Art-pop-torch-folk songwriter • producer • guitarist • vocalist • keyboardist
Tell me about a “happy accident” in one of your productions.
We recorded a couple of the songs for my most recent album, Imaginings, in our apartment. On the song, “Better” you can actually hear the sound of cars driving by outside the window on the wet, rainy pavement. That was definitely a “happy accident” because in one part of the lyrics it talks about hearing the cars driving outside my window as they go back and forth to work each day.
How autobiographical are your songs?
Almost always! My songs are usually about an experience I’ve been through or an emotion I’ve felt, but once in a while, I’m inspired to write a song about something a friend or family member has been through too. I’ve also written a couple of imagined ‘fictitious’ songs like “Horizon” just for fun. Often my songs sort of drop out of thin air though too, out of my subconscious I guess, and then I realize what they’re about later. It can be really interesting…
What comes first, the words or the music?
For me, it’s mostly the music that comes first. I think that’s because I learned music first as a piano player and the first songs I made up as a kid were instrumentals. It all starts with an emotion or energy and and from there I usually get a piano figure or motive that comes married to a melody that I sing wordlessly out loud. My job after that is to catch the words I connect to as they fall out, and that’s usually when I discover what the song is about or at least what the theme is going to be. Often I’m inspired to write an entire lyric out of just one word, or phrase that speaks to me. It makes me feel like a star catcher.
How often do you write songs?
Not often enough! It really depends on if you mean finished songs or ideas. I’m always coming up with ideas or ‘bits’ as I like to call them.
Tell me how you wrote your featured song.
“Tall Buildings” came to me very intuitively. I came up with the piano pattern first. I was just sitting at the piano one day and the pattern appeared under my fingers and I got hooked to it right away. I have a mini recording setup at home, so I immediately started layering some claps and snaps. If you listen really close you can also hear some faint panting sounds, which I had added right away in the original demo as well, which really invoke the rat race of the city. I live in Vancouver, and I had been thinking a lot about and questioning the pressure to get a corporate job, get a fancy house and get in huge debt, so that’s where the lyrics come from I think – a cheeky skepticism of the urban way of life.
You can see the music video we made for “Tall Buildings” here. We created and filmed the crazy cardboard piano city ourselves, with the help of our friends over two months in our apartment.
Listen to the featured song!
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