Creating music can have many different layers, many different stories and a crayon box of emotions that are all necessary to produce the best work. Many songs come from pain, suffering or loss. There’s songs of love and girls we met, songs of trips we took and songs about summer. Artists have a gift of combining the best lyrics with the greatest sounds. I think I was 12 when I discovered my huge attraction to music and a hit song. You want to keep playing it over and over until your parents tell you to shut it off! As you get older you tend to accumulate a collection of your favourite albums. We/I start to look at music artists as my heroes and we/I begin to plaster the bedroom walls with the bands posters. Music is responsible for bringing people of all types together, at concerts, at events, in clubs and in our homes. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
On May 12, 2020 the Toronto, ON Juno Award winning Reggae artist HUMBLE dropped two new tracks with videos, Fools Run and This Is Life, now available on all platforms. HUMBLE will be dropping a third EP Never the Same in June. I’ve listened to his music and immediately felt like it was so familiar. It has such a great vibe that grabs you and takes you for a walk in the park to smell nature and appreciate the small things in life. Humble has a way with words that recognize familiar struggle, love and pain and beauty. His first two albums garnered him two Juno nominations and a win. He is also the winner of Best Artist and Songwriter of The Year Award at the Reggae Music Achievement Awards. Humble is an incredibly talented Canadian artist currently based in Edmonton, Alberta. He tells me that the songs in his latest album were inspired by his close relationship with rural Alberta and the countryside.
You can have a listen and watch the video for Fools Run at https://youtu.be/9-ar3kk2-0w and This Is Life at https://youtu.be/LF64CHoWh6M
We caught up with each other and I was honoured to chat about his great career and latest album. He’s a great man, with a gifted ear and a golden voice that will leave you hitting repeat and repeat. Here’s how that conversation went.
“I’ve been listening to your music on Youtube and I think your voice is so well controlled. I can hear some Luther Vandross in there. Are you classically trained?”
“Not at all, I just started playing guitar out of college but the voice has always been there.”
“When did you start getting involved in music?”
“It was actually Lenny Kravitz that inspired me. I had seen him on Much Music back in the day in Toronto and it touched me so much that I felt the urge to buy a guitar and had the urge to practice the music he was playing. The melody of the acoustic just did something to me that I just needed to buy one and try it.”
“You live in Edmonton but Toronto is kind of a hub for musicians and new music. Why did you move from Toronto to Edmonton?”
“I haven’t left Toronto permanently but I lost my mom in 2015 and I was going through a lot of personal changes. My parents are separated and my half brother in Edmonton saw me struggling and going into a depression, so he invited me out here to work on my next album. It gave me an opportunity to work on new material, new music and it’s the first time I’ve fully produced a full album. I still have a lot to learn. I’ve been working with one other producer out here and we’ve been collaborating together.”
“When you create your music, is most of it sample tracks or live music?”
“Most of it is live. I play guitar and incorporate it all the time in my writing and composing. I also use Ableton (pro soundbank program), which has helped to create more sounds. I’ve also been working with a band out here in Alberta. I spend a lot of time in the studio with my guitar, I also play a little keyboards and sometimes I will invite a bass player in to help with some bass lines.”
“Is it safe to say that you don’t use the same musicians on every album?”
“I did my last album entirely in Jamaica with live music artists. We recorded the album in Kingston and it was a great experience.”
“When you write a new song, how is it usually inspired?”
“It’s hard to say, it usually starts off as a thought. With my last album, it was about being in a new place, being alone and isolated back in my home in Toronto. With this album, I just went inside a lot, inside myself to pour out my feelings. It was a lot of introspection, from a deep place.”
“Would you agree that the Blues is a lot like Reggae?”
“Yes, I’ve been saying that for a long time. It comes from pain and suffering and the message is similar. Reggae carries a lot of those same tones and same feelings.
“Does going through struggle and tough times have a side effect of inspiring new music?”
“Yes, if you can find it in yourself to go there and express yourself. I lost my mom 5 years ago and it’s still hard for me to go into a place and write about it, it’s real painful. I think being in a positive environment would make me write more but I probably wouldn’t have much to say. If you really want to get the juice out of the lemon, you really have to squeeze it out.”
“Congratulations on winning a Juno. Can you tell me what it felt like to hear your name called out?”
“It was a while back but it’s still fresh. That was my second album so it was a surreal moment. I had called my mom, cause we were so close. She’s from Jamaica, so when she heard that I had won, she thought we were all rich. It was funny but it was also great to be able to reach that status. It’s the Canadian equivalent of winning a Grammy, so it was huge.”
“When you walk out onto that stage to perform, do you have any tricks, rituals or anything you might do to get into the zone or loosen up the nerves?”
“Not really but there is a certain throat lozenge that I always have to have/take that helps to open up my voice before every performance. I might do a little prayer to myself too but no real ritual or anything else that comes to mind. I get a little nervous but I’m more excited to perform. Once I’m up there I’m in the zone and I lose all track of time.”
“Is there any place in the world that you haven’t had the opportunity to perform but would still love to?”
“Yes, Africa. I’d love to perform in any part of Africa. I’ve performed in Japan and that was awesome. When you go that far, the customs are very different. I was in Okinawa, which is a couple of miles from the mainland and was surprised at the Reggae crowds there. Those people really loved it.”
“With Fools Run and This Is Life already released and Never the Same coming out in June, did you write all these songs around the same time?”
“Yes, I wrote them all in Edmonton over the course of a year and over the course of another year I worked on the producing side. I felt good enough to put the music together with the words, so it was about 2 years for the entire process.”
“You also won the Reggae Music Achievement Award. How did it feel to be so recognized and accepted into that community?”
“It was quite different from the Juno’s because it’s more focused on your peers in the Reggae fraternity in Toronto at that time. I also won a Songwriters Award and was quite pleased. As an artist, it’s an honour to be noticed by other artists for the words you write. It really means a lot. With this new album, I’m really curious how it will be received by everyone. It can be considered Reggae but there such a fusion going on. I’m really curious to see where people will put the music and how they’ll categorize it, especially the track Fools Run and This Is Life. It was inspired by spending time in rural Alberta, close to the countryside. When you hear the song, you automatically get a natural country feel with a heavy Reggae bass line.”
“Can I ask you a couple fun questions?”
“Sure.”
“If you could create a new Olympic sport, what would it be?”
“(Laughing) I’ve always been an avid skateboarder since I was a kid. It’s not an Olympic sport but it should be. I ride the half pipe, so I’d say a half pipe in skateboarding should be in the Olympics. I love that stuff.”
“If you could be any animal for a day, which animal would it be?”
“A falcon. It would be so nice just to soar.”
“Considering the Corona Virus has impacted so much entertainment and so many music artists, how has your music career been impacted?”
“Now that the album is finished, I want to go out and support it. Last week I did a live-streamed show on the internet and a lot of artists are turning to that. If I can’t perform for the rest of the year it’ll have a little impact on things. Hopefully by next year things will open up enough, where we can start to have small gatherings. I can’t imagine how the rest of this year will pan out. I miss being around people like 12 or more. We get our energy from the crowd/people and when we performed last week to about 5 cameras in the venue, it was a little weird. I guess it’s going to have to be the new norm for a while.”
I can guess why this good man’s name is Humble.