September 27, 2019, Toronto
John McGrath is an author and former reporter for CBC Radio.
I’ve known you as an arts administrator and bureaucrat for decades. Why write songs and produce an album now?
I would say that I am uncovering the deep past. I’ve always loved music. In high school and university. I started playing music with friends. We were writing songs and trying to be like a group of the 1970’s. It was fun, but everyone drifted-off. I went on to do an MBA in arts management and the rest is history. My guitar sat in its case in the house like a talisman. After a day in the office, I didn’t feel like playing, but there was a sense of longing there. Whenever I went to hear someone play, I wondered, could I do that?
When my retirement was in sight, I said to my wife, on more than one occasion, I am going to play guitar again. Working at the City of Toronto in City Hall, I was fortunate to have Mike Tanner, a Music Officer there, as a friend. He recommended I go to Kitchen Music Studios. I was fairly accomplished at this stage of my career and feeling pretty good about myself. So, to start all over again as a beginner at Kitchen Music Studios was daunting. On top of that the teacher they assigned to me, Nick Tateishi, was so good at playing guitar that it was scary. At the first lesson, I could barely play. That was two years ago this September.
Four months into taking guitar lessons, my wife signed me up for a songwriting workshop Toronto Songwriting School as a surprise Christmas gift, and in January 2018 I started going to a song-writing workshop. It was not that easy for me to go into a place that I didn’t know, with people I didn’t know. Once I get going its fine, but it is hard to start. So, here I am, heading off into a dark, cold, rainy January night, wondering why I am doing this.
The workshop was taught by Murray Foster. For the first hour, he talked about the things we needed to know about songwriting, and then he split us up in pairs to write a song. If anyone told me this was what was going to happen, I might not have gone. But Murray made it easier by saying it’s a rainy night, make the song about rain, and do it in G. I am paired with Jennie Foster, and we went off and wrote a song in 30 minutes. The song “All This Rain” is on the album. So there must have been some dry kindling lying around, because a spark was lit in me that night.
At the end of the six-week workshop, my wife asked me, “What comes next?” I had brought a brochure home and it said in big words “Record Your Songs”. So, she emailed the school and signed me up for a recording session with Murray Foster in his studio.
It was another example of starting from a cold start. Writing a song and singing a song is one thing, but to go in and record the guitar and vocals was another learning experience. I was still taking guitar lessons, and my guitar playing was improving, so I was in no hurry to get it all done. Over the course of a year and a half we recorded nine songs. Murray is great to work with and has tons of experience. Murray added his production to all those songs. Here we are, Morning Light is now ready.
So, it is one cold start after another. Three of them: picking up the guitar again, writing songs and recording. That takes a lot of courage. Is that courage that you wouldn’t have had when you were younger?
During my career at the City, I worked with visual artists on public art projects. What that taught me is that you really can’t create something unless you are fearless, in terms of not being afraid of failure. What does success mean? There are layers to success. I already have songs that my friends and family like, but releasing them to the world seems like another cold start.
You wrote songs when you were young. Can you remember the difference between writing the songs then and now?
There are several things that are different. One is that I’ve heard a lot more songs in my life, than I had heard then. Two, I’ve learned that you need to work through several drafts of a song before it is finished. Three, I wrote many one-page briefing notes on complex topics during my career in government. They had to be clear enough that someone who doesn’t know anything about the topic can read through the page and know what the issue is, without any superfluous words. So in writing songs, I understand the economy of language better than I did when I was young.
There is an arc in the album from when you were left alone, after your previous wife passed away, and now you have a second family. Was that conscious or was that stuff just emotional and on your sleeve?
When I was working on the album, I realized that there is this sorrow to happiness thing happening through the songs. It wasn’t deliberately autobiographical, but probably somewhere in my subconscious I was working through my own understanding of what I had gone through in the last decade; understanding my happiness now, and what it took to get there. I suffered a loss and was able to regain something. I’ve had the birth of a child recently. These are all things that I experienced personally and felt deeply. I am hoping that when people hear the songs, it reminds them of something that they may have gone through. The song “In the Morning Light” is about the moment my daughter was born.
Who are your favourite artists? Who influenced you?
My musical tastes keep evolving. When I started out it was James Taylor and Jackson Brown. That has transcended through the years to Wilco and Bon Iver. Generally it’s artists, whose lyrics are important to them, who are trying to say something, and they are musically interesting.
So tell me about your upcoming performance at the Gladstone Hotel on November 3rd.
We are now embarking on my fourth cold start; we are going to play the album live. Murray Foster is going to play bass guitar, my guitar teacher Nick is going to play lead guitar and my good friend and neighbour Rob Hamilton is going to play percussion. We have a special guest, singer-songwriter Mary Milne, who will open the show. Where it goes from there, I don’t know, but I am completely open to whatever transpires.
There’s something fascinating about starting something new at this age, at our age.
I’ve been doing some self-reflection. I was a father. I have two wonderful sons. I was a husband. I was a musician. And now I am a father and husband again, and a musician again. This is a gift that I’ve been given at this stage of my life and I am eternally grateful for it. As stressful as it may be to get up on a stage and play with a band, I decided that I’m not going to sweat about it. We’re just going to do it.
Terry Nicholson’s Live Music and Album Release Party
November 3, 2019
7 p.m.
Gladstone Hotel, Melody Bar
Tickets: Eventbrite