Review Fix Exclusive: Running Red Lights’ Scarlett Talks ‘Song of Blue’ And More

Review Fix chats with Running Red Lights’ Matt Carson, who details the creative process behind their new track, “Song of Blue,” as well as their goals for the future.

Review Fix: How did you get involved in music?

Scarlett: Me and music go back. WAY back. My dad had a fair sized collection of 45’s. Two songs a side. I remember the artist labels, in mellow yellows and oranges, black standard font, ‘Dion and the Belmonts,’ ‘Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons,’ ‘Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers,’ ‘The Platters,’The Monotones,’ ‘Jan and Dean,’ ‘The Beach Boys’ etc. Doo-wop mostly. I also worshipped Elvis. My mother sang and played. She performed in church, weddings, funerals, festivals and jamborees. I started joining her on background vocals harmony around 5 or 6. We sang the Oak Ridge Boys, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Eddie Rabbit, Johnny Cash, Tanya Tucker, The Carter Family, Randy Travis, John Denver, Charly McCain, George Jones, Shenandoah, Marie Osmond, Alabama, Elvis Presley, Barbara Mandrell. We sang ‘Dream a Little Dream,’ ‘The Rose’ and Rainbow Connection’, ‘He’ and ‘How Great thou Art’. Together we would sit cross-legged in front of the tape deck listening to her latest favorites in Country music. She would cue me to pause after each phrase so she could transcribe the words to paper. She had a towering collection of binders all full of hand written lyrics. By 13 I had discovered Simon and Garfunkel, Janis Ian, Jim Croce, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac. I was unknowingly studying the craft of songwriting. In University I had a chance encounter with a record executive at a karaoke bar and he convinced me to try my hand at songwriting. The following day I purchase my first guitar and within a year I was leaving University, moving to Toronto and signed my first publishing deal with ole publishing.

Review Fix: What are your influences?

Scarlett: In terms of songwriting there is generally always a literary catalyst of some kind with novels and poetry influencing and inspiring the work of Running Red Lights as equally as songs and songwriters.

Sparks come from a wide scope of influences including Joni Mitchell, Ryan Adams, Jim Croce, Charles Bukowski, Sylvia Plath, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, D’Angelo, Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon, John Mayer, Harry Nilsson, Dolly Parton, Carole King, Andy Shauf, Janis Ian, Leif Vollebekk, Michael
Jackson….and so forth.

Review Fix: What is your stand-out track on this album? How was it written?

Scarlett: That’s a tough question. Stylistically the music is so varied it’s tough to select one song in particular.

The catalyst for the entire album was a song called ‘Isadora’. The inspiration came from a novel I was reading by Stefan Merrill Block called ‘The Story of Forgetting’. There were three narratives interwoven, one of which describe an Arcadian type parallel universe called ‘Isidora’. The whimsy, idyllic depiction of ‘Isidora’ made an impression on me. The song itself began as a lullaby on acoustic guitar. Thereafter I brought the bones of it to the band and it quickly evolved into what I consider to be one of our masterpieces.

Review Fix: What makes your brand of music special?

Scarlett: It is a collection of our own unique perspectives and stories. Though our experiences may not be unique in terms of their unlikeness to everybody else’s experiences, the frames in which we are looking at them through and the voices which we are using to share them, are ours and ours alone.

Review Fix: How was “Song of Blue” written?

Scarlett: The original version of ‘Songs of Blue’ had been sitting in a hard drive for a few years. My memory does not serve me well and I can’t recall the precise details of the writing process at that time. However as we were accumulating songs for this album we started to review and consider old demos. We sent the the track, along with a few others, to our producer, Robyn Dell Unto. ‘Songs of Blue’ was her pick. Ultimately, under the direction of our producer, the song was totally deconstructed with only the original chorus remaining intact. The entire process of re-writing and recording was done in a day. The session began on an old, out of tune piano that had long been left untouched in the living room at our producers house. We furiously threw verse lines and melodies back and forth until pieces started to assemble. Robyn Dell Unto, our producer, is brilliant and she immediately had a vision for the song which made the execution fairly effortless.

Review Fix: What is your biggest strength as a musician?

Scarlett: That I am technologically improficient. Meaning I have no formal music training. I can’t read music nor am I a superb instrumentalist. This may sound like a weakness, however, I believe that it is my greatest asset. I am not encumbered or concerned with whether the choices I am making are vocationally correct. I am free to be creative without the limitations that training can sometimes impose.

Review Fix: Why do you think people should enjoy it?

Scarlett: Enjoyment is not necessarily the singular emotion that I as an artist would like to elicit. Any reaction is a good reaction. I really just want people to feel that I am genuine, to know that I am accessible. Relatable. That I am not a musical whiz with years of professional instruction. I’m simply a person with stories to tell like everyone else and I’m just trying to tell them the best way I know how.

Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?

Scarlett: Ideally we would love our music to productively strengthen and transform the consciousness of the entire world. On a diminutive level I think every human has this capacity.  However, it’s best to focus on the individual, as that seems more tangible and achievable. If we can deepen our human connection to just one person by sharing ourselves and our stories via music, then I feel this is as much as an artist should hope to achieve. Furthermore it is not how people are affected that is necessarily our concern, as that is not within our control, but rather IF they are affected at all.

Review Fix: What makes this album different from your previous work?

Scarlett: This album is drastically different. Stylistically it reaches a lot further into Pop, R & B and soul. It is really a songwriters album. Each song is its own character. This is in part because we had a number of producers featured on the album and each producer brought their own unique spirit.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2018?

Scarlett: I often feel like I am flying by the seat of my pants. The music industry landscape is ever-changing and I’m simply trying to keep up. It’s a challenge to know what to focus upon. I would like to see the band get some sync and TV placements this year. Recording and marketing is an expensive endeavour so it would be nice to get some return on investment. Otherwise we’re taking it one day at a time.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Scarlett: Essentially we are focused on rolling out a couple more singles prior to the release of the full-length album. Thereafter we will try to work the album as hard as possible over the next year. Currently we have a weekly residency at the legendary Cameron House every Monday in July. We are headed to Nashville in August to pursue some songwriting collaborations. A UK tour is a possibility as well, depending on the timing of the album release.

Also currently we are getting ready to release a remix of the single that we did in collaboration with a Toronto electronic artist.