Music has always been an escape for me. Some people have video games, I had my guitar.
I started playing guitar around about when i went into my first year in Secondary School. It was me and another boy in a class full of girls. He was in all the musicals and was able to rock up and sing “let it be” without even having to think about it and I was the opposite to that. I was so self conscious back then. I can remember playing my first cover song in front of my class and shaking so much with anxiety.
My guitar teacher was Michael Sheridan. Without realising it at the time he was a huge influence on me as a player. He got me interested in some great music. To him i’m sure i was just another one of his students but looking back now I am so grateful to him for his way of teaching.
One of the first licks I ever learned to play was “Hey Joe“ by Jimmy Hendrix. He didn’t go for the traditional “learning to play guitar 4 chord songs“. He taught me songs with both rhythm guitar and lead so that every lesson turned into a jam session by the end. We would play songs like “wish you were here“ by Pink Floyd or “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak. Don’t get me wrong, some lessons were spent just going over all major chords and all minor chords, then scales and pentatonic scales but these were the stuff i loved practicing. Theres something simply beautiful about major scales and i use them in my songs quite a lot.
My cousin who is a similar age to me also played. He was always at the same level as me on guitar, maybe a bit better, a bit more focused when it came to learning difficult songs and picking patterns. We would always play at Christmas and family gatherings. He is a great song writer and player so growing up i always envied his songwriting skills that I lacked. I couldn’t wrap my head around the process of writing words to a song. So i resorted to the fact that id always be at this level of competency.
When I finished taking lessons I played mostly at school and I used music as a distraction from life things like my parents splitting up. Over the years following I only played the things I knew, Rarely put down anything new.
Fast forward to 2020, Im in Vancouver on a working holiday visa and Im working in Water Street Cafe in Gastown after being off for two and a half months due to the biggest pandemic the world has ever seen. I had bought myself a loop pedal and a guitar and amp as a birthday present to myself the year before so i was using the lockdown to get back into playing and creating music.
One day a musician rocked up to play a gig on our patio in work. He was playing all the classic busker songs and I thought that I could definitely do that as an extra earner. I marched into my boss and said “before this summers out, I will have played a gig on the patio“ to which he responded without hesitation, “well lets book it in now!!“
He put me in touch with the booking agent who looks after the restaurant and within a couple of weeks I was playing 3 hour sets on the patio. One gig led to another, then another, then another location then to a proper venue. So i had reason to practice my craft again. To get better at gigging and to be able to take it anywhere.
One day while journaling I stumbled on some inspiration for a song. I wrote down 4 lines to my first song momentum which would be the chorus and then I expanded. I was unlocked. I had realised that there weren’t really any rules to the craft of songwriting so I kept going.
Later I realised that my boss was a part owner in a recording studio and record label. He said to me “lets get you some time in the studio“. I took it with a pinch of salt. Having spent the past 10 years trying to get work as an actor I had learned that words said like that don’t always lead to much. I had become quite the pessimist.
Later I got an email inviting me to the studio as a thank you for all my hard work in the restaurant and as a birthday present. I was blown away. I spent a half day tracking Guitar, Vocals and Drums for Momentum. The result was great, even without much mixing Momentum sounded pretty good. I went home and played it for my brother and he said “it was Actually really good” so thats when I knew i was on to something.
I started playing more and more and writing more and more. Then the studio emailed asking if id be interested in putting out 6 songs under their label. I couldn’t believe it.