Of braids and
broken hearts

>> Krista Muir hangs up the hosen
and comes out as herself

PLEASE STAND UP: Krista Muir

By LORRAINE CARPENTER

“It’s funny,” says Krista L.L. Muir. “The lederhosen started becoming kind of threadbare. Literally, colours were fading on the pants, and the wigs were getting so ratty. She’s a very expensive habit, that girl.”

Muir is referring, of course, to her former alter-ego, Lederhosen Lucil. Together, they produced several independent CDs, most notably 2003’s Tales From the Pantry, and a book, The Joy of Hosen: Lederhosen Lucil Up Close and Pictorial. Muir’s Bavarian persona, born in her native Kingston and raised in Montreal, gained notoriety as she and her Yamaha toured North America and Europe, playing alongside the likes of Kid Koala, le Tigre, Carolyn Mark and the Unicorns. She also curated and hosted the annual Soiro Bizarro variety show at la Sala Rossa. But sometime in 2005, the character’s spark began to fizzle for its creator. Although Muir had the time of her life on her last European tour, she felt that the upkeep of costumes and wigs was taking time away from songwriting, which itself was becoming difficult.

“I ran out of beats on that keyboard,” she admits. “I sucked the marrow out of the bone that was that Yamaha.”

Coinciding with an illness during the tour, the acquisition of a wee baritone ukulele influenced the next phase in Muir’s musical life—“I could lie in my sickbed and make these little songs up when I was homesick or lonely,” she explains—while some upheaval in her personal life fuelled new songs.

“Dark and strange times are a wealth of inspiration and creativity ’cause you’re suddenly forced to look at things from a different perspective. Often, more poetic things will come out of those weird, horrible times and end up making something beautiful.”

And that she has. Leave Alight is Muir’s new album, a playfully winsome batch of pretty tunes underpinned by melancholy. It was recorded in Toronto with Brian Poirier and Dave MacKinnon (aka the Fembots) and in Montreal with Shane Watt, who also plays and sings with Muir on the record and on stage. The CD will be released independently on Sept. 12, the date of her Casa show, which will feature a percussionist and cellist Becky Foon of Silver Mount Zion, who also plays on the record, as do members of the Weakerthans, Stars, Besnard Lakes and A Northern Chorus.

Muir has already played a pair of shows in Ontario, she’s got five U.S. dates booked between her upcoming Montreal gigs, and then she’s off to Europe and the U.K. for four dates, with ample help from friends she made on the last Lucil tour. It’s not the first time she’s played as herself, but after six years of performing behind a mask, so to speak, it presents its challenges.

“The difficult part for me isn’t being myself on stage without a costume, it’s that the music itself is way more personal and kind of sweet and tender, and I haven’t really shown that side of me that often.”

Muir hopes to show her real self to a wider audience by finding a label to release her next record, which is already half written.

“It’s not quite starting over, but in a way it is,” Muir muses. “It’s taking a chance, taking the plunge, all the things you do when you’re moving into a new phase. Lucil was like a cycle, a seven-year cycle, and this is the Krista time.”

With Milie Croche at Cagibi on
Friday, Aug. 24, 9 p.m., free
With Shane Watt at Casa del
Popolo on Wednesday, Sept. 12