In this November 1991 broadcast of The Dini Petty Show, Sarah McLachlan is 23 years old — already a star in Canada, and still entirely unknown to the rest of the world. Solace has been out at home since June and will not reach American record stores for another two months. She arrives in the Toronto studio at the last point in her career where she could be asked to explain who she was.
She has a cold. She keeps apologising for her voice, and she answers everything anyway. There is no press training in her yet, and that is what makes the tape worth having: the questions land on someone who has not yet worked out which ones she is supposed to manage. She talks about the two videos with no clothes on, and about who “he” is, and she does it without the practised redirect she would have had a few years later.
The rest traces how she got there. Halifax, and the ukulele at her mother’s tea parties. Nettwerk coming calling when she was seventeen, and her parents saying no. The Edmonton show where her voice gave out. Why the sound changed between Touch and Solace. And the nine months with Pierre Marchand that ended with her playing sold-out rooms. Each answer is given in more detail than the question strictly asked for, which is the tell of someone who has not yet learned to ration herself.
Two years after this, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy made her a name outside Canada. Six years after this, she created Lilith Fair. Unseen since its original 1991 broadcast, this master tape has been meticulously optimized and preserved via the official archive of The Dini Petty Show.
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