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McLEAN & CO IAN NORTH SEPTEMBER 1 2024
I'm Dr. Sherman from Dairy Lane Dental and you're listening to Muscoco Magazine. Welcome to McLean & Company. My name is Douglas McLean. McLean & Company is an interview podcast dedicated to Canadian and international artists in conversation about their latest release, tour schedules and songwriting experience. My guest on Episode 12 of McLean & Company is Ian North. Distinguished Canadian singer-songwriter Ian North has carved a niche in the contemporary music scene with his distinctive fallen angel folk rock, evocative lyrics and soul fomelities. After a long hiatus and a near-death experience, North has worked his way back into creating music. On June 28th, he released his newest single "Channa Moon" from his upcoming third album Everything is in complete coming out in August of 2024. Please welcome Ian North in conversation on McLean & Company. Contrary to my normal procedure, I heard this album and I just decided I wanted to talk to you and I thought you would be a great artist to chat with, but I didn't do any research at all. Until this morning, I started because I had been on a busy schedule, so I was starting to brush up a little bit, but I just was listening to the album. There's something very tender in one regard about the lyric and the thoughts and themes in the album. Also, there's this sort of unique sound, it's almost kind of mysterious or something. You feel pulled towards- What are you talking about? Yeah, the whole sonics of the album, which is very unique. I mean, it's rare for, I don't know who produced this for you or how you put this all together. That was a guy named Chris Gardner, who's a well-known kind of musician/producer around. He works with Lori Cullen, Kevin Hearn, and Tasa is a world music group that he works with. He plays bass mostly, and he did the production and all the kind of keyboard, MIDI stuff. Right? Around everything. Well, we worked together in his studio to, you know, we had a lot of great ideas, yeah, for sure. Yeah, well, congratulations on that, because that's not an easy thing to accomplish. The other sense from the album, I mean, probably you've listened to it many times, but for somebody who's heard it for the first time, you get a sense that there's something important going on here, and this is all unbeknownst to your previous situations. So I think listeners are going to be, you know, fall in love with it, so it's a beautiful sense. Yeah, that's right. You know, the standard questions are like, "How do you sit down to write these songs?" I've read a little bit that you're a poet of some sort, I don't know if you're published poet or not. Not really, no, no, I do write poetry, I write, but I think of my lyrics as sort of the important part of the song. And the music around it is a delivery vehicle for that, right? And yeah. So do you have a process you want to chat about a bit? Like do you want to... Oh, sure, that's such a song. I mean, these songs were written over a long period of time over, you know. And when I decided to record this, I did a lot of rewriting and a lot of... The music, I mean, I've evolved sort of as a musician too, I think, over the years from more oaky, rootsy to more elaborate harmonic pallet, I guess you could say. And so that was fun to deal with too, and to look at these songs again and rethink them a bit musically, especially. Yeah. So when you say harmonic pallet, you're talking obviously about your chord structures, either use of... Yeah. So I'm sure I detected on a few of these songs sort of an E, that E minor... That old A minor seventh shape there. You know, not the standard one that most folks would see, but sort of that more jazzy where you... Use a lot of... I like muting out strings and getting sort of ringing off primary. I like using a lot of open strings, so I like to let them ring, and then... Making... but to build complex chords out of those sort of open string chords, which involves a lot of... I mean, I write a lot in particular keys and use certain chords that can facilitate that. Like there's a chord I like particularly, that F major nine, which is... It's got that sort of that ringing feel to it, right? If you just play a straight F, it's not that interesting, but if you leave a few open strings and just kind of imply the F, it kind of takes on a different feel. Yeah. And I didn't detect any kind of... Because normally people who are exploring or songwriters who are kind of exploring that approach often use open tunings of some sort of altered tunings. But I didn't detect that there was any evidence on this album there may be, but... No, I didn't use any... No, I just used regular tuning, but you know, just kind of like use the fingerboard, but leave the openness. Yeah. That's tricky. Yeah. Because you can get some... Yeah. Or you can get some overtones and things too. Yeah. Well, lovely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I also play in my spare time, I play a lot of jazz standards from my own amusement, obviously. Okay. And so I know a lot about the sort of jazz voicings, but I work around them with different kind of positions, yeah. Yeah. I was trained years ago, you know, I was taught to play these Mickey Baker chord progressions. I don't know if you remember. There used to be a little jazz standard. I do. I think I had one. Yeah. I think I had that book. Yeah. A long time ago. Yeah. I think I got to page five or something, but it just... It really informed the way I thought about guitar. I always loved like Charlie Christensen and those, those, like Herner Bellas and those guys are, you know, Joe Pass, the way they, the way they courted always blew my head off. And they were always, they were, there was a chord on almost every