{"id":14660,"date":"2016-05-09T16:12:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-09T20:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=14660"},"modified":"2016-05-09T21:48:35","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T01:48:35","slug":"steven-page-on-making-music-and-letting-go-of-an-artists-guilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/steven-page-on-making-music-and-letting-go-of-an-artists-guilt\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Page on making music and letting go of an artist’s guilt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian singer-songwriter Steven Page was in Huntsville Saturday night as the mystery headliner for After Party \u2013 Night on the Hill, a sold-out fundraiser for the Huntsville Hospital Foundation. Doppler caught up with him the next day at Lions Lookout to talk music and creativity.<\/em><\/p>\n

It took Steven Page a long time to accept that he can control neither how his music is received nor how he is perceived as an artist.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019ve always had a problem describing myself as an artist, and it got even harder after moving to the U.S. where that word has been devalued considerably,\u201d he said in a release for his latest album, Heal Thyself Pt 1: Intuition<\/em>. \u201cThere was always a sense of guilt that I didn\u2019t have a \u2018real job,\u2019 and that got channeled into some of these new songs, almost as a reaction to the mistrust and spitefulness that pervades so much of our current discourse in North America.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s his first record in six years and many fans still associate him with the Barenaked Ladies, the band he co-founded with Ed Robertson and split from in 2009. He still talks about the music he made then with pride. And as a solo artist, both his voice and his visage are instantly recognizable to old fans.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been talking for less than five minutes when a white SUV pulls to a stop next to where we\u2019re sitting and the passenger window rolls down. \u201cI recognize you! You look beautiful!\u201d the woman exclaims before the vehicle slowly pulls away. I make a comment about polite Canadian fans and suddenly there\u2019s his humorous side.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually a polite Canadian will then tell you to do something in their slightly passive aggressive polite way. Come over here and do this, you\u2019re not too big for that now,\u201d he laughs. \u201cI know you\u2019re from Canada so you should be able to just come and talk to my daughter on the phone right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then we\u2019re instantly back to talking about music.<\/p>\n

I had just asked him if he\u2019s ever surprised at how people react to his songs. He says it\u2019s hardest when people don\u2019t look too deep \u2013 into the music, the lyrics \u2013 but then he has to remind himself that they don\u2019t have to. \u201cThat work is really for me and for anyone who does want to look that deep. And if they say, \u2018I love that thing you just did, it\u2019s great to work out to,\u2019 hey, if it serves a purpose in their life and it\u2019s a positive one, I can\u2019t complain about it. But it took me a while to get to that point. If what you do for a living suddenly has some place in someone else\u2019s life, once you see it that way, it makes this job more fun, it makes life a lot more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

And having fun doing what he does is where part of his guilt came from, despite knowing that it can fill a void for listeners and fans. He says making music is spiritual work, too, but laments that it\u2019s not valued the way that of a rabbi or a priest is simply because it\u2019s perceived as fun.<\/p>\n

\"Steven

Steven Page plays at After Party – Night on the Hill, a fundraiser for the Huntsville Hospital Foundation.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWork has to be rewarding for us to want to go back to it the next day. And I think most of us feel a sense of guilt over that reward because that\u2019s not what it\u2019s about. You go and slog it out and you come home and relax. When you are a travelling musician and you\u2019re playing for other people\u2019s pleasure — so there\u2019s enjoyment already in the room and you\u2019re seeing the world \u2013 it took a long time for me to be okay with it being fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Often, the work part of the equation gets glossed over, too. His new album was several years in the making, some days working 18 hours on songs, arrangements and edits, until he got it to sound just the way he wanted it, \u201cas uncompromised as possible.\u201d But not perfect, he stresses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI leave lots of imperfections in the record because I realized that\u2019s what makes the records that we all like sound right. Sometimes there\u2019s flubs and not everything lines perfectly on the grid. But I wanted it to sound like what I imagined it to sound like in my head and once I got as close as I could to that, I was okay with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The

The album cover from Heal Thyself<\/p><\/div>\n

Heal Thyself <\/em>has 12 diverse tracks, from the Calypso styling of Mama <\/em>to some nods to the 80s with The Work at Hand <\/em>and I Can See My House From Here, <\/em>to the soaring strings and mostly one-note lyrics of There\u2019s a Melody II <\/em>which Steven calls the centerpiece of the record on his Facebook page: \u201c…where the ability to express the sounds in my head come from the meeting of instinct and discipline.”<\/p>\n

There are another dozen songs waiting in the wings for Heal Thyself Pt. 2 <\/em>which will likely be released sometime in 2017.<\/p>\n

Always, after a record is out, he feels anxiety, more than he felt when two of his sons left for college and university, he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t control it anymore \u2013 you can\u2019t control what anybody thinks about it, you can\u2019t control how it sounds to yourself or anybody else, you can\u2019t make any more final changes. And you don\u2019t know if what you intended to do actually translates. If people don\u2019t get it, did you actually succeed at what you were trying to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

He summed it up best in the album release, perhaps: \u201cThe best you can do is make the art you are driven to make, and in the end I know this album sounds like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we parted ways, Steven drove off in his own vehicle, headed to drop his son off at a rehearsal for Seussical<\/em>. And that’s just like him, too.<\/p>\n

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