Glasgow.

I found my songwriting moment, on my final tour across the pond. 

In Glasgow. Of all places.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to my podcast, The Train from Air Tree Station. It's a podcast based on my book about coming here as a little kid to Toronto, to Canada in the mid-60s. I write about the memories of a time in the 60s as a child immigrant to Canada from a small town in Scotland, Airdrie, how the culture we found here affected us and me ultimately, mostly through music and other creative endeavors. I write about my addiction, something that took hold of me for well over 30 years, how I used alcohol mostly to deal with and mask my depression and mental health challenges. I write about how I came out the other side as of this podcast, six plus years of sobriety, alive and still surprisingly upright. Sobriety is when the real work starts. I'm a songwriter musician as well. I'm just a speck of dust in the universe with access to a keyboard. This podcast is podcast number 12 and called Glasgow. Section 12, episode 12, chapter 12, Glasgow. When I got serious about songwriting, I developed a methodical routine. I had a discipline. I usually worked in a two-hour window. I preferred writing in the mornings, although sometimes if I was working on an album, I would stop for lunch and go back at it in the afternoon. Nights were for gigs. My method was simple. I reviewed my scraps of paper, notepads, yellow pads, napkins scribbled with words and ideas, lyrics that stood the test of time. My main guitar, usually an acoustic guitar, would be in the same place every time I would have the guitar on a proper stand. I would make sure it was clean, usually wiped down with an old cotton t-shirt from a previous session. Capo on the headstock, pick tucked, tucked between a few strings. I would take a minute to tune. I am a stickler for tuning. Guitars must be in tune. When I hear videos or tracks now, live off the floor stuff or concerts, and the guitar is a little bit out of tune, it really grates on me. Even a chorus pedal can't hide out of tune. To my ears, anyway. Well, it's almost impossible to put a guitar in tune because of the way the G and the B strings work together and to get the intonation just right. Working with a capo up the fretboard alleviates the issue somewhat, and of course, open tuning will sound better, although it's limiting. Depending on the time of year, being in southern Ontario, being in Canada, it can be very hot in the summer and very cold and dry in the winter. With a nice acoustic guitar, the Good Wood, it would respond more to the weather changes than I'd like. So I worked at getting the tuning right and keeping the room decently humidified in winter. And then I would sing and play three songs, usually three of my own. Once through three songs, I'd be in a groove and then I could start working on something, composing. Around my mid-40s, I took up finger style guitar, very rudimentary, Travis style picking, uh, Gordon Lightfoot style picking. Finger style to me was a more complete way of accompanying the song more than strumming with a pick, although the pick had its uses. I had played with a pick for 30 years and eventually developed a hybrid style, but now I had put the pick away and I learned a new, to me anyway, a new style. I would work on technique using a metronome, get the metronome ticking, and I'd repeat a simple pattern with my right thumb playing an alternating bass part, which while also holding down the rhythm, it's all about the thumb. And then my fingers, my second and third fingers, sometimes my first would start comping a little bit and making a Travis style sound. I was able to use this technique to write a repertoire of new songs. Making sure the guitar was in tune, I would sit at my table with a pen, a pad, and coffee. I'd have my little electric tuner, my metronome, and I'd work for a few hours. Some days, though I wouldn't play at all, because I needed to refresh, like an athlete taking time off after the playoffs, to reset, and I'd come back with new ideas, raring to go. I wrote most days or practiced. Even in the days that I was so hungover and I could barely move, I did that at least. I had spent years honing my stage skills in bands surrounded by other musicians. Now, a solo artist, an acoustic-based singer songwriter, the live dynamic was much different. Generally smaller venues and quieter spaces. If someone was talking during your set, they could be heard easily from the stage, no big sound system to drown them out. It took a while to develop an ability to tune out the noise from the crowd. You need to be laser focused on the performance and ignore the drunk at the bar, the server talking to a table or a guy chatting up his date. The solo performer is mostly naked and vulnerable up there. Acoustic songs usually have a strong, often poignant lyric, which