After living in Nashville for the past nine years, Canadian singer Mandy McMillan says she’s acquired a hybrid accent: “I say ‘eh’ and ‘y’all’ in the same sentence.”
McMillan grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, where her mother says she started humming along with the radio before she could talk. Soon she was singing with her two sisters in local Christmas concerts, which led to singing the anthem at the hometown rodeo and other opportunities to perform.
Her break came when she entered a singing competition in Edmonton. She arrived, not sure what was involved, but when she got in the lineup and saw cameras all around, she realized it might be more than she expected. The contestants had to choose from three songs for females and three for males.
“When I saw one of them was Alison Krauss’s ‘When You Say Nothing at All,’ I thought for a hot second, ‘This is a little unfair because this is the first song I ever learned to play on the piano and the first song I learned to sing in my vocal lessons,” says Mandy. She won the local competition and went on to Toronto for the finale, where she made connections with people from CMT Canada, which led her to make her move to Nashville.
Mandy worked her way through the process of getting her work visa and focused for the first couple of years on songwriting and recording. Before long, she started performing in venues downtown on Broadway, playing big shows as well as house concerts and corporate functions, and touring around the state.
McMillan had already been writing songs for years, but her first co-write came when she got to Nashville.
“That was a whole new world to me,” says McMillan. “I appreciate my journey. I got to write songs by myself for twenty-something years to create my sound and figure out what I love, but it was great to write in Nashville with professional songwriters and get a taste of taking my songs to another level, finding out how to do more with them.”
One of her favorite co-writers Andrew Beason has also become one of her best friends. Beason is co-writer on her latest single “Dream Catcher,” the title track from her upcoming CD. She says the Texas native who now makes his home in Nashville is a phenomenal guitarist, great at melodies, “and he beat boxes, which creates a cool groove.”
The idea behind “Dream Catcher” has a long history for McMillan. She says growing up she learned a lot about Native American culture and started making dream catchers when she was a little girl and selling them at festivals.
“About two years ago,” she explains, “ I was setting up some of my dream catchers at a festival and it hit me: This is more than just a dream catcher. I’m out here catching my dream.” She took the idea to Beason and “it just came to life,” she says.
The song alludes to time she spent before moving to Nashville, working as a waitress and a hair stylist to make enough money to move to Nashville to pursue her dream. “This song is a progression of not giving up, believing in yourself, that you’re the one that can make your dreams happen, so this song means a lot to me,” says McMillan.
In “Dream Catcher,” as she sings of “cleaning up dishes”:
in her head she’s hoping
and in her heart she knows
it won’t be long
She won’t give up on
everything her soul desires. . . .
She and Beason wrote the song, she says, “and I was in love with it, but the only part that didn’t sit with me was the original bridge.” One morning while doing her meditation, she says, “all of a sudden I had a download of the bridge. I grabbed my journal and wrote what was coming to me: I know this girl she’s got a dream she’s gonna catch it . . . .”
The new bridge had a “rappy” sound, leading some people to question whether she should include it in the song, but she says, “I feel like it came from above, like it was meant to be.” She kept it.
What results is a fun, uplifting song with a country pop vibe. McMilllan filmed the video for “Dream Catcher” in Phoenix after traveling there for a photo shoot last year. She realized she’d been in that same location on a photography trip when she was in grade 12.
“It was like it was calling me back, so it was natural to go there and film the music video,” says Mandy. “I feel like that’s where my spirit lives.” In the video, she sports a custom jacket with “She’s a little dream catcher” embroidered up the arm. She calls it “another blessing.” She won the jacket in an Instagram giveaway from the Nashville company Strange Ranger. As she discussed possibilities with the designer, the woman suggested pulling from one of Mandy’s songs. “Dream Catcher” was the ideal choice. Now Mandy looks forward to wearing the jacket out and about when live performances start back up.
While many Nashville performers have turned to social media during the quarantine, McMillan has been using a variety of online platforms all along. Recently on her Dream Catcher blog, she shared the series “Thirty Days of Dream Catchers,” which she says gave her a spark for creating more blog content.
She also collaborates with Carli Kahl on a Dream Catcher podcast as well, “interviewing people who are catching their dreams, highlighting them and giving a voice to people all over, in all industries about their passion and dreams,” explains McMillan. They have heard from people all over the world who say the podcast has been an inspiration.
The collaboration has a feel similar to songwriting, she says. Kahl started helping her with some of her music projects, on the road and behind the scenes. McMillan has learned that Kahl has a strong creative side, and working on the podcast has piqued Mandy’s business mind. She says, “We get to meet in the middle. . . . She brings the fun, funky wildness, and I bring the creative Bohemian spiritual vibe.”
This summer McMillan remains creative while promoting the single from the upcoming CD, which she finished recording in 2019. The first single “Chasin’ the Ace” was released a little over a year ago, and the next single is set for release soon.
The pandemic has given her more time with her guitar too. During the pandemic, she’s living in her parents’ camping trailer, playing a lot and writing songs on her own without much opportunity for collaboration. She says that in addition to new songs she’s writing, she has even pulled out some songs she wrote in the past, dusted them off, and reevaluated them. “I’m sitting here looking at a list of ten more songs,” she says.
Mandy McMillan is enjoying plenty of time for dreaming. Although she jokes about her “nosy neighbors”–her parents–knocking on her door, she treasures the time with her family. One sister who usually spends half the year in Germany where her husband plays professional hockey is closer to home now with her first baby; her other sister who lives nearby has a baby due any day now. McMillan makes the most of time “sheltering at home.”
Even though 2020 has had a “weird vibe,” she says she tries to keep a positive outlook, focusing on what she wants out of her music career. She plans to write more spiritual, uplifting songs. One of her dreams put on hold by the pandemic was to create her own festival in the Edmonton area, not just a country music festival, but one that “involves positive vibes, uplifting spirits, and different cultures.”
And since she is set on catching her dreams, fans can bet that Mandy McMillan won’t quit until she realizes them.
https://www.mandymcmillan.com