Persistence brought the members of Canadian country trio Runaway Angel together initially in 2013, and a decade later, after major life changes, persistence kept brought them back together. Newly signed with Reve records, they have a new single “Beach Please” released just in time for summer listening. Cadence Grace and Ann Chaplin credit Stacey Zegers’s tenacity with bringing together the trio who were all working as solo artists.
Stacey said, “I was a busy solo artist, but I wasn’t loving being alone on the road and on the stage anymore and had a gut feeling this would be a great thing to do.” She said she knew Cadence, respected her as a writer, and had a vision of forming a trio with her as lead singer. Cadence knew Ann and believed she would be the perfect third person. The three met at Stacey’s sister’s farm and wrote well together and decided to move forward with plans.
Ann and Cadence had both released solo albums. When they formed the band, the division of responsibilities also worked out easily. Ann and Stacey both play guitar and had no question that Cadence would sing lead while they filled in the background vocals and instrumentals.
“Cadence had such a unique tone we didn’t hear anywhere else,” Ann said, “Like the Dixie Chicks, when you hear Natalie’s distinctive voice, you know it’s them. We felt Cadence had the perfect voice for people to hear us and think, ‘That’s Runaway Angel.’”
Growing up, Cadence and Stacey were influenced by female country artists. Cadence said, “I’m the biggest diehard Reba fan. I grew up listening to Reba and Wynonna, Pam Tillis, and just loved late 80s and 90s country–and obviously Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain, Taylor Swift, and all the people that came after that, but my foundations was definitely the ladies of country.”
Stacey too cited the influence of the Chicks, as well as Deanna Carter and added, “I love really well written songs by female artists. I have a ton of respect for them in general.”
Ann came to country music later, she said, because her parents didn’t listen to it, but after she got her driver’s license, the only radio station played country music.
“I fell in love with it,” she said, “and never turned back.”
During their first few years together, Runaway Angel worked hard as independent artists, including touring Canada and Europe. The year before they were forced to take a break, they played ten to fifteen festivals on great stages. In 2016, they were CCMA Discovery Artist nominees, and earned seven CMA Ontario nominations for two albums – No End in Sight and Zero.
“It’s incredibly hard for independent artists to get traction, so we were busy doing music very passionately,” said Stacey, “but independent artists pay for everything ourselves. We all had jobs as waitresses and bartenders.”
Cadence added, “You’ve got to do it because you love it. As much as it sucks working our tails off for so many years literally to pay all our bills, it was worth all of that because we got to do what we loved.”
The trio found one of their strengths was their songwriting dynamic. Cadence said, “We all have different writing backgrounds, so we each bring something unique to the table. When the three of us get together, it always takes our songs to a totally different place than we would go alone.”
Ann said the group learned how to communicate in the writing room. “We know when somebody’s passionate about something to let them explore a thought. And we learned to feel each other out, to understand each other’s moments and each other’s strengths.”
Cadence said the other two members of the trio have helped her to balance what she calls her commercial tendencies. “These guys have pulled me out of the box so many times, and I love what we come up with every time they do that.”
In 2018, while Cadence was preparing to travel for yoga training, her physical exam resulted in a diagnosis of leukemia. She saw the results and starting Googling before the doctor called her to come back into her office to discuss the results of her blood test, scheduling the visit for the next morning. Even without an official diagnosis, Cadence called the other two members of the band immediately. They went to Stacey’s house for a girls’ night where, Ann said, they drank wine, laughed, and tried to take Cadence’s mind off her diagnosis.
Once she got the official diagnosis, Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, the group unanimously chose to put their band on hold. During that time, they wrote both separately and together and pitched songs from their catalog for film and television, but Stacey said they certainly were not pursuing their musical career as Runaway Angel.
Unable to perform together, even before COVID hit, they had to consider alternate plans, even how to pay bills. Ann and Cadence both said they could not even listen to music for at least a year. “I would drive six hours north to visit my parents and not even listen to music,” Ann said. “Music just wasn’t a part of my life until a couple years later.”
Cadence said, “I think it was the collective feeling of grief that our careers were likely ending when everything went on hold and the uncertainty not knowing if we were ever going to make music again. I felt the grief of losing something that was so important to me. I couldn’t even listen to music. I had to disconnect myself from the music community those first few months and focus on my health. It was so hard to watch everybody keep going and not be a part of it.”
During the interim, Stacey had two children, and Ann went back to school to study non-destructive testing and quality engineering. Cadence turned her focus to informing the public about the form of leukemia she was fighting, maintaining a blog called “Love and Leukemia,” chronicling her experiences, including the bone marrow transplant that saved her life.
Cadence learned about the age limits for joining the bone marrow registry: a person must be no older than 35 to join the registry and can stay on it only until 55. So many people she knew were close to that window. When tested as potential donors, her sister and parents were only half matches, but they found two matches in the in the database, picked the strongest one and got lucky.
She said, “I would love to help more people understand that being a stem cell donor is such a painless process now that they have advanced technology, so they don’t have to take it right out of your hip bone. It takes a day and then you’re back at work the next day. Anybody can do it, and anybody should do it.” She added that the number of blood cancers now are increasing. “We really don’t understand why it’s happening, but we’re going to need more donors, so I want to continue to bring attention to the need.”
For the members of Runaway Angel, the decision to reunite took time. Stacey had just had her second baby when Cadence first approached them at the beginning of 2022. Cadence said she was “waiting for the universe to tell me to do something else with my life after cancer, and that call never came.”
Her parents encouraged her to try writing music again, so she bought some recording equipment and started playing around with it. Then she and her parents co-wrote a song she liked. “I went to the girls and said, “Are we getting back together because if we’re not, I really want to put out some music.” They were not ready yet but gave her their blessing to do her own music for a while.
“I put out that song and played some shows last year, but it was super weird,” Cadence said. “It was the first time I’d played a show without these guys in almost 10 years and it felt very strange. I just kept thinking the whole summer, ‘When is this going to feel normal?’”
At the end of the summer, when she played a gig at a theater in Ottawa, it was the first time that she felt she could do this alone. A week later, however, she was approached by Tommy K.W. Lam from REVE Music, telling her he wanted to sign the group if they were getting back together. She called Ann and Stacey, and they were ready to give it a go.
Stacey said, “We didn’t necessarily have a timeline when we got back together, but we wrote “Beach Please” in January on a trip to Nashville with Kate Malone. It was our favorite song, and we wanted to release it for spring so it would be in people’s heads for summer.”
Ann noted that their back catalog includes a lot of songs they love that don’t necessarily fit radio parameters, but that matters less now. They are thinking about the possibility of an album project down the road, she said, “but right now we’re just taking it day by day and just enjoying playing music again.”
Cadence said that even with all they’ve been through during their long break—kids, changing careers, cancer, and COVID—when they went to Nashville to write together again for the first time, instead of the “groundbreaking, emotional songs” about all they’d been through, they wrote some lighthearted songs. “We went through a lot, and maybe one day we will write music that will touch on those things, but for now, we want to celebrate being back together, creating, and finding joy in that again.”
For now, Runaway Angel has some songwriting showcases scheduled for June, and they will play the all-female Harmoniafest in August. Maybe they’ll be able to work in a little “Beach Please.”
