Name: Eddie Schwartz
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, artist rights advocate
Nationality: Canadian
Current release: Eddie Schwartz's new Film School EP is out via Moody Hill.
Recommendations for Nashville, USA: The mother church of country music, the Ryman Auditorium is a must, and try to catch a show there. Also Bolton’s spicy chicken, but be prepared – it’s not for the faint of heart.
Topic I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: I have to say, my electric bike is a game changer, and I do love it. It’s very hilly where I live in Nashville, and before, riding on my non-electric bike, I felt like a heart attack was just around the corner. My electric one gives me just enough help to get over the steepest hills, and yet live to write another day. I’m good with that.

If you enjoyed this Eddie Schwartz interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, and Facebook.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I think there are multiple internal feedback loops at play with each other, and I seem compelled to attempt to react to them in a meaningful way.

I do read the news every day, my interactions with my family, my friends, the music business, technology are all swirling around and eliciting emotions, ideas, thoughts and feelings that need to find an outlet.

Songs on “Film School” and earlier songs like “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and “Don’t Shed a Tear” are definitely “in conversation” with what I was experiencing in real life.



Who was the “tough cookie” in “Hit Me," a potential lover or the world in general and the music business in particular at a time when I couldn’t catch a break? I could bitch and moan, or I could write a song. As it happens, I usually do both.

I live with an accomplished visual artist and my daughter is one as well, and they certainly enrich the creative process for me through their work and knowledge of art. And given the name of my current EP is “Film School," I think that speaks for itself in terms of the influence from that artform.

But my music is also very much about sharing, reaching out to people and seeing if what is going on for me has meaning for them. Community is very important to me and music has always been central in that.

Right now I am deeply affected and concerned about what’s going on politically and environmentally, locally, globally, and how that’s affecting the people I care about – and many others. “We Win,” “Waters Rise," “Has It Come to This” on the “Film School” EP reflect that.



But hopefully it’s expressed in a way that brings something positive and meaningful or even just satisfying to the conversation.

One other thing, the fact that I grew up in a household where the music of Woody Gutherie and Pete Seeger were daily staples exposed me to music as political and empowering, and particularly for the those who needed it most.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

It’s more about stumbling on music that gets my wheels turning, and then lyrically, is there something I want or need or am compelled to say? Very often I come up with some music that then inspires lyrics, or I start with a lyric idea, and then try to find music that can support that message.

I can often jam both music and lyrics, but that doesn’t mean either one is any good. So that jam can often be where something starts, and then the rewriting begins.

Almost always, it’s the rewriting and revising, and leaving it and coming back an hour – or another day or week later for that matter – is where an idea that may have some potential starts to stand on its own two feet. Or not.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

Coffee, a guitar or keyboard, and the voice recorder in my phone are my weapons of choice. And then it’s just about putting in the time. It seems that no matter what my mood or mindset, if I start to play an instrument the journey begins.

I work under the assumption that the music knows where it wants to go, and my job is to faithfully follow. And to be clear, it’s a job that I dearly love, and couldn’t live without.

Natural light is very important to me, and I’ll sit outside on our back porch and write with an acoustic guitar in hand. It’s possible in that case that my neighbors have already copyrighted my songs before I finish them, but so far that hasn’t come to light so to speak.

For the  Film School EP, what did you start with? If there were conceptual considerations, what were they?

Well to be perfectly honest, I needed an antidote to despondency over the current state of the world, and I needed it quickly.

I was in a long dry period – hadn’t really written a song in years, and I desperately missed how much making original music meant to me. I needed some self-therapy, which songs, thankfully, have always been for me.

“We Win” as a concept was a very welcome ray of light. Once that idea appeared I saw a path forward, and one that helped me cope, and that I was excited to complete and then share.



At a time when there is so much division and anger in the air, “If love counts for something, we win” the first line of the chorus of “We Win” was exactly the realization I desperately needed. And that was the start of the “Film School” songs, and me being able to write songs again after a long break.

So just a tremendous joy that I could pick up a guitar and find my way to writing a song again, and that was the positive feedback loop that led to “Film School”. But at some point, when I had a “We Win” and a few more songs under my belt, I did begin to see a thread that linked them, and I didn’t want to mess it up.

In particular, I knew it had to stay real, and make each song as good as I humanly could. And ‘humanly’ takes on a whole new meaning these days of course in light of generative AI.

Tell me a bit about the way the new material developed and gradually took its final form, please.

After years of cowriting in Nashville, I was burnt out, couldn’t write songs, and took a long hiatus from songwriting and focused on advocacy for music creators. Advocacy gave me a sense of purpose – I believe this generation and music creators in future should have the opportunities I have had, and that’s very challenging right now.

Anyway, “We Win” was the first song I had finished in years and it set the stage for more songs to come. I did have some ideas that had been neglected for years, and I felt ready to revisit them and see if I could bring them home. “Waters Rise” and “Outbound Train” were the next songs I was able to work on and finish.

Once I had the six songs that are “Film School” in hand, I saw them very visually, like six short subject films. The lyrics are very akin to dialogue in most of these songs, and I felt the music served as a kind of score. I also felt I had relearned how to write songs again, but at a different level.

