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Rekindling the Fire - Paula Toledo followed her heart, picked up a guitar and hit the hardscrabble road to success.

North Shore Outlook
March 2, 2006

by Jennifer Maloney

Paula Toledo didn't realize how important music was to her until it was missing from her life.

Dressed in a black pin-stripped blazer, tan leather coat, jeans and cowboy boots, the dark-eyed Filipino-Canadian looks every bit the independent rock goddess.

After our diner-style breakfast at Slickety Jim's on Main Street - the only area in Vancouver that shares some characteristics with her native Montreal - the emerging songsstress will go back to juggling vocal practices, interviews, bookings and promotions for her Saturday night concert at the Media Club.

But for now Toledo, who plays regularly at Grouse Mountain's Friday Night Concert Series, is content to talk about her metamorphosis into music.

"When my sister would play guitar and sing to me when I was young - she had this really beautiful voice - I found it so soothing," Toledo recalls. "I sometimes would sneak into her room and pick up her guitar. I felt like I could play. It just felt really comfortable in my arms.

"It took me years to realize that that fire didn't come with everything in my life."

As the second youngest of six children, Toledo whose parents couldn't afford guitar lessons, struck a deal with her oldest sister: chords for chores. As she grew older, she landed her first gig with a group of high school friends who would practice wailing in their parent's basement.

But it was Toledo's parents' wishes to see their children, who'd been brought to North America for a better life, pursue a pragmatic career. That influence prompted Toledo to move to Vancouver after high school and study international business at UBC.

"It was kind of a cop-out because I really didn't want to," she confesses, "I really felt out of sorts in that program. For me it was more about learning about the history, the culture."

After completing her degree, Toledo took a desk job in Tourism, but the career was short-lived. While reading, Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, Toledo was impacted by the protagonist's deep-seeded regret. So much so that it caused her to quit her job, without an idea of what she was going to puruse.

"The thing I fear most in my life is actually not death," Toledo explains. "It's knowing that I could've done something different, but I didn't have the courage to follow it."

Without a job, or even an inkling of the future, Toledo found herself painting the walls of her apartment and reorganizing her living environment. Life slowed down and Toledo began talking to people in her building, including a couple who were departing on a music tour in France.

"I joked and said, ‘I'm outta work. How about I come on tour with you!'" she recalls. "They looked at me and said, ‘absolutely'"

While singing back-up in smoky Parisian cafes, Toledo became aware that the fire had returned.

When she returned, Toledo locked herself n her apartment over the summer and wrote music. Even with the sun tempting her through the cracks of her blinds, she forced herself to stay inside and focus on her song-writing. While she accredits her self-discipline party for the interest the film industry later took in her five-song EP, part of it she admits was luck.

"I have a positive outlook that things that are meant to be will happen," she says. "Discipline for me is something I've always kind of focused on. The rest of it I really have no control over."

Toledo based many of her decisions on intuition.

So when she saw Irish producer David Odlum at a show in Seattle, she followed her gut and dropped him her EP.

Months later when he called asking for another copy as he'd lost her EP with his luggage, Toledo asked him if he was interested in helping her complete her first album. He agreed.

"It was really great to work with him because he's worked with a lot of artists that I really admire," she says. "I really wanted sounds that had more of a dreamy quality. I wanted contrast of hearing aggressive , distorted sounds and abrupt changes to something smooth and pretty."

"With Jonathan (Anderson) and David, they totally got it."

Toledo's debut CD, Stay Awhile was released last month on Valentine's Day and has been garnering air time on university radio stations, where it's currently ranked in the top 12. CBC Radio One has picked it up and she's been selling CDs off her website through Internet Podcasts.

While her accomplishments are impressive by indie standards, Toledo admits its hard to "make it" in the music biz.

"I'm able to do it, but I'm struggling still," she admits. "I'd like to be able to push it to another level, but it's very hard."

Despite the challenges, Toledo has a feeling she's on the right path.

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