Cape Breton to Lollapalooza: Goldie Boutilier's fall, and rise, to music's biggest stages

For Cape Breton musician Goldie Boutilier, her first time performing onstage when she was five years old came to symbolize a lot about her future career in the music industry.

Performing with the Men of the Deeps, as Boutilier walked toward the stage, someone told her to be careful not to trip over the cords onstage.

"So of course I walked out, and as we say in Cape Breton, went ass over tea kettle, and tripped and fell on my face," said Boutilier. "And it's a core memory for me."

Boutilier remembers lying on the stage, looking up and crying. But once she got up and started singing with the coal miner choir, she loved the experience.

"My life has been just a collection of successes and many failures, and perhaps that was a little foreshadowing," said Boutilier, who has also released music under the names of My Name Is Kay, Kay and Goldilox.

This year saw Boutilier perform at some of the largest and revered North American music festivals — such as Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits — as well as gigs opening for country artist Orville Peck.

Boutilier released an EP in September called The Actress, which is a mix of indie pop and alt-country. The title track serves as a nod to the roles she's played to survive: Hollywood starlet, escort and French ingenue.

But a decade ago, a promising start to her music career with a major label in California turned sour and saw her doing sex work and struggling with drug and alcohol use.

"I got very, very good at acting," Boutilier told CBC News while she was in Glace Bay, N.S., as she worked on material for a new EP that she expects to release next year.

Boutilier moved to Los Angeles in her 20s in the early 2010s after videos she posted to YouTube were spotted by a major label and she was signed to a deal.

Filled with optimism that she'd made it, she soon realized she needed to do a lot of learning as she had never recorded in a proper studio before. A combination of song and producer matches that just didn't work meant that as time passed, enthusiasm waned for Boutilier at the label level.

She estimates she worked with at least 30 producers. Over time, they were "less and less awarded, more and more slimy," said Boutilier.

And then one day a producer said he thought it would be a good idea if Boutilier worked as an escort.

"As time passed, I did less and less music and more escorting and that is a whole other world of drugs and, you know, really risky situations ... things went from so good to so terrible within like a span of five years for me," said Boutilier.

In 2015, she met a French producer who was visiting Los Angeles, and decided to move to Paris for a fresh start. She didn't really speak the language, so she found she was quiet and reflective, but she was motivated and started writing more honest music.

"I got nowhere other than really hurt by living a life that was, like, smiling and faking it and pretending for everybody else," said Boutilier. "I was just so hurt inside. So as I started to tell the truth, little by little, the right people started to come around."

Her 2022 EP Cowboy Gangster Politician was released independently and well received. As the streams piled up, so did interest from management and record labels.

Boutilier moved back to Canada last year.

When Boutilier played Austin City Limits this year, it was a dream come true. It was a festival she's long wanted to play, which is something she pointed out in a social media post from around a half-dozen years ago.

"Some dreams take longer to come together than others," she told CBC.

It was at a festival in California this past year where she reconnected with a music producer from her L.A. days — one she had a positive experience with — Martin Kierszenbaum. They wrote and recorded a song together called Going Diamond, which was released in 2012 and featured legendary rapper Kurtis Blow.

Kierszenbaum said he wasn't aware of the struggles Boutilier experienced.

"I don't pretend to know the details as our paths diverged for many years," he wrote in an email from Europe where he was overseeing touring and promotional activities for artists such as Sting and Shaggy.

"However, what I do know is that I am super impressed and inspired by her talent, determination, resilience and new music especially. I love her sound, songs and esthetic. And, I have loved her voice from the beginning."

Kierszenbaum had some thoughts on why an artist's major label experience does not go as planned. He likened artists to being like rivers.

"All projects pour into this big body of water and, once there, an artist and project can be at the mercy of the major label's particular prioritization process," said Kierszenbaum.

"As a musician myself, I always felt that this system left the chances of an artist's success to chance too much, or at the mercy of somebody else's decisions."

By going independent, Boutilier has taken charge of her career and is very selective about who she works and surrounds herself with.

Headlining European tour

Next year is shaping up to be a busy year. Boutilier has some festival shows booked and is doing a headlining tour in Europe beginning in February.

"I'm so excited to keep going because I just feel like with each EP and all the shows, I'm starting to become the person that I thought I could become when I was a little kid with a dream," she said.

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