So that’s where the EP title “Film School” came from.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

To my mind, a song is fundamentally a very simple thing; a sung lyric.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a great synth part, a cool drum groove, a catchy guitar riff, and all manner of other instruments and sounds. And those elements are important, but to the record, they’re not the song. So given that “sung lyric” definition, what could be more important than the words? Not much.

I’m trying to communicate, I want to connect with people, not be obscure. Songwriters often revel in the obscurity of their lyrics, but that’s often a cop out. So yeah, storytelling is a big part of it for me, and economy of words – saying what’s essential, nothing more and nothing less.

I want the lyrics to make sense on some level, not necessarily always in literal sense, but certainly in most of my songs there is literal sense to be made, whatever else may be in there. The words certainly cannot be just place-holders for the notes of the melody.

And the music and lyrics have to be made out of whole cloth, they have to seem inevitable. Made for each other and united forever, whether in fame or (much more likely) obscurity. I have had the privilege of working with many amazing musicians over the years. But most are not great songwriters because often, they underplay the importance of the lyric.

Look, great music draws you in, but it’s a great lyric that keeps you coming back for more.

What are areas/themes/topics that you keep returning to in your lyrics?

Empowerment as mentioned, and defiance is part of that as well.

Might seem strange, but I see “We Win” as a defiant song because in a time of anger and division, love is an embodiment of the opposite, in other words defiance. Strange to think of love that way, but these days there’s a lot of strangeness in the air.

And I’m always drawn to standing up for the underdog. Maybe that is in my own way channeling Woody and Pete. But also, if you’re an artist or an author or a songwriter, you are the underdog, and that’s never lost on me. So it’s all wrapped up together.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece?

I’m never satisfied, and will revisit a song over and over again. I only let it go when it occurs to me I am in dangerous territory and have to move on for my own mental wellbeing, or when my wife tells me if she hears ‘that song’ one more time she’s going to divorce me.

Of course, once a record is out there it’s a little late, but that won’t necessarily stop me. “Special Girl 2025” on “Film School” is an example.



I felt the original version was too 1980s, and so it was more about the production in that case. Not much I can do about the America and Meatloaf versions of the song.

But I guess I’ll just have to live with that ...



How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

Good question, and one I struggle with.

Ideally, a collection of songs on an album should be related in some way, and back in the day, when albums were the dominant format, there were many incredible concept albums as we know.

In the case of albums I was involved with that consisted of unrelated songs. We took a lot of time sequencing them so each song was placed where we thought it could be best appreciated, and supported the track before and the one after. So yeah, it’s important.

But at the moment, since streaming is so singles oriented, it does seem to be less important overall. Certainly each song has to be able to stand on its own in any case.

Music and the accompanying artwork are often closely related. Can you talk about this a little bit for your current project and the relationship that images and sounds have for you in general?

The “Film School” cover photo is a shot my father took sometime in the mid 1950s of me at the breakfast table in our modest Toronto home.

He had it developed to be viewed through a slide projector, so the slide itself was like a negative – transparent and designed for a light to shine through onto a screen. There’s actually a “Mad Men” episode that gets into this and the invention of “the carousel” which served as the projector.

The slides went into storage decades ago (my father passed away when I was 18) and I rediscovered them recently. The color is as you see it on the “Film School” cover, the original colors have aged to yellow and red. There is a poignancy to the photo that I think is also there in the songs on the EP. And the image is literally a small rectangle of film.

The “Film School” songs are very visual for me, and very vivid. In “Waters Rise” for example, I see the hapless fisherman, and the creatures below the waves, I see the Canadian Rockies as islands in a future sea, and I see Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian on the deck of the “The Bounty."



Also true of the passengers in “Outbound Train” – the card shark, the young priest,  and the couple in “We Win."

The images the music and lyrics conjure up are very real for me and hopefully come across for others.



After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

Definitely can relate, and part of the answer for me is there’s usually another song idea crying out for realization, and then, the one after that. So it never really ends.

Also, as an independent artist, once the record is done, there is lots to keep you busy, like being the record label, the manager, the cover designer, the social media purveyor, and all manner of other things. I don’t love all of it, so volunteers are welcome, but I do like the direct connection to the people who seem to like what I do, which I haven’t had as a ‘behind the scene’ guy in many of my other projects.

Being creative is always about filling a void to some extent, feeding a kind of hunger I suppose and processing what’s going on in the here and now. There are lulls of course, but the music is always  there for you to find. So it’s about getting back up on the horse. The sooner you’re on the trail again the better.

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

I’ve learned after all these years in music to keep my expectations very low, because for every high point there are many lows and disappointments.

That said, the response to “Film School” has been very humbling and gratifying. “We Win” has elicited some beautiful reviews and deeply moving personal messages I’ve received. I very much appreciate everyone who has listened and been so generous in their comments.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?  

I’m going to have to push back regarding the premise that making a great cup of coffee is a mundane task. Let’s acknowledge that a great cup of coffee and a song can both bring joy into our lives.

That said, I typically don’t reach quite as deeply into my soul when brewing coffee, as I do when I write a song, at least not yet. However, it’s not inconceivable that that may happen one day, and I certainly don’t want to preclude the possibility.

That said, making a great cup of coffee for someone else is an act of caring, and showing you care. Loading and emptying the dishwasher and wiping down the counter can also be acts of caring, maybe even love. So there may be more similarities than at first may be apparent.

However, one does hope that music caringly crafted and executed might reach a larger audience.