When a Handsaw Became the Lead Instrument on a Folk Album

The first thing you notice about June Ashby's new record is not a voice or a drum kit, but a thin, silver hum that seems to float above the room. The sound comes from a standard carpenter's saw, held between her knees and stroked with a bow. Ashby, a folk musician based in rural Quebec, spent the better part of two years teaching herself the instrument, and the result is an album that feels like a quiet conversation between wood, metal, and throat.

When Lady Indie caught up with Ashby ahead of her first Australian visit, she was still getting used to how the record was being received. "I kept waiting for someone to tell me it was a gimmick," she said, sitting in a small Montreal studio with afternoon light pouring through the windows. "Instead, people have been writing about the saw as if it were just another voice in the room. That is exactly what I wanted."

Ashby's path to the saw was not planned. She had been writing songs on guitar for nearly a decade, releasing two critically liked EPs and playing the festival circuit across eastern Canada. The shift happened after a friend played her a recording of a 1920s blues singer who used the instrument on a single track. She was transfixed by the way the saw seemed to hover between melody and weather, and she knew almost immediately that she had to learn.

Discovering the Saw in a Carpenter's Workshop

The story of how Ashby first held a saw in her hands is almost too literal. She borrowed the tool from a neighbour who built wooden boats on the edge of the St Lawrence River. The neighbour handed her a fine-toothed model and a violin bow, told her to bend the blade slightly, and walked back to his workshop. "He didn't make it sound romantic at all," she laughed. "He made it sound like something you could just pick up and try."

That casual attitude turned out to be the permission she needed. Within weeks, Ashby had purchased her own saw from a hardware store in Trois-Rivières and was practising on the wooden porch of her family home. She learned through trial and error, watching old clips online and listening to archival recordings of saw players from Appalachian and Scandinavian traditions. There were no local teachers in her part of Quebec, so she treated the learning process like a private apprenticeship.

The saw's appeal, she explained, came from its fragility. A guitar is forgiving. A saw, by contrast, reveals every mistake. A hand that shakes shows up as a wobble in the note. A breath held too long makes the blade lock. The instrument forced her to slow down her playing, to listen more carefully, and to stop trying to impress listeners with technique. Instead, the saw asked for patience, and that patience changed the way she approached every session.

Why an Entire Album Built Around Saw

Once Ashby realised she could write songs that placed the saw at the centre, she did not want to use it as a decorative touch. The album, recorded over eighteen months in a converted barn outside Quebec City, treats the saw as the lead voice. Guitar, pump organ, and upright bass appear, but they sit low in the mix, leaving space for the bowed blade to float above the arrangements.

"The guitar had started to feel like a cage," she said. "I knew the shapes of the chords I was going to play before I even picked it up. The saw doesn't have that history in my hands. Every note is a small discovery." That sense of discovery shaped the songwriting. Instead of writing lyrics and then adding the saw, Ashby bowed first, recorded hours of improvisations, and let melodies emerge from the instrument's natural overtones.

The songs that resulted feel rooted in folk tradition but tilted toward something stranger. One track, written after a long winter, uses the saw to mimic the sound of wind moving across frozen fields. Another, a slow waltz about her grandmother, pairs the saw with a pump organ to suggest a parlour scene from another century. The record moves between English and French, between Quebec and the wider folk world, and between the familiar and the unfamiliar.

Technique, Bows, and the Science of Sustain

Playing the saw well is a small physics lesson. Ashby explained that the blade must be bent into a gentle S-shape so that the bow can catch a single harmonic node. Too much pressure and the note collapses. Too little and the blade refuses to speak. The sweet spot is narrow, and finding it requires the player to constantly adjust posture and hand position while listening for the moment the metal begins to ring.