beat, right? And they didn't seem to use upbeat. They're moving around a lot. Yeah. Just move, juke, juke, juke. Juke, juke, juke. It's so beautiful. But there's something else going on with this set of songs, it's not like that at all. I mean, there's... This is kind of a more of a, you know, a folky, a collet, folk rock, you know, what I'm doing, sort of, I mean, I don't know what else to call it. We have that, our sort of, excuse me, Jara, we made up called Fallen Angel Folk Rock, to sort of, it's a lot, the Fallen Angel part is more about the lyrics, the characters that I'm writing about, and the situations that I'm writing about, where, you know, the people who are sort of caught up, left out of things sometimes, you know, and I've been doing that for a long time. Yeah. So, yeah. Now, where did that character study? Yeah. Where did that phrase come from? Like, where did that... I know you have a song. Well, I wrote a song. We were just... You have a song. We were fooling around. Yeah. We were talking about Fallen Angel on the last CD, and so, we just adapted that, too. Did you, you know, 'cause there's quite a backstory about Fallen Angels, right? Like, Milton wrote about Fallen Angels and about... Well, there's a whole, a whole religious view of it, but I mean, it's more of a colloquial thing I'm thinking of, you know, we're all kind of trying our best, we're all angels in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Don't quite make perfection, you know, and that's the characters I like to write about, you know? I didn't detect, actually, that your songs were character driven through this new album. Make sure I get the title right, like, everything is incomplete. But they're probably... That's not really character, yeah. That's not really character driven, but "China Moon" is definitely a character in there, the girl who lives in "China Moon." Right. Um... Who else is on there? That's an amazing love song. "China Moon" is an amazing love song. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, boy. Well, you know the story, did you hear the story of a... That's what my wife used to tell me about her childhood, growing up in East York, and, you know, playing in the ravines and sort of imagining this world around her own forest and out in the woods in the city, you know, in an imaginary world. So that's really what that song is. McLean and company be back after these few messages, continuing our conversation with Ian North. Bye, Miskoka, for Miskoka. Your collection of Miskoka-based talk shows, Miskoka Magazine, the Bay, 887. I'm Dr. Sherman from Dairy Lane Dental, and you're listening to Miskoka Magazine. Welcome back to McLean and Company, episode number 12. We're in conversation with Ian North, in regards to his new album, "Everything is in complete released August 4th, 2024." It's a extraordinary album. Okay, the first thing, I guess you have the new single out, right, "China Moon," which is very endearing and quite a unique set of lyrics and ruminuses of some sort, and very beautifully, thoroughly done. So I guess let's start talking about that a little bit. Oh no, let's not. Let's talk about you, because where do you come from, like, have you been playing music your whole life? And is this part of a tradition for you? Yeah, yes I have, I haven't been relying on it too much for survival, but I have been doing it since I was teenager. But yeah, I've made a couple of recordings back when I was in 2001 or so, I think, another year, 2006, and then I kind of got frustrated with things or just decided to take a break from all that. And then I went, I don't know if you know the story of my health crisis. Yeah, well, I was good at that. Bring that up, because I looked on your Facebook page today and it said it was June, July 17th, and I thought, "Oh my God, it's just going through this major health crisis." But I guess it was a year ago or something, right? That would be, it was, what year is this now? Yeah, it was 22, September 22. Oh, so it's a year while I recover. I checked in, I did about a year, I did like a year of, we moved, we were living in Bracebridge at the time, and then we moved back to Toronto so I could do some rehab, have access to more health professionals and so forth, and yeah, that took a while, and eventually I got the idea, or Jen got the idea really that I should make another album. So we started that, I think, around March 23. Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about this health scare that you had? Was it, by the sounds of it, it was pretty sudden, and there was no indication at all, had you had previous issues or anything? No, no, I just, I mean, I guess, I mean, knowing what I know now, I could say, I did have some, just for weeks, maybe two or three, four weeks prior, I was having a lot of shortness of breath. Right. I said, well, I'm out of shape, I better get some exercise, but it was leading up to this blockage of the lungs, of the pulmonary arteries, I guess, or whatever, I'm not sure. And I just collapsed one day in the backyard, one evening, actually, the next day I collapsed again, we went to the hospital, I would spill an ambulance, and that was the last thing I remember, really, of the whole thing until I woke up in the ICU in Aurelia. Right. So, I mean, you have a quote there that, you know, you're done with death, because you've done that. You've been there and done that sort of thing. But I mean, the obvious question, I mean, the obvious question was, obviously, you were, you, I guess, maybe you were very close to something, but, yeah, you have- Well, apparently, yes, I was, I was technically my heart stops for about 15 minutes or something, but I was on life support during that time, so, you know, there was no damage that we know of. Yeah. Right. Oh, my gosh, you're