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.
I think Chet was probably a young person that struggled. I think the connecting point was, maybe this was more than just a young kid learning music, it was a lifeline. I'd like to believe it was. I could be using my imagination a little bit, but I think part of it is people that are hurt or damaged or spiritually carrying some weight, they tend to recognize one another. At the flip side, music and art was the key link to everything, to happiness and the drive. I consider myself lucky that the role of art and music has typically played in my life is that it saved me and continues to.
Because it was that outlet for you when you were struggling, and people around you were struggling, is that what led to a bit of that darker, bluesy kind of sound?
I think so. It's also the company you keep and the circles you move around in. For much of my life that's how and where I lived, so I think it definitely did. As a little kid, I remember seeing Elvis on TV, and it wasn't that long after that, I discovered Black American music. I don't know what you would call that in a politically correct way, but with the early blues guys, the early soul guys, it seemed every time I found something I liked, if I looked a little further, a Black artist would have done it first and more effectively.
So if you kind of look at it from a slightly more mature place, you realize music is intrinsically connected to suffering, marginalization, and oppression. I’m certainly not comparing my struggles to anybody else's, but I started seeing that correlation to where it's not just being an entertainer. It took me a long time to get to that, but I don't know that I'm an entertainer.
What would you see yourself as?
As I get older, I see it more as being in service to something and not in a religious way. It was a hard thing because I was never a natural performer. I didn't take to it right away. It was a necessity because if I'm going to write these songs, they aren’t even songs if I'm not sharing them in some way. That was a harder thing to learn, to talk to audiences, and lead a band.
Not in the preacher's sense but when I say ‘in-service’ I mean, for me, when I go to see music or something in the arts I want to be moved or uplifted or challenged or inspired. I have this songwriter friend whenever we'd be traveling to see a performer, he would always lean in and whisper into my ear ‘better not waste our time,’ and I always loved that. I want to see somebody walk on stage and I want to be taken somewhere. Looking around at the state the world is in, I don't know if there's enough room for frivolous ear candy anymore. Maybe what we endeavour should be more meaningful and should be designed to resonate the right ways.
I mean this could all just be me getting older too. As I say it now, it sounds like a guy just getting older.
I feel that does just come with age because when you're younger, everything is always about you and what is happening to you. But when you get older, you get to see a different perspective about the world around you.
That's very true. It's also very informative coming back to the you part of it, where you realize and learn to take things in a certain context and understand and appreciate them. And your suffering seems different when you've seen somebody else that’s suffered.
I do want to talk about your specific set at Harvest Sun. You are going to be doing something different: a poetry reading as well as a performance.
Yeah. I've done this a handful of times since the book came out. When I was writing it, I reconnected with a trusted friend. We had met in grade 4; lifelong friends. We were in our first band together as kids. We were terrible.
We reconnected after 20 somewhat years. I had begun producing artists here in my little studio, and he had been a fly on the wall for more than a dozen recordings with all these artists he's never heard of. This was a whole new world for him, and somewhere in the middle of it he said to me, ‘you know I've got this ten-year dream. I'm going to use your songs to teach myself to play the piano, and I want to be a piano player and travel with you.’ I loved that. I was so taken by the idea that I said ‘let's just do this. Let's dive in!’ He's done a handful shows with me. He was walking with me on many outings when I was writing the poetry, so it's neat for me that it's going way back to where I started and the first people I ever tried to make music with.
What's also been neat is that I stopped touring. I stepped away from a lot of that stuff, and I'm easing my way back out, and I'm seeing things a bit through his eyes now. Everything's amazing to him. This is so new. I love telling the audience, here's a middle-aged guy; like who decides that at middle age I'm going to learn the piano. I'm going to start doing this, and it's had an amazing effect on his life and his family. And I love that story.
It's a quiet set. It's not a rock ‘n roll show, but it combines short poems and short songs that relate to those poems and then basically our story. We've done this a handful of times now, and audiences seem to get something out of it.
For anybody that’s sort of on the fence about heading to Harvest Sun. What would you say are the best reasons to go?
I think most people feel overwhelmed with everything going on in current society from the news to politics. I mean there's no shortage of things to be overwhelmed by. This is the folk ethic where it goes back to this little town that has a sense of spirit and energy invested in it. Look what happens, there’s Harvest Sun, and now there's Harvest Moon. There are these festivals that are bringing life back to their community. It's not just some pop thing where we roll in and get up on stage. It's meaningful, so I'd say if anybody were on the fence, if they felt overwhelmed or cynical or depressed, and they wanted to step out of it, this is where you step out of it.
Be sure to catch Scott Nolan at The Harvest Sun Music Festival in Kelwood, MB - August 16 - 18th. With only a few days left to go tickets are still on sale now but they’re going fast!
Follow Scott on Facebook, Instagram, and his official website.
Janet Adamana is the Founder/Editor-In-Chief of Sound, Phrase & Fury Magazine - a Winnipeg-based digital publication dedicated to promoting independent artists and industry professionals from all over the world. More than just about inciting hype, she interviews/writes to capture an artists’ essence and their greatest passions to ignite meaningful connections between fans and really great bands.