Hauler, a contemporary roots incarnation of Slowcoaster consisting of Steven MacDougall and Mike LeLievre and joined by Canadian Folk Music Award-winning fiddler Colin Grant, are crafting some folk songs of their own. This isn’t at all surprising; the band’s Cape Breton roots practically implies some level of storytelling will find its way into their music. What is surprising is the band’s sudden foray into the medium of marionettes to tell those stories. “The Widow’s Vow” takes a page from the book of Tim Burton for a tale of creepy romance…
Marionettes weren’t always the plan, though. Released as part of the band’s debut self-titled album back in May 2020, Steven MacDougall explains that the band initially had a very different approach worked out for the song.
“In about February, we had had the idea of a vaudeville-style play/dance video for the song pretty much everything you see in the video would have been filmed on a stage,” says MacDougall. “Then the pandemic struck and our timeline for production was thrown in the air.
“I came up with the idea of marionettes and using the beach behind my house. And I started. I watched a YouTube video on how to make simple puppets. They were ratty and weird and that fit the mood.”
MacDougall, who has been performing regularly during quarantine via live-stream, repurposed his streaming area into a little studio and went to work on the marionettes—essentially playing double duty as the Tim Burton to his Danny Elfman.
“It actually got very creepy,” says MacDougall. “Especially when filming the last scene in the rowboat. I was down by the water hundreds of feet into the woods, trying to film these puppets while animals made creepy noises in the woods behind me. It felt very fitting.”
The video captures the story of two people being bound together for eternity by unfortunate circumstances and worse intentions, fitting the song well into the canon of east coast folklore.
The lyrics are just the tip of the iceberg:
“I vow I will always keep you warm,
You will always have a home.
You were sent here just for me,
I vow you will never leave.
I vow to the wind and to the waves,
To every bone in every grave,
We will grow old by the sea,
I vow you will never leave.”
“Cape Breton is ripe with shipwrecks and ghost stories and I’ve always looked at the early 1900s as the spookiest time in on the east coast. So I set it there,” says MacDougall. “I remember being enthralled listening to my family and neighbours playing songs like this around the kitchen table. I love story songs; they either come to you quickly or take years to write.”
While the pandemic may have forced the band into making a video with no humans involved, MacDougall says it might be a process the band explores more for future videos.
“During the filming, I felt like I had wasted my life and making puppets movies and as my true calling. I was a hair away from making this stop animation. Thank god I didn’t go in that direction. I would still be filming.”