The Great Canadian Road Trip…Song #56/250: Stompa by Serena Ryder

The COVID pandemic wasn’t good for very much. But one thing that has proven beneficial for me and my family is that we have gotten to know the towns and villages around us much better. You may remember that when the pandemic restrictions were first introduced, one of the things that immediately happened was that our ability to travel freely was restricted. We couldn’t go shopping whenever or wherever we wanted to. We couldn’t travel abroad or even across the country. Most people couldn’t even socialize with colleagues by going to work anymore. Everything became focused on the area within the boundaries of your property. Even walking around the neighbourhood was sure to draw disapproving stares from behind curtained windows. Like many of you, my family and I followed the rules that were put in place for our protection, but eventually we started yearning to move beyond the close confines of our home and our street. To get around the restrictions that were in place, while at the same time, abiding by the rules in a sense, we began taking family day trips in our car. We only traveled within an hour of our home. We never stopped for a washroom or snack break. We only stopped if we were able to get out and walk in a wide open space such as a park or shoreline. But for the most part, we simply got in the car and drove around to see what there was to see. These little jaunts in the car opened our eyes to how many neat and interesting things were located only a stone’s throw from our house, but which we had never explored prior to COVID. This is a long, convoluted way of explaining how it was that we ended up one day in the tiny town of Millbrook, Ontario. Up until the day we actually went to Millbrook, it had always just been a road sign destination on our way to the much larger city of Peterborough. As a family, we had traveled to Peterborough often for shopping and had passed a roundabout along the way that, if we had gone left, would have taken us to Millbrook. Instead, we always stayed going straight ahead and went to Peterborough. However, at this roundabout my wife would always say, “One day I want us to go to Millbrook”. Thanks to COVID, one day we did.  

It was as we entered the lovely little town of Millbrook that “one day” that I came to realize that it was the proud home to Canadian singer Serena Ryder. Not just anyone gets to have their name on the sign that welcomes new visitors to their town, but in Millbrook, the town’s civic pride is on full display. As you can see from the photo above, Millbrook is very proud of its most famous resident, as they should be. Serena Ryder has carved out quite a place for herself in the Canadian music scene. From humble beginnings singing in community halls and at roadside motels in Millbrook, to her time spent in Peterborough and the thriving music scene in and around that city, all the way to writing anthems for the Pan-Am Games when they were held in Canada, to hosting the Juno Awards, to winning Juno Awards and earning the Allan Slaight Award for Humanitarian Service as part of Canada’s Walk of Fame awards, Serena Ryder has accomplished much. The exciting thing is that she is still relatively young and has a long career still ahead of her. So let’s take a quick look at how it all happened and where it may go from here. This is the story of Millbrook, Ontario’s own Serena Ryder.      

One of the cool aspects of passing the Welcome to Millbrook sign that day in the car and discovering the connection it had to Serena Ryder is that Serena Ryder’s song “Stompa” has a connection to my own family. The song “Stompa” came from Ryder’s sixth album called Harmony, which was released in 2012. By the time it came to be in regular rotation on our local radio station in the spring of 2013, my eldest daughter had just turned seven years old. Because she was becoming a big girl now, we got her an iPod Shuffle of her very own. We filled that iPod Shuffle to capacity with about 50 songs that she got to listen to over and over again as we drove from here to there on road trips. These songs were all popular songs on the radio. By listening to cool tunes on her own device, our eldest daughter felt all grown up and started taking a greater interest in other radio songs that she might want on her iPod. This new interest in modern music on the radio coincided nicely with the release of “Stompa”. At the time, all that we knew about “Stompa” was that singer Serena Ryder was Canadian (and we liked that) and that the song exhorted us to clappa our hands and stompa our feet (which we liked to do, too). The message of the song that there is power in music that helps make life better is one that resonated with all of us. And so we drove on, clapping our hands and stomping our feet as we headed on down the highway. In 2013, we had no idea that Serena Ryder’s childhood home was only twenty minutes or so from our house.

