The Femme Fatale of Folk known as Sarah Segal-Lazar currently splits her time between the busy streets of Montreal and the red shores of PEI. She shares her own special blend of folk and country, wherever the wind may take her. Her latest album, produced by Canadian folk luminary Matthew Barber, comes out later this year.

There’s a farmer in the small community where she’s from on PEI. This older fella lives alone in the home where his family has lived for generations. The locals have speculated whether or not he’s always been a bachelor, or was once married. One day, when Segal-Lazar was visiting, she noticed a room with women’s clothes still hanging in the closet. They looked like they’d been hanging there for years, maybe decades, untouched.

Segal-Lazar didn’t feel like she could intrude with a question, for fear of bringing up painful memories. Instead, she let her imagination take her on a journey, and wrote the song “This Old House” for him – and all the older folks whose stories we don’t always get to hear – incorporating personal details like his grandmother’s rug, faded family photos, and the embroidered tapestries. 

“I started writing this song because I was going to be leaving PEI for a while, and I wanted to write a song about my relationship with the island,” explains Segal-Lazar. “I wanted to write a love song or a breakup song or an ‘it’s complicated’ song about us. But as I started noodling around on the guitar, it turned out that I didn’t actually have much to say about myself – what came out was a song about someone else.”