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Music lessons take Serena Ryder back to basics

IN CONCERT What : Serena Ryder with Luca Fogale Where : Capital Ballroom, 858 Yates St. When : Friday, Feb. 17, 8 p.m.
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Serena Ryder is changing the setlist for every show on her current tour.

IN CONCERT

What: Serena Ryder with Luca Fogale
Where: Capital Ballroom, 858 Yates St.
When: Friday, Feb. 17, 8 p.m.
Tickets: Sold out

One would think that Toronto singer-songwriter Serena Ryder — she of the three-octave range, six Juno Award wins and platinum-selling albums — would never have to take another music lesson in her life.

But here’s the funny thing: In going back to learn new tricks on piano and guitar, the gifted Stompa hitmaker realized she had never had a lesson.

“I literally know nothing about music theory,” Ryder said with a laugh, during a Vancouver tour stop. “Seriously, I’ve always just played by ear. I’ve played by shapes, too. When I put my fingers on a guitar, I remember shapes, so it’s a sense-memory thing. If I haven’t played a song in a few years, and you told me the chords of it, that would mean nothing to me. I would need to physically remember how to play it.”

As she prepared to write her latest album, Utopia, the Millbrook, Ont., native went back to basics and took guitar and piano lessons for the first time. Now that the record is out, she’s still committed to growing as an artist. “Maybe that evolution will [make me] a better guitar player, a better musician,” she said.

On the surface, it would appear that Ryder needs little help in those areas. Stompa (her triple-platinum smash from 2012) is a guitar-heavy single, with an accompanying video that shows Ryder wielding one of her favourite guitars, the very rock-like Gibson Flying V.

During her last show in Victoria, a headlining performance before 5,000 fans at the Rifflandia festival in 2014, she was particularly adept at all things guitar. That approach has changed on her current tour, which brought her to Campbell River on Wednesday.

Ryder (who will appear in Courtenay tonight and Victoria on Friday) has to ditch her guitar for the Utopia songs in her set, as they are too difficult to play while singing. “The songs that I wrote are super-challenging to sing, so there’s some rhythms that are too complex to play the guitar with. I want to run around the stage and have more fun.”

Musical adventures are nothing new for Ryder, 35, who started performing at the age of eight. She was blessed with an over-sized singing voice at a young age, and made great use of it on her early albums, the first of which arrived when she was just 17. Cover songs were a big part of her repertoire, which expanded her fanbase for the album If Your Memory Serves You Well. The album netted Ryder a best new artist win at the Junos in 2008.

That led her down the path to songwriting sojourns with a range of artists, including Randy Bachman and Melissa Etheridge — some of which stuck, and some of which didn’t. She eventually discovered her own voice, good enough to win her a Juno in 2014 for songwriter of the year.

“Who you’re writing with, who you’re hanging out with, that definitely sinks in. When it comes to learning different techniques, I’m the kind of person that learns a little by every way. I have to see it, I have to hear it, I have to do it and I have to write it out. And if I don’t do all those things, for the most part it won’t stick.

“You also have to be really passionate about it, too. If it was kind of a s----y session, I’m not going to remember what went down. But if I love the person I’m writing with, and it’s amazing, I can learn a lot from that experience.”

Utopia brings together songs written in various cities (Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Nashville) with collaborators including Ontario-bred songwriter Simon Wilcox (who co-wrote the Nick Jonas smash Jealous). It’s Ryder’s first record in five years, the delay due to a multitude of factors (constant touring, the dissolution of a romantic relationship and Ryder’s subsequent move to California.) The follow-up to 2012’s Harmony, home to Stompa and another sizable hit, What I Wouldn’t Do, was put together from nearly 100 songs.

After six albums, crafting a setlist for this tour was difficult. Ryder said she decided to change the setlist for every show out of necessity. Complacency is not something she accepts.

“The audience can tell if you’re not excited about what you’re doing. We slowly incorporated the new songs into the set, and by the middle of the touring cycle, we were pretty much all Utopia, because it was all brand new for us. But now we’ve started incorporating some of the older songs, to keep it fresh for us and them.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com