is a big part of the composition. It needs to be heard. If the crowd is with you, great. But a lot of nights, since you are a stranger, it took some work to win their attention. Challenge accepted. You're picking, you're picking the material. You're playing the guitar, you're singing the songs, and working the audience with no band or rhythm section to back you up. I loved it most of the time, and I didn't have to worry about anyone else. That part I really liked. It's quite raw, and when it works, there's nothing better. Some of the best moments in my life have been on a stage. I don't know what that says about the rest of my life, but there you have it. The size of the audience didn't matter. Not to me. I liked small, intimate venues. But the gig was challenging and more difficult than being in a band, obviously. With a group, you have a rhythm section, other musicians, other singers, and you can lean on them. And if there's a weakness in the band, sometimes other members compensate for it, particularly a good rhythm section. If there's a beat, most audiences will respond. And when I was playing in bands, performing top 40 songs, popular rock songs, popular country songs, it was a simpler gig, much less stress. The crowd was there to listen to cover material. As long as you played their favorite song or did a song that was popular at the time, you connected. You didn't even have to do it that well. There was a comfort level to playing cover songs that people wanted to hear. Frankly, it was easy. When you're writing original material, performing in small venues where the audience doesn't know you, well, that's a different challenge. I've had some pretty close calls with crowds who didn't like what I was doing. And once you lose a room and there's alcohol involved, it can be borderline dangerous. I'm not saying Blues Brothers chicken wire close calls, but enough to keep me alert and guarded. It's just one guy up there, me. And you have a pretty expensive guitar. I've had some nice acoustic guitars. I performed in some pretty shady spots. I had a good sound system that I sometimes traveled with. And I am in a strange, at least to me, town, new town, sometimes thinking, how do I get my stuff back to the car? Let alone get paid. You work the room. Of course, you know, you had fans sometimes in the audience, fans of your songs, and they would come out and support, which is nice, but the crowd is mostly strangers, and it takes time to build. And I had a problem there. I took long breaks between performing. Ah I would get in deep funks. Depression ran my life often back then and can still to this day. And I would question my life in music and my life in general. As for other chapters in this book, I would I would hit a wall, a barrier. The doubts and the depression could handcuff me. The dealing with the stuff in my head, the depression sometimes so deep, I would stop working and I'd just go and do other things for a while. To a distraction, I would lose momentum, of course, in my career, lose myself at the bar or worse, at home where the liquor was easier to reach. Each time I returned to make a record and get a few gigs, it was starting over. I wasn't a big fish, I wasn't a big deal. A little bit of airplay here and there. I was a small singer-songwriter guy, and I was okay with that. I liked my role there. Still, each successive time I made a return, I was unknown. I'd be offered an opening act slot or a Tuesday night. Not great time slots, but that's okay. You tried to work the room. I wasn't addicted to alcohol. I was addicted to the escape. Let's pause here for a sip of coffee. My final addiction, perhaps, coffee? Black Bodum style, French press. Delish. One more. I know that's not very professional, but hey man, it's my it's my podcast. I did a lot of cover big uh gigs back then, too, as a solo artist. A lot of cover gigs. Singers were starting to use backing tracks, uh, sounding like a full band, string along like a karaoke machine, backing tracks on an iPad. But that was not going to work for me. I didn't find that creative in any way. Backing tracks were for players that couldn't play. At the time, I didn't feel like an artist, a creator, or a proper singer-songwriter using tracks. I felt like a fraud and that I was taking jobs away from friends who were bass players and drummers. And I may have been wrong about all of that. It's a different dynamic standing on a stage with a huge sound system, with a loud electric guitar, with a heavy rhythm section. You can overwhelm and overpower a room with rock and volume, but you can't do that with acoustic music. You're winning over a crowd differently through the delicate power of a song and much, much less volume. So I went about my business trying to be the best I could be. Even a gig in front of three people at an open mic night. I left everything I had on stage. I