Interview: The Singer Who Learned to Play Banjo Specifically for One Album

Mara Vale had written half of Salt Lines before the banjo appeared in the room. Until then, the Montreal singer and songwriter had built her songs around a weathered electric guitar, a small keyboard and the kind of close, conversational vocal that makes a listener lean towards the speaker. The banjo was meant to be a colour. Instead, it became the album’s organising force.

“I didn’t want to become a banjo player,” Vale says, laughing over a video call from her flat in Mile End. “I wanted one particular sound: something bright enough to cut through the sadness. Then I realised I couldn’t keep asking someone else to find it for me.”

That decision turned a production problem into an education. Over eighteen months, she learnt rolls from online lessons, slowed down old folk recordings and played until her fingertips hurt. The result is an album that moves between indie folk, alt-country and nervy chamber pop without sounding like a genre exercise. Every pluck feels attached to a memory.

The Instrument Arrived Late

Vale bought the banjo from a retired music teacher in Verdun who had listed it online as “good for a beginner, needs attention”. The neck was slightly bowed, two tuning pegs were unreliable and the case smelled faintly of cedar. It was hardly a glamorous beginning, but the instrument had the dry, metallic snap she had been chasing.

Her first lessons were less romantic. “I could make a roll happen for about four seconds,” she says. “Then my right hand would panic and the whole thing would collapse.” She recorded those failures, listened back and marked the moments when the rhythm nearly held together. Those fragments eventually became the foundation of “Northbound”, the album’s restless opening track.

Learning an unfamiliar instrument also changed her songwriting habits. Guitar had encouraged her to think in chords and patterns she already knew. The banjo demanded smaller decisions: which string should ring, where a note should land, how much space to leave between the thumb and fingers.

A Record Built Around Friction

The songs on Salt Lines are full of contrasts. “Borrowed Weather” pairs a quick clawhammer figure with a slow vocal melody, while “Static Prayer” places a brittle banjo line above a low electronic drone. Vale says the tension was intentional, although the arrangement developed gradually rather than from a neat blueprint.

“I liked that the banjo could sound cheerful while the lyric was absolutely not cheerful,” she explains. “That mismatch is where a lot of the record lives. There’s a smile in the rhythm and a bruise underneath it.”

That balance will make sense to listeners who move between folk festivals, indie rooms and community radio. In Australia, a song like this could travel from a late-night Double J program to a Sunday set at a regional pub without needing to choose between roots music and alternative pop. Vale’s music has the same portability: handmade enough for a small room, detailed enough for headphones.

Practice, Patience And A Lot Of Noise

For the first six months, Vale practised for twenty minutes at a time. She used a towel under the bridge to soften the volume and avoided playing before her neighbours left for work. “The banjo is not a discreet instrument,” she says. “It announces every mistake in a very confident voice.”

Her teacher, American-born Montreal player Ruth Ellison, insisted that Vale learn traditional rolls before writing new parts. The discipline frustrated her. She wanted to make the banjo sound like a synthesiser, but Ellison kept bringing her back to rhythm, touch and timing. By the end of the first year, Vale could play three reliable patterns and knew exactly when not to use them.

The recording sessions took place in a converted warehouse near the Lachine Canal. Producer Elise Gagnon kept the microphone close to the instrument, leaving in finger noise, squeaks and the occasional uneven attack. “If we cleaned everything up, we’d lose the story,” Gagnon says. “The album is about someone learning in public, even when nobody is watching.”

What The Banjo Added

Element	Before the banjo	After the banjo
Rhythm	Guitar-led strumming	Interlocking rolls and clipped accents
Mood	Brooding and spacious	Brighter, sharper and more unsettled
Writing process	Chord-first compositions	Melodies shaped by finger patterns
Live arrangement	Small electric band	Acoustic detail against electronic textures

The instrument gave Vale a new way to create momentum without increasing the tempo. A banjo roll can keep moving beneath a restrained vocal, so the songs feel propelled even when the drums remain minimal. That quality is especially clear on “Harbour Lights”, where a repeated figure suggests a train leaving the station while the singer stays emotionally fixed in place.

It also brought her closer to musicians she had previously admired from a distance. Vale began trading recordings with fiddle players, old-time string bands and folk singers. Her curiosity recalls the story of a fiddle player’s transformation, where one acoustic instrument became central to a sound that initially seemed far removed from traditional music.

An Album That Travels

Vale is realistic about the economics of an independent release. Salt Lines was funded through savings, a small arts grant and pre-orders from listeners who had followed her work since her first cassette. There was no large campaign, no national publicity machine and no expectation that streaming revenue would cover the recording costs.

Her strategy is familiar to Australian independent artists: build a genuine audience in small increments, keep the mailing list active and make physical editions worth owning. A limited run of recycled-cardboard CDs and hand-numbered lyric booklets will sit beside the digital release. In Melbourne or Sydney, that sort of object can sell well at a support slot; in Hobart, Newcastle or regional Queensland, it may travel through a community radio host or a local record shop.

Vale has also resisted the pressure to turn every part of the process into content. Her launch plan is simple—pre-save links, a few live sessions and direct sales—rather than the fast withdrawal chatter found in unrelated corners of the internet. “I’d rather give people one good reason to listen than ten noisy reasons to click,” she says.

The Quiet Work Behind Discovery

There is a useful modesty in Vale’s approach. She does not present the banjo as a branding gimmick or claim that learning it made her a different person overnight. The instrument simply forced her to pay attention. That patience comes through in the arrangements, where every new texture has a clear role.

For Australian listeners, discovery often depends on these small networks. A track can surface through a local presenter on 2SER, PBS FM or 4ZZZ, then gain a second life in a playlist curated by a Brisbane promoter or a community station in regional Victoria. Vale understands that independent music rarely moves in a straight line. It passes through people who care enough to keep recommending it.

Her own archive-minded curiosity led her to an unearthed radio session, a reminder that overlooked performances can remain meaningful long after their original moment has disappeared. “That’s the beautiful thing,” she says. “A song can wait for the right listener.”

Ways To Hear The Record Properly

The most rewarding entry points into Salt Lines are the ones that preserve its physical and emotional detail.

• Start with “Northbound” to hear the banjo as a pulse rather than decoration.
• Follow it with “Borrowed Weather”, where the bright rhythm works against a bruised lyric.
• Listen on headphones for the quiet electronic layers beneath “Static Prayer”.
• Catch a live performance if possible; Vale’s imperfect, close-miked playing is part of the appeal.
• Read the lyrics alongside the record, since many of the songs turn on small changes in phrasing.

The album rewards patience without becoming precious. Its songs are easy to enter, but their arrangements keep opening up: a brushed drum, a bent note, a banjo pattern that lands slightly differently on the fourth repetition. Vale has made an instrument associated with tradition feel immediate and personal.

The Sound Of Choosing A Limitation

When asked whether she will keep playing banjo on future records, Vale pauses. “Probably,” she says. “But I don’t want it to become a rule. The point was to give myself a limitation and see what became possible inside it.”

That may be the lasting lesson of Salt Lines. The banjo did not solve the songs or turn Vale into someone she was not. It gave her a stubborn, unfamiliar set of problems, and she stayed with them long enough for a new voice to emerge. What listeners should remember is simple: sometimes an album begins when a singer chooses the instrument she does not yet know how to play.