Renée Lamoureux’s first solo disc, the very personal I Fall for You, is the result of a five-year journey to build confidence in her personal sound.

While still committed to her primary project, Keith and Renée, Lamoureux has been putting aside music for five years that she wanted to develop on her own.

“I needed a new outlet for the material I was producing that didn’t fit the sound or style of Keith and Renée,” she says.

Lamoureux decided to develop a solo project after her first attempt at skydiving with her sister during a Keith and Renée tour stop in Nashville, Tennessee.

“After I got back, I realized if I can jump out of a plane, I can finish this album.”

Within a week of returning home from that tour she was working on putting the album together with Murray Pulver (Doc Walker).

Four months later, it was done.

Lamoureux notes that her development as an artist has been about her finding confidence in herself and recognizing she can master her craft.

“Even going back to starting Keith and Renée, it took me a while to believe in myself,” she says. “I’m a really cautious person. But I’m a really persistent person, so I get it done.”

Lamoureux’s musical roots are simple, humble and quintessentially Manitoban.

She grew up in Île-Des-Chênes, Man., a small French town 20 minutes south of Winnipeg. Her father is a farmer and truck driver, and her mother is a schoolteacher.

“The first song I (ever) wrote was an assignment from a teacher. Songwriting quickly became a way of journal writing for me.”

As a child, Lamoureux began singing in French and performed as part of the French festival scene.

Although she now performs professionally in English, Lamoureux still speaks French with her family.

“Speaking French and being francophone is really important to me,” she says. “I produced one song in French on this album, but my aspirations as an artist are to eventually be able to release a full album in French. It will be hard and I need to get better, but it is something I hope to eventually to be ready for.”

Published in Volume 67, Number 2 of The Uniter (September 12, 2012)