is the New Music Monday highlight!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMaita Waters is a pillar of the Victoria music scene, having played in bands such as Maitarra and the still-active Waters (formerly HopeCity Waters), as well as being the organizer of Folk Night at the Mint.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn addition to these endeavours, she has also been performing and recording music solo for years now and has just put out a brand new EP, <\/span>Ruthless and Tender.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nThis new offering from Waters came serendipitously, when she decided to make the best of a bad situation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhile off working a tree planting job near Midway, BC for the summer, Waters says she accidentally hurt her ribs and had to take three weeks off in the middle of her planting contract.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt was really brutal, because when you\u2019re planting, your whole life is based around going to work every day,\u201d Waters told Victoria Buzz.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not like you can say, \u2018oh, I have all this time off, I\u2019ll just hang out with friends, or go off and do my own stuff,\u2019 because you\u2019re just in the middle of nowhere living in a tent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nHowever, there was a nearby arena facility the tree planters had access to for meals and meetings. In that arena, Waters found a room off to the side that had really good acoustics for singing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cBoth of the cooks at the camp were amazing musicians, and they would go in their off-time and sing songs in this room,\u201d she explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cSo I would just go and spend a lot of my time in this arena. It got me thinking I should do something with this and I had just finished writing these three songs before tree planting that I was really excited about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nWaters says she went into the small town of Midway and bought the only microphone she could find, downloaded a trial version of Ableton, a digital audio workstation (DAW), and got to work figuring out how to record.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThen I just spent all of my days in this room getting the tracks down, so I\u2019m really excited about what that means to me,\u201d said Waters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cObviously it was a really hard time, not just physically, but emotionally of being in a place where you just kind of feel useless and taking up space, then being able to turn that around in some way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nWaters got the three tracks recorded, sent them to a friend to record some pedal steel for the EP, then gave it to local Victoria producer Julian Marrs of Marrs Audio for mixing and mastering.<\/span><\/p>\nShe says that she was really inspired by classic folk music for this recording project, but as a female singer-songwriter, flipping the patriarchal roots of that genre on its head.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cYou know how men\u2019s folk songs can be, like, a murder ballad, and it feels like as a female artist my options are to basically go really against that, but I really wanted to put myself in that same story line,\u201d explained Waters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cLike, what is that same narrative, but from a female perspective\u2026 I want to own it as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nRuthless and Tender <\/span><\/i>was released to the world on September 7th.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAs a highlight track for this week\u2019s New Music Monday, Waters wanted to talk a bit more about the final song of the EP, \u201cGood, but at what cost?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWaters says that \u201cGood, but at what cost?\u201d was definitely the most personal of the three songs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nShe explained that this song is about noticing the women around her and in her life settling for what they have, even though a situation might be less than ideal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cA lot of it is definitely, seeing a couple women I am close to settling or not settling and feeling bad about that,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAdditionally, and on a very personal note, Waters says that this song is about feeling like she has to stifle her passion in order to meet the expectations of those around her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIn the chorus, when I say, \u2018this passion f*cked me up, cause it doesn\u2019t come with any grace,\u2019 it\u2019s about feeling like you\u2019re too much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nWaters says this feeling comes about in many ways, because she considers herself a very passionate person, but it is especially present for her when in music scene spaces.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAs a female musician, it feels like you have to be really nice and supportive, and even on stage,\u201d said Waters.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cA guy can get up and be really funny on stage and then it feels like women have to get up and be like, \u2018thank you so much,\u2019 like there\u2019s a way to do it where you are full of grace, gentle and non-threatening.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe added that she is driven by the passion to be understood and heard without having to stifle that same passion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nListen to \u201cGood, but at what cost?\u201d below:<\/span><\/p>\n