33 Songbird

TESS JAINE

Singer/songwriter Jacquie Walters has released her fourth album The Forest, a confessional-style folk album.

Songbird

Singing and performing has played a major part in Jacquie Walter’s life and her new album takes a look back at that life with the album touching on gratitude, grief and wry reflections on her personal dating experiences. Adrienne Matthews finds out more.

Jacquie Walters is one of those people who oozes honesty and integrity and her fourth and latest solo album is a kaleidoscope of ballads that shows this yet again. Its inspiration is the torrid internet dating fiascos she has experienced throughout the last few years, grief from her family’s loss of a loved one and gratitude for the opportunity to live in a paradise like the Nelson region. In essence it is about love; the search for it, the irony of it and the breadth of feelings and emotions it engenders.

Writing songs has been in Jacquie’s blood for over thirty years during which time she has been turning all manner of life experiences into exceptional songs which she has performed throughout New Zealand and overseas. As a student of Linwood College, Christchurch, Jacquie received a scholarship to study at the United World College of the Atlantic in South Wales for two years. “This was an opportunity of a lifetime and where I discovered my singing voice,” she says.

Back in New Zealand she achieved a university degree before her love of Shakespeare led her back to the UK to complete an MA at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Embarking on a career in writing and communication on her return, music was never very far off her radar and she was a founding member of the group “Pounamu” in the early 1990s with Ariana Tikao and Leigh Taiwhiti. She and Ariana

went on to record two albums, making regular appearances on television and around New Zealand. In 1996 the duo was auspiciously chosen to represent the Body Shop’s petition against nuclear testing to the French presidential palace before performing at venues throughout Europe.

In 2012 Jacquie established Walters PR. Winning a national award for her public relations work for the University of Canterbury after the 2011 earthquake gave her the confidence to start her own business in Nelson after moving to the city with her two children as a single mother. Jacquie’s passion for helping others in an ethical way is central to the way she runs her business. “It matters to me that I have the opportunity to work with good people who are seeking to make a difference, solve challenges for others, or improve our community or environment.” The people she has met during the last ten years and the life happenings here have spawned the songs that populate Jacquie’s last two solo albums. “The latest, ‘The Forest’, is a confessional album,” she says. “It is a wry commentary on unsuccessful dating. It is about ordinary life and the small details within it. The older I get, the more I understand the universality of our experiences of love and loss. I hope this album will bring some healing to others as it has to me.” The album’s name was inspired by the grief she and her family felt when her ex-husband passed away from cancer, complicated by early-onset Dementia. “We took our grief to

The older I get, the more I understand the universality of our experiences of love and loss. I hope this album will bring some healing to others as it has to me.

the forest and sang it to the trees,” she says, “letting the power of nature be part of our healing.” The song ‘Breadcrumbs’ is a poignant commentary on the Hansel and Gretel story. “The birds eating the breadcrumbs symbolise the memories of someone with the disease disappearing, piece by piece.” There are some songs that will highly entertain such as ‘New World.’ “It tells the story of running into an ex at the supermarket and is probably the only song on earth that includes the words ‘I focus on our list of perishables’,” laughs Jacquie. “Culloden” comes from her experience visiting the Scottish battlefield where 1300 young lives were lost. “They weren’t much older than my own children,” she says, while ‘Whakatu’ is a song Jacquie gifted to the Nikau Hauora Hub, a community mental health hub, written in response to the 2020 ‘We’ve Got This’ campaign. It is about the healing power of place. Jacquie’s voice is rich, expressive and of international quality. Her warmth and humanity shines through every note and her guitar playing is sublime. Bass and guitar maestro James Wilkinson produced this album as he did two of her previous ones, performing on it as well. Maria Oxnam also puts in an appearance on the harp. “I have really enjoyed this project,” says Jacquie. “I want to unlock people’s hearts through my music. That’s why I do it. There are songs on here that will make people laugh and others that will make them cry. I write to process my feelings and am happy that I can share them in this way. Hopefully listeners will find a resonance that will uplift them.” The hardest thing was figuring out how to share it now that CDs are rarely purchased anymore and streaming is the preferred option of so many music listeners. “I feel sad that for the first time there is no physical album,” says Jacquie. “There are no liner notes, no artwork, none of the tangible side of music that I love.” The album will be available on Bandcamp and at only ten dollars it is an extraordinary gift. Gifts are what Jacquie Walters is about. “Essentially it’s a gift to the community,” she says. “I certainly won’t make any money from it but hope that as many people as possible will find something of value in it.”

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