Serena Ryder comes from musical roots. Her biological father was a Trinidadian musician who came to Canada in the 1960s. Her uncle is singer-songwriter Bob Carpenter, who is part-Ojibwe from Temagami First Nation. While she had musical blood running through her veins, it was the gift of a guitar at age 13 from her step-father in Millbrook that got her started playing on her own. As Ryder gained experience playing at the Millbrook Legion hall and at strip motels nearby, she also immersed herself in the technology that was available at the time…her parent’s record collection. It was there that she learned to sing Beatles songs and those of Canadian acts such as Leonard Cohen. As time went by and it became apparent that Ryder’s interest in music was more than just a passing fancy and was actually turning into a pathway forward in life, she moved from Millbrook to attend a high school Arts programme in Peterborough. Once there, Serena Ryder’s singing ability caught the attention of local musicians and promoters and she started getting invited to perform locally and to record her songs on cassette. Canadian rockers Three Days Grace (from just down the road in Norwood) often performed together with Ryder on local bills in Peterborough. For those who may be unaware, Peterborough is home to Trent University. Like most university towns, Peterborough has lots of watering holes where students can go to dance and find romance and listen to up and coming musical acts. Peterborough is also home to a performing arts centre known as The Market Hall. It was in 2001, while performing at The Market Hall as part of the Peterborough Folk Festival, that Ryder won her first professional award for Best Emerging Artist. Her performance at the Peterborough Folk Festival was recorded and released as an EP known as Live at the Market Hall.  Not long after that, Ryder began making connections within the industry that resulted in her appearing on various CBC Radio shows. It also brought her into contact with fellow Canadian singer Hawksley Workman. Workman convinced Ryder to sign on to his record label, and her career took off from there.

In the decade that followed from 2005 to 2015, Serena Ryder rapidly rose through the ranks of the Canadian music scene. Even though she had several of her own hit songs, including “Stompa”, “What I Wouldn’t Do” and the Pan-Am Games anthem, “Together We Are One”. Serena Ryder is just as well known for being a singer of songs, period. By that I mean, Ryder has released albums of classic cover tunes and has collaborated with numerous artists on original songs that they have written and released themselves. She just loves to sing and is very good at it, too. Along the way, Serena Ryder has several platinum selling albums, she has won seven Juno Awards including Songwriter of the Year in 2014, for which she is very proud. She has been involved in collaborative projects with everyone from Steve Earle to Gord Downie, Melissa Etheridge, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Johnny Reid and William Prince, just to name a few. In addition to music, Serena Ryder is also actively involved in many causes such as working to improve access to Mental Health services, as well as appearing on stage with Gord Downie during the premier of The Secret Path (the multi-media story about Indigenous child Chanie Wenjack and the residential school system in Canada). She has taken a turn hosting the Juno Awards and has even had her own radio show on station CHFI-FM in Toronto for a while.  

In Canada, we are lucky to have so many multi-talented people to help drive the creative arts scene in this country. Someone like Serena Ryder, who is a singer, songwriter, musician, media personality, poet and much, much more, makes life better for all of us due to her positive energy and her artistic vision. What I like about her most, aside from her obvious talent as a singer, is how open she is to collaborating with others. Whether it be Peterborough or Toronto, Montreal or Halifax, Winnipeg or wherever, there are lots of musical communities in our country that all sport networks of musicians who help each other out on projects and at individual shows. Having such support systems in place allows ideas to be brought to fruition that would have languished otherwise if the artist in question was working in isolation. By supporting each other, the members of the Canadian music scene have helped to develop our country’s own unique star system, of which Serena Ryder is a full-fledged member. In that light, Serena Ryder’s most current project involves starting an agency called ArtHaus, which offers recording space to emerging artists and acts as a protective incubator for them as they begin their own careers. Who knows where the next great Canadian musician will come from? It could be from almost anywhere. Hopefully, wherever they happen to be from, their hometown will be as proud of them as Millbrook, Ontario is of Serena Ryder, who, as my family and I now know, grew up twenty minutes from my house. Thanks, COVID! 

The link to the video for the song “Stompa” by Serena Ryder can be found here. ***Lyrics version is here.

The link to the official website for Serena Ryder can be found here.

The link to the official website for ArtHaus can be found here.

The link to the official website for Millbrook, Ontario can be found here.

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