 Singer/songwriter, poet, and all-around storyteller, Scott Nolan, has been treating audiences to introspective, moving art his entire career. Incorporating short poetry readings from his debut poetry book, Moon Was a Feather, and songs from his massive collection, his upcoming Harvest Sun set will for sure be a feast for the soul.
Scott spoke with us about how music and poetry helped him through a difficult youth, finding his footing as a performer, and what it means to continue creating art. How did you get started in writing and recording? I started playing guitar probably around six years old. I was always attracted to music, but no music teachers really had much to do with me. My first music teacher fired me, and I was chased out of junior high band. I fumbled around until maybe my very young teens when I first discovered Osborne Village. There I met Lenny Broad, a revered virtuoso guitar player and his son Chet. Chet was the first person that sat with me in any form or capacity as a teacher and recognized that not all kids learn the same way. The writing [started] around eleven or twelve. During a difficult period of my adolescence, I had a cousin who committed a murder and wound up spending the rest of his life in a prison in California. Through my difficult adolescence and substance abuse and all kinds of stuff, he mentored me through prison letters from somewhere around 11 on, maybe when he first turned his life around with poetry. I often say at the end of violence is poetry. As a young kid, I had one foot in music, and the rest of me was in a darker place. I had this cousin, and he was a heavy guy, somebody that you looked up to whether it was for the right reasons or not. He was writing to me, and he would always encourage the music and encourage the poetry. He would send me poets’ names. He would take books out of the prison library and mail them to me. I always had that whether I knew what it was at the time or whether I could fully appreciate it at the time.
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 James Culleton is an all-around multi-faceted artist. From being a musician, painter, and illustrator, James gets to exercise every aspect of his imagination to create an endless portfolio of awe-inspiring and moving pieces of work.
As a true artist never rests, James sat down with me all the while drawing our interaction, we spoke about his beginnings in art and music, and how he melds both visuals and sound to create his masterpieces. You’re a multi-faceted artist, so what artform came first? Art and drawing. My older brother was an artist, so I followed in his footsteps. The person who taught me how to play guitar was my cousin, Billy. Years later, I found out he actually didn’t know how to play guitar. So would you say that you came from an artsy family? Not so much my parents but my mom’s side of the family is from Quebec, and back in 2004, I did a project where I was rediscovering my french roots. I found all sorts of music and art. My grandfather was a fiddle player, and my aunt Doris played music, so there’s quite a bit of music on that side. You're mainly a guitarist, but do you play any other instruments? I've been playing a lot of piano lately. At the festival, I might even add that to the set. Can you go into developing your sound, especially when you first started? There was a band in my neighborhood called the Crop Circles. They were a bunch of friends of mine who played music, and I always wanted to be but was never in the band. I was writing and playing my own music alongside what they were doing. I just never stopped where that band folded a long time ago. My interests are varied. I like old-timey music. I like Elvis and Ray Orbison, but my songs are probably a mixture of country, folk, rock and maybe some old-time jazz. The last full album I did was called ‘Vanished Days.’ That one was about farming in the early 1900s in the Red River Valley. It was all a part of an artist residency that I did while I was in North Dakota. I had unearthed all of these poems and prose that was written in the 20s and 30s and rehashed them into an album.  Fan-favourite, Al Simmons, is always guaranteed to give audiences endless entertainment and belly-deep laughs! Well-known for his wacky, ingenious creations, and hilarious tunes, The Harvest Sun performance veteran has also become known as the most coveted impulse collaborator at the festival.
Al spoke with us about the unique gadgets he’ll be bringing, his favourite things about Harvest Sun, and who he’d love to do a surprise HS collaboration with. You always are, by far, the fan favourite at every Harvest Sun and everywhere you perform! What do you think it is about your act that speaks to everyone, both young and old? It couldn’t possibly be my bad puns. It must be my charming personality. We’ve been asking this year’s performers, who they would LOVE to have jump in on their set and do a spontaneous Harvest Sun collaboration with. Almost every single person named you! No pressure now, but who on this year’s roster would you want to have join your show? I’m hoping to have some of the members of Ego Spank join me for a song or two. We did a show together at the West End Cultural Centre last December, and it was great fun. I do plan on leaping onto the stage with many other performers during the festival.  Our local music scene got a real treat the day Parklandia formed. The Manitoba supergroup is the latest roots music collective made up of Kayla Luky, Marc Clement, Melisa Stefaniw and Ian MacIntosh.
We spoke with Kayla, Marc, and Melisa about what inspired them to play music, working together and the importance of celebrating the local community and homegrown talent. How did you each get involved in music? Marc: My mom was one of 16 children living in the country around the Ste. Amilie / Laurier area. Growing up, every family gathering I went to included a "hootenanny" portion filled with guitars, harmonies and mostly country music. These were the seeds that grew into an interest in guitar and singing in my early twenties. Family hoe downs graduated to campfires with friends and eventually performing cover songs in public. It wasn't until later in life that I got into songwriting and exploring my own style of music. Kayla: Growing up, my mom was always listening to the radio, which was a definite influence. Living in the middle of nowhere allowed my imagination to soar, so I was always creative (which included writing). When I was 12 or so I decided to pick up my mom's old guitar and teach myself how to play. Songwriting came very naturally after that. Melisa: I started playing the piano when I was 4. I was a terrible student and never learned to site read, so I spent many days with my eyes closed humming melodies until I realized I loved to write lyrics. I was obsessed with Kurt Cobain, and after he died, my parents bought me my first guitar. Songwriting took off from there.  Raw emotion and the endless opportunities to connect with others are Matt Foster’s favourite aspects of music. At a young age, the singer/songwriter was drawn to the art form simply to explore one of the oldest forms of human communication.