lucky, man. Yeah. Well, I mean, I can, you know, off the record too, I mean, I had an issue last summer that was pretty spooky, but not as, not as dramatic and as life threatening as that, but yeah, I mean, you know, you know, Neil Young had a similar issue too, but they, I don't think he fainted or I don't think he passed out or anything. So that must have been fairly severe, man. It's surprising that you didn't have other warning signs, but I guess there are none with those. Well, you know, there were no, I had, like, ultrasound on my legs to see where the clots had come from. There was no evidence of where the clots could, they weren't, nothing wrong with my legs, no clotting, no nothing. Yeah. So, you know, who knows? It was just one of those sudden things. Yeah. You're listening to McLean and Company in conversation with Ian North about everything is incomplete. Well, I mean- What else is there? The history of swings, which I think history swings us. That's a pretty powerful piece of work. If you don't mind me saying, there's a lot contained in there. And actually, I, when the first time I heard it, I thought, I thought I heard the phrase, we live our lives, we live our lives as it slithers, slithers past. That's what I thought I heard, and I thought, my heart, let's jump. Yeah. But I thought, what an incredible way to kind of phrase this all in back and re-listen to it about 14. That's okay. You can, you can use that. You can use that since I'm- Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't, I've- How much? Take in my hand. No. We swing above the world. It's kind of that, and it's about the same kind of feeling of, I mean, the connection between people is created, how it's created and where it exists, you know, and well, I just noticed that, you know, I had children and they, you push, you want to push them on the swing, but then you go back, you were being pushed on the swing when you were a child, and now you're pushing your own children on the swing. And sometimes when you, I found, you know, with friends, you end up in a, you know, in a playground, playing around on the swing. So it's kind of continues through life, you know, creates a circle. Yeah. Wow. Mm-hmm. And who ever came up with that whole invention anyways, I don't even know. Yeah, well, that's where the idea of the history of swings, I don't know, what is the history of swings? Well, there, there's- Where did that come from? Yeah, that's also implied. I mean, that whole, aren't we, we're living in a time when we have no connection to these inventions? Like how, I mean, I was just telling, I had a long conversation with my son the other day about a hammers, like who invented a hammer, because I was splitting wood, and I, you know, how you use the big mall, and I thought, well, who the heck had the insight, the genius, and the engineering capacity to create such a thing, because it's, it's all about the weight, right? It has nothing to do with how hard you get the block or how tough you think you are, how strong you are. There's nothing to do with that. It's just simply the, simply the fall of gravity on the wood at a certain point splits it wide open. It's amazing, right? And of course, the dryness of this, right? But somebody had to observe that, right? Somebody had to sit there and say, I have to be a solution to this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I find that that's- Probably evolved over centuries. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I find that that's one of the heartbreaking pieces of the life we, the modern world is here. There's so much focus on opinion, but never on how all of the stuff around us was created, and we're living in a world that if all we contribute is an opinion, it's pretty useless, right? Yeah. Anyway, I digress. So now you will be doing, you will be doing an album launch on this, and you're going to do it in Mississauga. Yep. You're based in brace bridges. No. No, we're doing it in Aurelia. Oh, okay. Is that where you're based? Remember we missed that part of the story. Yes. You missed that part of the story. So I was in Bracebridge. We were living in Bracebridge about a half an hour outside of Bracebridge near a little town called, or a village called Vancouver. Right. Along the Black River. And when I had that health crisis, the pulmonary embolisms. And then, after I got out of the hospital, it was decided that Jen couldn't, I wasn't able to do much around the property. We had like seven acres of meadow and woodland, and so we had to move back to Toronto. So we had to sell our place there, and we moved back, rented a place in Toronto. And I did the rehab for a while for about a year there or so. And then, we moved, Jen didn't really like living in the city. And since I was pretty much rehabilitated, we didn't need to anymore. So we moved to Aurelia. We're on a front pass lake in Aurelia now. And so we're having the record release on the Chingbrui. Oh, right. Great. Okay. On August 4th. I missed red. So there'll be a bit of a show there. We'll have the vinyl, hopefully, by that time, as everything goes according to plan. And CDs and some other things that you downloads and so forth that you can obtain. And yeah, should be good. Yeah. And are you going to... And Chris Gardner is coming up to play bass with me. Right. Are you going to be like, not a full, not won't be the same as the full album, but it will be entertaining nonetheless. Yeah. Now, do you plan to tour at all behind any of this, do you think you'll take this? Not really. I'm going to play a few gigs here and there. But I'm not really, you know, I don't have the somethings and will to travel that much anymore. Yeah. You're listening to McClain and Company Episode 12, a conversation with Ian North. Thanks for listening. [MUSIC PLAYING]