learned to sing a little better. I learned to become a better vocalist. The guitar playing got better too. Accompanying myself, finger style guitar worked much better than strumming for most songs. It was more interesting to my ear, and I figured it would be more interesting to the audience as well. I made a record during that time where I was learning how to play finger style, and I can hear my fingers stumbling over parts. I was working on my writing voice. I was putting the two together and I was composing. There's something completely satisfying about writing your own material. I also wanted other people to cover my material. Maybe I could just be a writer in the background, but it was not meant to be, at least not then. I lacked the confidence then to pitch my own songs, sadly, for whatever reason. Wulda, coulda, shoulda. My last small tour, I went to the UK, played about eight or nine venues, starting in London, then north up to Aberdeen. Now, when I say tour, I don't mean to suggest limos and private planes, roadies and riders. Oh, there was a plane, an Air Canada overnight from Pearson in economy seating with my guitar in storage. By the way, I always had a touring case for the guitar, very important for touring musicians, my goodness. And then public transit from Heathrow, taxis, local buses, and trains. I had booked my own gigs through social media, which you could do back then. Did a bit of promotion. I was a one-stop shop, the reality of the average touring musician. I stayed in BB's and with the occasional family member, occasionally with a family member in Scotland. If there was a way to make money touring this way, I never found it. Still, it's about the music and finding places to perform. A few radio stations picked up my songs and I did a live on-air interview, which was kind of cool. Despite the travel, the stress of touring costs, and knowing that this was probably the end for me as far as recording and touring, I did my best to enjoy the experience. I was getting ready to move on from my life as a musician and a songwriter. I put up with road food and poor sleep, and as per my moment, years before as a guitar hero, playing in a bar, playing like Roy Buchanan, nailing it, I found my songwriter performance moment in Glasgow of all places. I do remember the venue in Glasgow's West End, a pub called the Liquid Ship, since we branded something else, of course. Upstairs featured dining and microbreweries, single malts, and a casual cross between students and young professionals. Live music was on the lower level down the stairs. That was the gig. Most of my singer-songwriter gigs have been in small venues just like that. Cramped, an afterthought, small stage and a basic PA. Sometimes the venue supplied someone to do sound. Sometimes they were good. A bad sound man can ruin the sound of even the best players. But often we have magic, magic in a small venue with the right audience. Coffee time. Take a moment to have a coffee. Now there was a time in Glasgow, not that long ago, when pubs were generally working class, cigarette smoke filled, smelling of stale beer, and packed with mostly older men, no women. In the era of pregentrification, the city was blue-collar, tradesmen, laborers divided by football rivalries and religious differences, Catholic or Protestant, Rangers or Celtic, and there was real poverty in places. Many areas were rough, tough, and inhospitable to even the police at times. My mother was a young nurse for a time and had stories about medical people needing police escorts to get to certain areas in emergencies. But the people are good, generous, friendly, and unpretentious. I asked someone for directions once, and they walked me to my destination. That's the Glasgow I know. The stunning grand nature of Glasgow University and her grounds and the architecture, ornate Victorian era buildings, museums and galleries, and the wealth of shipbuilding once on the River Clyde, Glasgow Central Station, one of my favorite people watching spots anywhere. The sound of the trains, the bustle, the announcements, the pigeons flying, the huge high ceiling, and the sense of purpose. And then George Square, a public space, monuments, statues, and an imposing cenotaph, where one of my aunts asked to have her ashes scattered, don't tell anyone. At her funeral, she had requested for one of my songs to be played. I learned this later from my uncle, one of the highlights of my life as a songwriter. I had no idea. Glasgow and Airdrie are connected, not just by rail. We are a West Scotland people, as my oldest cousin told me once. We share a dour, dry outlook on life. Never get too high on yourself. Realistic, pragmatic. A people that have lost boys to wars and poverty down the mines and on the industrial floors. Men who fought for unions and union wages, voted labor, despised stature, raised families somehow in hard