Part 2

On the basis of a piece off The Grass Grows, Antonych Grows, tell me about how the lyrics grew into their final form and what points of consideration were.

When beginning the process for my latest album, The Grass Grows, Antonych Grows, I knew I wanted to adapt Bohdan Ihor Antonych’s poetry to a full length, but didn’t know how to approach it. I had adapted two of his poems on my previous album, but felt an album entirely made up of Antonych inspired songs needed a different set of sonics and lyrical attitude.

When a week opened up in spring of 2023 between two work contracts, I set out to write the album. Coming off a record that was largely guitar based, I figured I’d play my Yamaha PSR-37. I set up a bossa groove and began reading Antonych. The first poem to inspire singing was “Cherry Trees.”

Antonych was a May-bug and once lived on cherry trees,
on those cherry trees of which Shevchenko1 sang the praises.
My starry land, biblical and abundant,
the flowery homeland of the cherry tree and nightingale!
Where evenings are out of the Gospels, where there are dawns,
where the sky overwhelmed white villages with the sun,
the inspired cherry blossoms are blossoming curly and with a high,
just as in Shevchenko’s day they are steeping the song with hops again.
April 16, 1935
-Translated by Michael M. Naydan

The poem was beautiful, but it didn’t work as a song. Or at least it didn’t immediately find common ground with my own writing and voice. As the bossa groove continued, I simplified the sentiment of the opening line and personalized it: “I am a Bug”. I kept singing that and laughed to myself. “Yes! I am a bug.”

In changing up the language, I took more liberties, drawing upon the song’s images and sentiment, while not worrying about syntax or order. I aimed to capture the experience of receiving the poem rather than the poem itself.

I am a bug living on a cherry tree

Moonlit night
Biblical and plenty
The tree still stands among the nightingale
I am a bug from another century
Where the deathless poets still sing so sweet

There are evenings plucked out of gospels
There is dawn light and blossoms grow
The tree still standing
Same as shevchenko
Song bird’s drunk and steeped with thought

In adapting “Cherry Trees”, I figured out an approach to the record. Songs pull from multiple poems, language is changed liberally. Yet, they still feel tied to Antonych, or at least the vestige of his expression. And in using the keyboard and drum machine, I found an anachronistic pairing to the poetry’s pastoral imagery that felt oddly appropriate.

I'd love to know how you think the meaning or effect of an individual song is enhanced, clarified or possibly contradicted by the EPs, or albums it is part of. Does the song, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

Since I’ve written so long-windedly for the last few questions, I’ll be brief: contradictions all the way down.

When you're writing song lyrics, do you sense or see a connection between your voice and the text? Does it need to feel and sound “good” or “right” to sing certain words? What's your perspective in this regard of singing someone else's songs versus your own?

Yes, the connection needs to be there. And the “good”, of course, is not moralistic, but rather an intuitive “good” or “rightness” that you feel when you sing.

To return to an earlier response, it didn’t feel right to sing “Antonych was a May-bug”, but it felt “good” to sing “I am a bug.” I also think that you don’t know what words are “right” until you sing them, or learn how to sing them. This is why I write poetry now and later draw upon the words for songwriting - it frees up the potential to find more “good” words that are “right” for the song.

As for singing other people's songs, this is also a relevant question. I co-founded a group in Toronto, The Holy Oak Family Singers, that has been running for the last ten years. We often pay tribute to our favorite songwriters. It started with a Judee Sill night and has included tributes to the McGarrigles, Haruomi Hosono, Arthur Russell, The Roches, Steely Dan, Leonard Cohen, The Spice Girls, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ron Hynes, Mary Maragret O’Hara, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush … The collective includes over sixty musicians and songwriters in Toronto.

For Holy Oak nights, the process of choosing and adapting a song to my voice is always interesting. Especially since I sing in a very specific way. Often the words are ”good”, but the melody needs to be altered so the language lands “right” in my voice. Other times, there is a need to reconfigure the arrangement so that the words feel “good”.

Perhaps the ultimate interpreter is Nina Simone and she has always been the touchstone of how to take any song and make it “good” and “right”.

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 – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

I once played a show in West Dublin, Nova Scotia where a young boy thought my song “rough times” was called “reptiles.” He listened intently and said to his father after I finished, "I love that he sings about reptiles, I like reptiles too." I prefer his interpretation.



I later wrote a poem on that experience:

Singing at West Dublin Hall

Light distributes unevenly in the ancient hall

Facing the singer, staggered chairs form a half circle
and song mellows the murky vagueness of speech

At every bounce-angle, sound somersaults into being
words receive unintended designations
blindsided by feeling

bubbling with wonder
a child dreams wildly of reptiles

Do you have things that you are really passionate about but rarely get to talk about?  

Jackie Chan. I do seem to bring it up in interviews occasionally, but if you ever meet me in person and want to talk to Jackie, I’m game. Preferably, only his Hong Kong career.

A poem for JC

To fall like so
emptying out your whole
Knowing full well
the soft glow

rose rose i love you

to touch
delicate
Of ladder, of ceiling fan, of plate
shattering glass
Or tossing schoolbooks
off Kowloon peak

We carry on like boys
Grown men
Invested in the
Rarefied view

Utterly mute
Soon to be
Bursting
With our
Recollection

on the Knight of the Dragon