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When acclaimed Vancouver singer-songwriters Haley Blais and Sam Lynch threw up a posting on Eventbrite for a date at the WISE Hall in February, fans of the two were excited and curious.
Blais and Lynch have accomplished solo careers, with two albums to each of their names. And, if you grouped their fans in a Venn diagram, it would likely be a circle.
The pair are both based in Vancouver, they’re both introspective songwriters with tons of acoustic talent and big voices, and they both have a penchant for being able to do soft ballads and fiery numbers. They’ve even opened for each other on tour.
In the fall of 2024, the two decided to get together and write a song.
“We were like, ‘That was fun. Interesting.’ And then we wrote another one,” says Lynch, sitting beside Blais in the WISE Hall’s green room before their first show. “And I feel like we were both kind of side-eyeing each other, being like, ‘Who’s going to take this song?’ ”
Adds Blais: “Yeah… nice songs there. Where are they going? And so we kind of silently just put them in a little pile. We haven’t signed anything; I could take all of this and run.”
Last year the duo took a writing trip to L.A. to work on their solo projects.
“We each had these writing sessions,” Lynch recalls, “and we would come home at the end of the day and talk to each other about how they went. At the end of it, we were like, ‘We probably should have just been writing together.’ ”
The week after, they came back to Vancouver and did just that.
“We really looked at it as an opportunity to try things a little bit differently, and to really push ourselves,” Lynch says. “We knew we wanted to do it all ourselves and play as many instruments as possible.”
The duo acknowledges that they had a couple people sub in on instruments like the violin, but most of it, including drums and harmonium (pump organ), is just them.
“I learned so much,” Blais says. “I usually freelance people to do all the grunt work—they’re better musicians than me, so why use myself? But I think that having this outlet to just push myself… the point wasn’t perfection, it was doing it together.”
As a pair, Blais and Lynch adopted the name True Mountain Laurel, and that’s what their debut album—currently scheduled to come out in the late summer—is likely to be called. The name comes from a tree that, somehow, smells like grape soda.
“Mountain Laurel is a plant that we discovered while we were on tour together and we both love scents, we love fragrance,” Blais says. “We’re the true version of the truest, most delicious-smelling tree.”
TML, as the duo affectionately call themselves, has so far produced seven songs, from the heartbreaking “East of Anything, Sunny” to the haunting “Bury Me Not”.
When asked if there’s any song that particularly represents the album, Blais and Lynch count to three and offer, at the same time, the cutting “Angel So Bad”.
And while the combined effort doesn’t stray far from the individual artists’ sound, there is an element of freedom in both of their voices—a notion that nothing has to be flawless and that the harmonies that they hit together are greater than the sum of their parts.
Both Lynch and Blais note that they won’t be releasing solo records until at least next year. It’s possible that TML will be looked at as a momentary blip in their careers when they are all said and done, but even a short-lived project has the potential to reinvigorate the friends’ solo careers.
“The question was, ‘Do we sort of fade into oblivion for a year and keep posting bullshit on TikTok to keep the socials engaged?’ ” Lynch asks. “Or do we just, like, make a record that we’re really proud of as quick as we can and just have fun with it and put that out, and have that be the thing that we’re using to reignite the juices?”
TML’s first show was a sold-out affair. Nathan Caddell
In addition to the WISE Hall show, TML played two shows in Toronto at the end of February. They are also booked for Music BC’s SoMa Fest, which takes place at multiple venues in Mount Pleasant on March 20 and 21.
An hour after the interview, the WISE Hall was packed to the brim with fans clamouring to get a look at TML. Lines stretched across the venue at the merch table, with two items available: blue and yellow shirts with “I was at the first True Mountain Laurel show” emblazoned on them.
How many more there will be is unclear—but hopefully they will all be as sweet as grape soda.
True Mountain Laurel plays the Anza Club on March 21 as part of SoMa Fest.