times, and now a few of their sons and daughters can go to college. The young people now who might frequent the liquid ship. I was sharing the bill with a young local singer songwriter, and I often opened the show as most of the crowd they were there for him. I don't need to be a headliner. I had my 45 minutes set, 10 songs or so, not expecting much, just another gig, opening acts. Again, it was a small room, but but packed. Non-smoking pubs now, even in Scotland, maybe 50 people in, a sound check, a few Guinness. Yeah, I was still drinking back then. Maybe a whiskey, microphone adjusted, guitar in tune, and ready to go. Introductions, polite applause, and the show begins. Eyes closed. I often would sing with my eyes closed early on in my set as I was concentrating on what I needed to do. And it's all about the music. I was in about my second song through the set when I realized there was no other sound in the room. Just a song. It was pin drop quiet. I opened my eyes and everyone was watching me intently. They were listening to the song. They'd never heard my song, my songs before. It's a cathartic feeling to share a moment like that with an audience, particularly a crowd, unfamiliar with your work, and far from home and across an ocean. We shared common ground too. I was born close to this city, still a stranger to them and a foreigner. The music, not unlike when I was a kid in the 60s, listening to AM radio, connects generations and people. I've been working so hard on being a good writer, a better musician, and a and a performer. I I had achieved something here, and it was enough. And I knew I was good. So that was uh chapter where are we at? Chapter 12 of my uh book, The Train from Eritre Station. The train from Eritre Station leads you to Glasgow Queen Street. And that chapter was partly based on my experience in Glasgow. Fantastic. Listen, I I want to say that I'm I'm sober now. It's been six plus years, and uh I'm sober because alcohol was the numbing tool that I used to mask my depression and mental health problems. And it worked until it didn't. And when it doesn't, it's worse, it's terrible. So I don't really care if you drink, really. That's up to you. This is not a podcast to say that you shouldn't do any of the things that you want to do. It's up to you. But I I will urge you that if you do think about quitting an addiction, don't do what I did, which was cold turkey, and it was just a miserable five days, and I was lucky I survived it, to be honest. You know, seek out medical help, the best you can to get a professional to walk you through any kind of cleansing of an addiction. Because once you get clean, the sobriety, that's when the real work starts. You have to address all the reasons that you use that as a numbing tool. And it's harder work than you think. Not everyone can do it, frankly. That's my experience anyway. If you've been listening to these podcasts uh all along, you'll have listened to the intro music that I have, and it's just like a little instrumental piece. That's actually the intro to my song called Glasgow, which I'm going to play for you now. And I, of course, always hope you enjoy it. A little housekeeping. I have a Substack page. You can go there and subscribe to my writing and to my podcast. Of course, I'm on all the platforms that you're listening to now. It would be really appreciated if you would take a moment, if you're on Apple or Spotify or any of the platforms, to take a moment and make a review, like a five-star blah, blah, blah, or leave a review. It really helps, I think, in the algorithm as they go and suggest other podcasts as people are scrolling. I would be appreciative of that. And if you have anything that you would like me to cover in feature podcasts, let me know. Until then. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Let's go. Glasgow, Glasgow, been away so long, but you still got a hold on me. Well I flew into Glasgow through the mist and through the rain with a morning cup of coffee as the flight attendant came Fasten in a get ready, boys, in a quiet Scottage probe. The history of you, my child, is on a target below, Flasgone, you're beautiful, that's a where I wanna be. Been away so long, but you still got a hold on me. Well, we all flew out of Glasgow, still I'm not sure why. There was something about a better life across the ocean skies, but all I ever heard about all we had lost. Made my life's better, you don't think about the cost gold, lies go, you're beautiful, that's aware I wanna be away so long that you still got a hold on me. My uncles were young men when I was about ten, there was cigarette smoke in the halls, laughter through the wall, and then we're gonna go to the house. Been away so long, but you still gotta hold on me. You still gotta hold on me. You still gotta hold on me while I flew into glass go through the mist and through the rain.