After years of touring the world through different musical projects, Foster has branched into a solo career, where he can further create those meaningful moments with his audience and experiment with his latest songs. Matt spoke with us about the adventure that is collaboration, letting go as a musician and what he appreciated most about music. How did you get involved in music in the first place? I almost don’t know how. There’s no real music in my family, but my older brother had maybe taken some guitar lessons so there was a guitar around and I just felt like I wanted to. Maybe sports wasn’t working or something. Oh yeah, like you just needed a hobby. Yeah, and my parents are just like any parents trying to put their kids into whatever. I don’t know why I fell in love with it, but it ended up being a way to connect with friends. It was really about people. I learned the guitar in a sort of lonely guitar lesson kind of way. I don’t think I ever really loved it or not, but I knew enough by the time I was 12 or so to be able to make some noise in the basement with my friends. I’ve just been doing it ever since. It’s the connection to others that I think draws me to music. So when you were learning, did you get formal lessons, or did you teach yourself? I took weekly guitar lessons for a long time, and I think I learned a lot without actually knowing that I had learned a lot. I was terrible at practicing, but I was interested, so I absorbed it. I didn’t get any good until I started playing with friends in bands. I think the ability to play music sat dormant in me for a long time. I’ve always been attracted to people with terrible voices, and that sort of bang-and-smash kind of attitude towards music.  Better Than drummer, Rick Waterman, got his start in music by surprise. After spontaneously receiving a drum set from his parents when he was a kid, he quickly picked up the skills to play and garnered a new fascination with rock ‘n roll.
Fast-forward to 2019, and the band, which also started somewhat randomly, has been gracing crowds with a blend of the best elements in rock ’n roll. We spoke with Rick about his start in music and developing the band’s eventual sound. When did you first get involved in music? My parents surprised me with a drum set. There was a band in town, and their drummer had bought a new set and wanted to get rid of his old one. My parents picked it up for pretty cheap and brought it home. They thought I might like to play it. They were right (laughs). Were you sticking to a specific genre or anything when you were learning? I listened to what was in my parents’ music collection, so I ended up listening to a lot of different kinds of music. It was a lot of early rock. Then I discovered the radio, and they played good music, so I liked listening to it. When I was a teenager, I started listening to whatever my friends were listening to at the time.  Rick Neufeld’s story is what movies are made of; fueled by big dreams, world travels, and chance encounters that eventually build up to his remarkable career in the music industry. The singer/songwriter, most famous for writing The Bells hit, “Moody Manitoba Morning,” spoke with us about his start in music, his life-changing trip to Europe, and finding new found fulfillment driving tour buses for some of the world’s biggest acts.
How did you get involved with music in the first place? Growing up Mennonite and on a farm, it was probably not too likely that I would get into music, but I guess it was just a part of my rebellion. I thought I was going to be an architect, but when I went to school at the University of Manitoba, I saw Simon and Garfunkel there. I got to meet Paul Simon at Memorial Park in the 60s, back when Memorial Park was a hippie hang out. Paul was just sitting there, so I spoke to him and played him some of my songs, and he encouraged me to chase that dream, so I quit university the next Monday and considered myself someone who was going to be making music for a living. So then you stuck with that and started out playing guitar? Yeah, that’s all I ever played. I don’t think I ever really got good at it, but from early on, I knew that I wanted to collaborate. I would play at coffee houses and stuff while I was saving up to travel to Europe. After a year of that, I went to Europe. A lot of things happened in sequence while I was there. I had never left Manitoba, and all of a sudden, I was over there with another fellow. We traveled around, and I bought a guitar in Madrid with whatever was left of my money, and that’s when I really started to play every day. Aside from getting that guitar was there anything else about that trip that motivated you to keep playing? When Leonard Cohen came out with his album, I related to it because he wasn’t a great singer or guitar player, but he had the most amazing way with words. I wasn’t at any level of being able to do that yet, but I learned every song on that record. When we were in Rome I was playing that guitar on some Spanish steps, and somebody came up and started singing one of Leonard Cohen’s songs, and it ended up being him! He had been spending a lot of time in Greece and would come to Rome sometimes, and that’s the first time I met him, and that inspired me like crazy. Further on in that Europe trip, I met a guy who had a car, and we decided to travel with him. He was going to law school in London and was studying music law. His dad was a publisher from Saskatchewan and wrote jingles. When he finally got back to Canada, we went to his place in Montreal. He was very successful as a jingle writer, and I played him some of my songs, and he liked them. He said, ‘we’re going to make a record someday, but right now I’m producing somebody called The Bells. Write me a song, and I’ll get it on their album.’ When I got back to Manitoba I wrote ‘Moody Manitoba Morning,’ and they recorded it. That’s sort of how I broke through. After a while, I started having anxiety about performing, and I was starting to get really interested in buses. I had been driving the bus for my band then, and Bruce Cockburn decided he wanted to use my bus. He got tired of flying, so I started driving him around and decided the tours were much more fulfilling than me having to go on stage on these little gigs I was doing. I kept writing songs but for the next 35 years and drove buses and worked with just about everybody. |
AuthorSnapshots of Manitoba music and the artists making it! Archives
August 2019
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