She uses a violin bow with the hair tightened more than usual, and she favours flexible saws with fine teeth that respond to subtle changes in pressure. In the studio, she worked closely with an engineer who placed a large ribbon microphone about a metre from the blade to capture the instrument's natural sustain. The engineer also built a small wooden cradle so the saw could rest between takes without losing its bend, and the sessions were scheduled for the early morning when nearby roads were quietest.

"It is the most physical instrument I have ever played," Ashby said. "My shoulders ache after a session. My jaw hurts from holding tension. But when the note finally blooms, it is worth all of that." She added that learning the saw has changed how she sings. The instrument's pure, sustained tones have pushed her toward longer phrases and a more open throat, especially on the record's quieter tracks, where the saw and her voice share the same breath.

Touring Australia and Meeting New Listeners

Ashby's first Australian tour begins next spring, with dates in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, along with a handful of regional shows in Tasmania and rural Victoria. The trip is partly tied to a new wave of interest in experimental folk across the country, where independent venues have started booking artists who work outside the usual singer-songwriter template. Her Melbourne shows are presented by a small collective that focuses on female-led experimental music, and readers who want background on the team can find more through the about page.

The Australian folk scene has long welcomed unusual instrumentation, from the drones of the didgeridoo to the bent strings of the slide guitar. More recently, festivals such as St Jerome's Laneway and the Brunswick Music Festival have made room for artists who blur genre lines. Ashby said she was particularly excited to share stages with local players who use homemade instruments, and she has already begun swapping recordings with several Australian musicians ahead of the visit.

Australian listeners have also shown a strong appetite for free and independent releases, a culture supported by community radio stations like Triple J and a network of small record labels in cities such as Adelaide and Perth. Ashby's label plans to mark the tour with a free download release, building on a tradition that has long fed the country's indie scene. Fans who want a sense of where her sound fits in a longer arc can explore a curated set of free 2013 MP3s collection that captured the early wave of female indie rockers.

How the Saw Changes the Way She Writes

The most surprising effect of the saw, Ashby said, has been on her approach to writing. Before she learned the instrument, she built songs around chord progressions and lyrical hooks. Now, she begins with a single sustained note and writes outward from it. Lyrics arrive later, often after she has lived with a melody for weeks. This shift has produced songs that feel less constructed and more discovered, like weather patterns that happen to pass through the room.

She also finds that the saw invites collaboration in new ways. The instrument is quiet enough to record in shared spaces, and its soft tone blends easily with other acoustic sounds. On the new record, she duets with a cellist on one track and with a field recording of spring peepers on another. The saw acts as a thread between voices, holding the songs together without dominating them.

Looking ahead, Ashby is already thinking about a second saw-led project, though she wants to give herself time to forget some of what she has learned so she can approach the instrument with fresh ears. She is also writing a short manual for other musicians who want to try the saw, partly to pay forward the informal lessons she received from online communities and old archival recordings.

Aspect	Saw-led album	Guitar-led folk record
Lead tone	Single sustained harmonic, flexible pitch	Strummed or picked chord clusters
Writing start	Improvised bowed phrases	Chord progression or lyric draft
Physical demand	High (posture, tension, breath)	Moderate (fretting, strumming)
Recording setup	Ribbon mic, wooden cradle, quiet room	Standard acoustic mic, room mics
Audience expectation	Discovery, patience	Familiarity, singalong
Genre framing	Experimental folk, ambient balladry	Traditional folk, contemporary singer-songwriter

The differences are not a value judgement. Ashby still loves guitar, and she plans to return to it on a future record. For now, the saw has given her a way to step outside the patterns that had begun to feel too comfortable, and to write songs that ask listeners to slow down and listen closely.

The record is a quiet argument for the value of unusual choices. Ashby did not set out to make a statement with the saw, only to find a voice that felt honest and a little unsettled. The result is music that rewards the kind of patient listening once common in folk clubs and now rare in playlists. If the tour brings her to a small venue in Melbourne or a regional hall in Tasmania, the best advice is simple: arrive early, sit close, and let the saw do what it does best, which is to turn metal into air.