So, instead of doing one of those typical influence-laden biographies or press write ups that people do, I thought I’d shoot the breeze on what music means to me on a personal level and how it got me where I am.
I can remember several key catalyst moments that stand out: being given a 7” vinyl copy of Plastic Bertrand’s ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’ for my 6th birthday; discovering a dusty acoustic guitar under a couch at the back of a family shop; figuring out the melody to Harold Faltermeyer’s ‘Axel F’ on a friend’s cheap Casio keyboard. These things impressed a lifelong love of music and pop culture upon my young heart and mind.
I’ve since been guided and influenced over a lifetime by both artists and producers alike. It was never just about the music, but also the construction of it and how it came to be. I imbibed vital cues and clues across a spectrum that spanned the record sleeves of icons like Bowie, The Beatles and Springsteen through to discussions with local bar bands that came and went like a fast dream. I gained as much pleasure from listening to music as I did through dissecting it thanks largely to endless hours spent on YouTube watching engine room masters like Tony Visconti, Hugh Padgham, George Martin, and Jimmy Iovine.
Ah, music. You can’t master or tame it. You can only be a willing participant, a foot soldier at its command, always willing to channel its unknowable magic. It has an unreasonable way of making you get out of bed at 4am, jump into a closet and hum some half-formed melody into your phone so you won’t forget what might evolve into a great chorus six years later.
It requires no formal training either. I believe it’s elemental and comes from a realm that feels as instinctive as survival. It’s also highly subjective. So how you relate to it personally comes down to how it makes you feel. As the great Edward Van Halen once said: “If it sounds good, it is good”. Disliking Nickelback because you genuinely don’t like their music is very different from dismissing them outright because Dave Grohl made a meme once.
Music has literally shown me the world. From Abu Dhabi to Auckland, Barcelona to Bali, Cape Town to Calgary, Hamburg to Hanoi, Lisbon to London. And all the rest. I’ve had the pleasure and the good fortune to have travelled the globe via a bass or a guitar or a keyboard at either my own or someone else’s behest. Hell, I even got paid for it most of the time. Handsomely too.
I’ve had my tunes played on the radio, appear in small independent films, and even championed by broadcasters over paragraphs in Rolling Stone magazine. As a performer I’ve played house concerts, empty bars in the middle of nowhere, sold out theatres, thrumming summer festivals with audiences in the tens of thousands and TV spots from North America to Europe to Asia.
Through no intent of my own, I’ve noticed that my songwriting gravitates toward the minutiae of life: chance encounters, wistful introspection, and glimpses of the human condition. My music has a sort of fictional cinematic quality to it and as a result, my songs present like vignettes or short films. I adore Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and I love the cover art for Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours. The aesthetic of those scenes seems to make sense to me even though I’ve never experienced them. What’s most important is that I can harness and render approximations of these feelings and try to make you, the listener, feel them too. I seek to be an auteur of my own invented landscapes.
This leads to a personal tenet I hold for my music:
Not head. Not hips. Just music for the heart.
Basically, it means that if you want to dance, you’re shit out of luck with my stuff. Sure, I can rock as good as anyone, and I have done so many times all over the world. But sublime and heartfelt is the territory I naturally dwell in. That’s the soul that inhabits the music I’ve released across my little vanity label Crimson Retriever Records.
So, once you’ve danced yourself around and want to chill a little, put on some of my stuff. You’ll find a heart and soul in there I promise. Give it a try.
Oh yeah… remember that dusty guitar under the shop couch from all those years ago? Years later, I tracked down the owner, bought said instrument and it’s since appeared on every record I’ve made. Some things are just meant to be.
Yours in music,
:: DC ::
