Bassic-ly me

Well... I've just received the Music PEI award for Musician of the Year. What an honour!  Sincere thanks for Music PEI for including this award for all current, past, and future nominees and winners.  For many music awards organizations, most of the well deserved focus goes to mainline artists and groups for their creative contribution to the music scene. Totally legit, totally great.  Music PEI is one of the few that has the musician of the year category.  Grammys, Junos, ECMAs - none of these have this specific category.  So in these larger music award organizations, many musicians like Chris Gauthier , Nathan Condon , Dan Currie , and myself don't even get the honour just to be nominated.... and they should... because these musicians and countless other musicians across Canada and around the world are responsible for creatively and professionally and passionately supporting artists in rehearsals, on stage, in the studio, etc, etc.  They really d...

"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols I'm not a big Nietzsche person or pretend that I knew that quote before googling "what would life be like without music" but... I thought it summed it up nicely.  What would life be like without music...it would be a mistake.  It sounds cliche ...but...stop ( collaborate and listen )...for a second...and really do think about it.. music doesn't exist.... BAM!   Think about your day today.  Where did music enter?  Think about the last movie you saw ..imagine it without music.  Think of the last wedding or night out at a club you were at... would people still dance?  It's an interesting thought.. why is music so intertwined with our every day life?  My answer... and even if you don't notice it or even agree with me I think I'm still right... it's wordless emotion.  Most people are historically bad at expressing themselves.  We don't talk any...

I was just asked to answer the following question for a Philosophy of music course.  Thought I'd share my answer here as well. why do you make and perform music? The beautiful and very interesting thing about music is that the answer to this question is never, ever the same.  The answer I give tonight would be different than a week ago, a year ago, a decade ago, and finally two decades ago when I first started playing music.  20 years ago I played music because someone handed me a bass at school.  I didn't choose it.  A month after that I chose to play music in an orchestra festival and was bitten with the performing/musician bug.  In these days I played music in and out of school for love - for the great feeling of doing something creative and collaborative.   When I studied music at University I played music because I had to succeed.  The focus was different. Scholastic.  There was still love but there was dissection of "why" and "how"...

I have a confession to make.  I lied when talking  on   +CBC News  about what inspired the idea to give a perfectly good electric bass away to someone. It wasn't sitting there thinking about what to give my kids for Christmas that inspired the flashback of me 20 years ago when I got my first bass.  It was a lie. What really inspired it was a beautiful sunburst 2003 American Standard +Fender Guitars  Stratocaster that I purchased on November 25th 2011.   Its story was too fresh an open wound to discuss publicly when doing the interviews.  I'm ready now. My mother died in October 2011 only four months after being diagnosed with cancer. It wasn't the best time in my life to say the least. Many things that occupied my daily stream of brainpower, previous to my mothers diagnosis, seemed to fade in priority and many things which I had forgotten about bubbled to the surface in clear picture and sound, screaming at me like bright sunshine ...