morrison’s Crazy Love and Ann Peebles’ Trouble, Heartache And Sadness.
“Teenie loved our version of Happy Song in particular,” said Frazey.
“That’s a big part of why I’m including these.
“It felt like I had his ghost on my shoulder saying: ‘You gotta put these tracks out’. It feels like we’re honouring him.
“I’ve been in the industry since the early 2000s, and it’s just got weirder and worse the whole time.
“It’s always been perilous and a potentially bad decision as a career no matter what, but you’ve chosen that path.
“I’m fine, I’m living a great life and getting to do what I love to do, so I don’t spend much time worrying about it.
“I ran into a friend recently and she was performing this beautiful show in a small cafe and she said that music is just music regardless, and we’re out there making art, because that’s what we do, and we’re going to do it no matter what happens.
“There might be all kinds of bullshit, but we’re still going to create things.
“Now I’m at a riper age, I get interested in other bands and young talent.
“I’ve started producing and want to help people. I’m a mum and I tend to mother these young artists.
“There are really cute scenes with funky performers – 20-somethings – starting it all over again, and that’s inspiring.”
Frazey Ford’s Indian Ocean Deluxe Edition is out now on vinyl and digital via Nettwerk.
The three bonus tracks are only available as digital downloads.
key details: Black Deer In The City
Black Deer In The City at Tobacco Dock in Wapping, which Frazey had been due to perform at, was cancelled on October 1, 2025, after the last issue of Wharf Life went to press.
You can find out more about Frazey Ford here
Read more: Cody Dock becomes a keeper of the River Lea’s stories
Read Wharf Life’s e-edition here
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