Lisa MacIsaac and Brenley MacEachern are Madison Violet
Last Friday, October 10th, I sat in a booth at the Carleton for one of Madison Violet’s sold out Last Call Tour shows, and I experienced the profoundly emotional collective experience of an audience saying goodbye, at least for now, to a band that has meant so much to them- in some cases over decades of their lives. I had never experienced anything quite like it.
On February 4th Brenley MacEachern and Lisa MacIsaac posted a video on their social media pages saying that they were putting their band, Madison Violet, which they formed in 2000, on indefinite hiatus after their final show of this tour- which includes one more show at Celtic Colours in Cape Breton, and a few more in Western Canada, and then through November and into December in Germany and Switzerland. MacEachern said in the video that both she and MacIsaac are going to be focusing on other projects that have kept getting put on hold due to their perpetual and hectic touring schedule, which has kept the band at the forefront of their focus for the past 25 years.
Since 2000 Madison Violet has released twelve albums. Their newest is The Best of Brenley & Lisa, which was just released and features 20 tracks of both their own and fan favourites from their discography. Their music is rooted very firmly in storytelling and narrative. Each of their songs could be studied lyrically as a poem, and they also very often write about their own personal experiences in love, grief, and navigating familial relationships, often against a backdrop of some sort of cultural or societal context that connects the individual to the collective. MacEachern and MacIsaac also tell very honest stories connected to the themes of their songs (as well as incredibly hilarious stories of their shenanigans), which creates a very intimate experience with their audience.
I have only been a Madison Violet fan since March of 2019 so I still feel very much like a newbie by comparison; I know many folks who were at the show last Friday have watched the band evolve and MacIsaac and MacEachern grow and change along with it from close to the very beginning. Yet, even just in six years, I feel like I know Brenley and Lisa through their music, and I know that others in the community they’ve created spanning multiple countries feel the same way. And, in turn, because many of the themes that they write about are so universal, it is easy to connect with certain songs or particular albums as you navigate the emotional and difficult aspects of your own life. For me, I associate Eleven (2022) very specifically with the summer before my mom died, and even though it’s objectively quite a reflective album exploring simultaneously one person falling in love while another person’s relationship is ending, it has become a nostalgic reminder for me of how happy and carefree I used to be before everything in my life shattered. Having now lost all three pillars in my life: my mom, my grandmother, and my Aunt Carol, I connect with Madison Violet’s discography differently. Sometimes when I would have ordinarily skipped “The Woodshop,” for example, now I listen to it deliberately because it feels cathartic to cry.
This is my first experience having a band that I not only love but have been fortunate enough to be able to see multiple times disband, and to be able to take part in the celebratory, melancholy, excitement and anxiousness around this sort of “end of an Era” moment. It was a much more collaborative experience than other concerts I’ve attended, with the audience really taking the reigns quite a bit in requesting favourite songs, especially in the second half of the show. You really got the sense that the audience would have sat there all night- would have merrily sat through and sang along with MacEachern and MacIsaac singing every single song they had ever recorded starting with “Light It Up” and ending with “Out On the Weekend” because no one wanted the evening to end- every extra song the crowd managed to convince them to squeeze in postponed the inevitable goodbye for another few minutes.
And while this concert isn’t the end of the line for MacEachern and MacIsaac, they still have a slew of dates left in other places, and indeed, it wasn’t even their last show at the Carleton, they had two sold-out shows the following day too, I could hear something different in their voices as they sang, and even in the fiddle and the harmonica as they played, there was this little edge to everything, a little extra emphasis; they were really givin’er’ every ounce of energy, effort, talent, and care that they could possibly muster.
In keeping with their propensity to find ways to bring their fans further into the world of their music their new album offers short descriptions in the CD sleeve of each of the 20 tracks that outline not just a sentence or two about the song’s theme or narrative, but it also references where in the world each song was written. “Time to Write the Wrong,” for example, was written here in Halifax. It is a heart wrenching song written about MacEachern’s brother, Stevie, who was abused by a Catholic Priest beginning when he was an eleven year old alter boy. While the song is set in Ontario, it having been written here seems symbolic in a way to the fact that the abuses covered up by the church have affected people like Stevie in communities across the country and around the world. Tragically, this abuse really derailed Stevie’s life as we see in “Time to Write the Wrong,” which begins with, “You were never going to be on the hockey team/ you were already high on the dope,” and I find that the song, and Stevie’s story more broadly, really highlights the fact that folks live with the trauma of unhealed, stigmatized, and repressed abuse, and that can often lead to struggles with addiction, which can lead to a myriad of other ways that they can be further stigmatized and marginalized.
One thing that has really struck me about the music of Madison Violet, but also with MacEachern and MacIsaac in general, is how much they lead with empathy and open hearts, and they seem to attract a fanbase who do the same. I know it hasn’t always been easy for them, but the amount of compassion and care for one another it must have taken for two people going through a breakup after a ten year relationship to continue to collaborate on crafting these highly personal songs, many of which explore aspects of their own relationship, and that breakup, but then also the ability to co-write songs about aspects of subsequent relationships also requires a hefty dose of grace, love, and respect for one another. That sense of safety with one another allows them to present the messy truths in their lyrics that reflect real life, and allows their fans to love and connect with them as fellow complex, imperfect individuals just trying their best to follow their hearts in a difficult world.
I could feel how special MacEachern and MacIsaac were to the crowd that packed in the Carleton on Friday night, that the songs weren’t just fun bops and jams, but fond memories, and vessels that had carried them through their own challenging times, blankets that they had nestled into for comfort, and nights out that they would cherish forever. What a legacy for Brenley and Lisa to leave behind.
The very first Madison Violet song I ever heard was “Tell Me” from their 2019 album Everything’s Shifting, and that was the first song that they performed last Friday at the Carleton, which feels like a bittersweet full circle moment. I can’t help but reflect a little bit on how much I have survived between 2019 and now, and I have been singing along to these eleven albums through all of it. I’m left with just profound gratitude for Brenley and Lisa for sharing their talents, their hearts, and their experiences as they too navigate the rough terrain of the world and in such a poetic and poignant way. I feel sad at the prospect of this being the end of something that has meant so much to me, and something that I wish I had discovered 19 years earlier, but I am also excited to see what happens next. The community that has congregated through the love of this music and the two brilliant individuals who have brought it to such vivid life will not dissipate. I think in some ways we are all trauma bonded together. I hope that as Brenley and Lisa go bravely down their own separate paths, they continue to feel the love and support of their community buoying them up.
There’s an iconic line in “Small of My Heart” where MacEachern sings, “I haven’t been up Number 9 for months/ but the sign says ‘you’re a stranger only once,’” and I feel like that is the ambiance of the Madison Violet community too. Once you’ve found your way in, you belong, and, of course, in this moment “when [you] leave/ it’s hard to let you go.”
Madison Violet performs in Milestones and Memories on Friday October 17th, 2025 at 7:30pm at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia as part of Celtic Colours. It’s sold out, but you can watch the Livestream here!
