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The bio on Meredith Moon’s website reveals that the Ontario-based singer began writing songs at the age of eight, taught herself guitar by the age of 14 and travelled Canada as a busker while still in her teens.
It describes how she mixed folk-punk with traditional Appalachian sounds, adopted the clawhammer banjo and has been heralded in the old-time music scene for her energy and unconventional approach to tradition. It goes on to discuss her indie debut album, 2018’s Forest Far Away, and her 2023 follow-up, Constellations, which she released after singing with True North Records.
What is not mentioned anywhere in the bio is that Moon is also the daughter of legendary singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. It’s not that Moon actively hid this fact, but she has made efforts since entering the spotlight to ensure her music speaks for itself. That included adopting her mother’s maiden name. Even when she opened for Lightfoot for some 2022 dates, neither mentioned the connection to the audience.
But Moon was interviewed by the Canadian Press just over a year after her father’s 2023 death. It was ostensibly a preview for a tribute concert at Massey Hall that she didn’t organize but participated in. She spoke about growing up as the daughter of a folk legend.
“People like to see a legacy like that being carried on,” says Moon, in an interview with Postmedia from her home in Ontario. “So part of it is to satiate that. My attitude of it has always been if people find out, they find out. But I’m never going to use that as a way to further my career because I want my music to speak for itself. So some people mention it, but I don’t ever mention it. Enough people mention it already so I don’t need to. If they want to do that, that’s great.”
If this connection was rarely spoken about in the past, it’s safe to say that the cat is out of the bag now. In an email to Postmedia, the publicist for Moon identified her as Gordon Lightfoot’s daughter in the subject line. The bio provided by the Calgary Folk Music Festival – where she will be playing Friday and Saturday – brings up the connection in the very first line, calling it “the elephant in the room.”
Given that Moon is a folk musician, it’s easy to assume she inherited her father’s love of the genre. But, as the folk fest proves every year, “folk” comes in various shades. Moon’s fiercely DIY attitude comes from her roots in folk-punk and the old-time scene, where there is considerable overlap in attitude and esthetics.
As a teenage busker – first in Ontario before travelling throughout Canada and into Central America – Moon developed a style that she admits has been hard to shake.
“When I started performing, I was a lot louder and harder,” she says. “That comes from busking a lot. You play as loud and fast as you can to attract attention and make sure people hear you on the street. I think learning to play softer was actually hard for me. So I’m doing that a lot more lately, just learning how to not overpower the song.”
Released in 2023, Constellations showcases Moon’s talents as a songwriter capable of mixing old-time violin-and-banjo vibes with a contemporary sensibility that recalls singer-songwriters such as Christine Fellows and Charlotte Cornfield. Opening track Star Crossed is an achingly beautiful piano-violin ballad that showcases Moon’s plaintive vocals while Soldier’s Joy is a surprisingly chipper-sounding, banjo-fuelled, old-timey tune told from the point-of-view of a soldier angling for morphine.
Moon has finished a follow-up album for True North that should be out next year. It is produced by Colin Linden, a producer and songwriter who performs in Blackie and the Rodeo Kings and has worked with a who’s-who of roots artists including Bruce Cockburn, The Band and Bob Dylan.
“We went a little more rocking with this one, I would say,” says Moon, who will be playing some new songs in Calgary. “At its core, I try to focus on the lyrics first and foremost and keep the folk structure of songs. We have some exciting people on it, some guests. There’s piano, guitar, banjo, the same kind of stuff as Constellations, but it’s a little more developed, I hope.”
As for directly carrying on her father’s legacy, it’s complicated. He had an impact on her as a father, but his musical influence is less defined.
“I’m not super-versed in all of his music,” Moon says. “I made a choice to not listen to it because I didn’t want to see my dad as Gordon Lightfoot, I just wanted to hang out. I guess some people would find this hard to believe, but he influenced me as much as if another songwriter who had a dad who loved to canoe and had all these incredible stories about canoeing and all these valuable life lessons that any father that you love a lot would offer you. Those are the things about him that inspired my songwriting. Of course, I grew up with him playing music, so I don’t know if that is the reason I play music. I don’t know if I’d be doing this if he were or weren’t a songwriter. There’s no way of knowing. I do know he was just a very influential person just based on his stories and who he was to me.”
Meredith Moon plays the Calgary Folk Music Festival on Friday at 4 p.m. and Saturday at 10:30 a.m. and 12:55 p.m. The folk festival runs from Thursday to Sunday at Prince’s Island Park. Visit calgaryfolkfest.com.