Why Canadian musicians can't just stop touring in the U.S.

As support grows across Canada to keep our collective time, money and talents focussed in our own country, Canadian musicians are starting to feel a bit caught in the middle of the ongoing U.S. trade war.

While it sounds simple enough to cancel any dates south of the border, touring musicians can't so easily participate in cultural boycotts because much of their livelihood is dependent on U.S. touring.

Today on Commotion, Tamara Lindeman (a.k.a. indie-folk artist The Weather Station) joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud on the eve of her latest U.S. tour to talk about how she's thinking and feeling about travelling to the States in this tense political moment.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full episode, including a conversation with musician Dave Bidini on how to better support artists in Canada, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: You're about to kick off a tour. That tour is going to take you all over the U.S. You've done this a bunch of times before. How do you describe your feelings getting ready for a tour this time, to go tour America, versus all the other tours that you've done?

Tamara: It feels heavy to go there right now. I do feel a heavy heart about it, to be perfectly honest. But, you know, I am going. So it's definitely less light and joyful than it was to go to Europe and the U.K. last month. 

Elamin: Tell me about the heaviness. What does that feel like for you? 

Tamara: I just feel the tension and everything that's happening there. I think it's just so devastating and sad. I feel weird as a Canadian going down to the U.S. right now. 

Elamin: To give people a timeline, to get them oriented around this, the fact that you're starting this tour now does not mean that you planned this tour now. Tours take a little while to figure out — the route that you're going to take, the venues you're going to play. Do you want to talk a little bit about what it takes to pull off a tour? Because there's so much planning that goes in advance of it.

Tamara: Absolutely. I mean, we were booking this tour eight months ago. Tours are booked almost a year in advance sometimes. This tour is all independent promoters, small venues; this is not with Live Nation. Everyone that's worked on this tour and that I've worked with for years is all independent people with small companies. So yeah, the thought of canceling a tour like this is, there's a lot of things in my mind. But from a pragmatic perspective, it wouldn't be simple and the people that I would hurt would be all these lovely people who I've worked with for years, and primarily my band for sure.

Elamin: I've also got to imagine if you're trying to take your whole band with you, you've got to start the process of arranging visas months in advance. That's very expensive. You can't just leave that money on the table.

Tamara: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's so painful about going to the U.S. is that visas are incredibly expensive. When we go to the U.K. we get a visa, but it's about $100. And when we go to the E.U., there's no visa at all. We just waltz in, say we're a band playing, and they're like, "Welcome." So it's just the U.S. that requires these expensive visas, and I wish they didn't. But yeah, in this case, we had to get a visa. And in the case of my band, everybody's freelance, so if the tour doesn't happen, it's bad for everybody.

Elamin: Well, Tamara, I feel bad for you in the sense that you are planning and starting this tour in a difficult moment, right? There's intense national pride here in Canada in terms of focusing on the stuff that we do because of the threats of tariffs and annexation. You're getting some expressions of patriotism that sound like, "What we should be doing is buying Canadian and investing our energy right here in this country." And with that, I think you've heard some leaders say, "Don't travel to the United States right now," which I think raises some questions for artists who are Canadian, who are trying to figure out how to tour the United States…. What's your response to people who say this is the time to stay home for the good of the country?

Tamara: I've been thinking about it a lot, and I actually really subscribe to a lot of this — of reinvesting here, taking a look at what's important to us, I agree with that. And I think anyone who chooses not to go to the U.S., I respect that choice and it makes total sense to me. But for me, thinking about this show, I feel that my job right now is to communicate. When I write songs, when I make social media posts, when I write my newsletter, increasingly I've felt the most purpose right now in trying to speak to what's happening and getting ideas out there into the world. 

And so when I think of my tour in the U.S. that begins on Friday, I'm thinking about being in a room physically with people in America, holding a microphone and how I want to use that moment, what I want to say, what I want to share. And so I think that if I was pursuing a career in the U.S. that asked me to change my principles or my politics, that would be out of my integrity. But in this case, my show is actually quite relevant to the moment and my songs feel relevant…. So I do feel that going to the U.S. and playing shows in this context that are relevant to the context is different, and for me, an opportunity to speak to what's happening. And for me also, it's galvanizing in terms of thinking of that moment on stage when I have the mic and what I want to say.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Tamara Lindeman produced by Stuart Berman.