It’s that time of year. We’re all drawing up lists and making master plans for our new lives – everything starts now. I’m no different. One of my goals for 2012 is to re-open a steady flow of communication between me and you. I haven’t blogged regularly since my Workshop video series. Over the next year and beyond, I’d like to share my thoughts on inspiration, the creative process, career and anything else that flows in and out of music and life. I’ll be posting something new twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday. I hope you’ll come back and visit and share your thoughts too.
I’m starting with a multi-part riff on how my relationship to music and creativity has evolved over the last 15 years, since I started to sing my songs in public at the Yellow Door Coffeehouse in Montreal. And so the journey begins.
LIFE EXPERIENCE
It’s been a slow ride, but I’m beginning to realize that the art you create can only be as rich as the life you lead.
The bike I rode while recording in Nashville in 2010
I went to Concordia University for Communications in my hometown, Montreal. Like most of my high-school peers, I stayed living at my parents’ house (isn’t it weird how at some point it becomes your “parents’ house” and not your own?). It didn’t even occur to me that I might want to leave Montreal and experience something different. All through university, I stayed in Montreal – I was still working on the basic stuff like finding the courage to ask girls out and make friends.
My summers were spent working as a councillor at Camp Massad, a Jewish summer camp in the Laurentians. My first (and last, outside of touring Canada and the US) trip to explore some other part of the world was in 2001, when I drove with my friends Eran and Robbie from Montreal to Austin, Texas. That trip opened my eyes a bit and eventually led to me writing the song “Stay Gritty”.
After university, I lived for part of 2002 and 2003 with my aunt and uncle in Highland Park, New Jersey, and spent many nights sleeping on couches in New York City and going to coffeehouses and beginning to learn about all the talented people there are out there. I learned a lot about music – but I never dove into the wild river that is living and making art in New York City. It was all very tentative. While I don’t regret it, I left NYC and was back at “my parents’ house” – borrowing money to begin recording and learning with the amazing Brothers Creeggan in Canada.
The Brothers Creeggan, Kurt Swinghammer, Paul Forgues and me during the sessions for "I'll Bring The Stereo"
While the 20’s can be an exciting time when a lot of us travel, explore and soak it all up, I feel I’m just beginning to let go of the anxious need to always be producing and promoting something, allowing time to peak around the corners I’ve previously hurried past (probably on my way to the gig) and live a bit more. It’s showing itself in subtle strokes like accepting an invitation to a potluck from a yoga teacher whose class I had just taken in Dufferin Grove Park earlier that evening – to broader strokes like beginning to plan a trip to Mali this year (my first time overseas, expect for traveling to Israel).
For me, a fuller life has to do with relaxing and letting in the infinate shades that float past my senses every day. And I’m learning to trust this thing called Life, that it will eventually come around and share some of its bounty with the artist in me and filter back out to you somehow.
What are some of your watershed life experiences? How have they influenced your work?
The best sandwiches I've ever had, this place is in Burlington, VT
Music listened to while writing this post:
Bill Frisell’s Nashville
The Beach Boys’ Carl & The Passions – “So Tough”
and a bit of Carters Family
