by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“Who I thought I was is not who I really am,” says singer, songwriter, musician, poet and eccentric Hawksley Workman. “Who I am is very Canadian. I’m tied to the seasons, to this culture, to this sensibility, to this humility, and I had to move to Paris to find all that out.”

From his temporary home base in the French capital, Workman toured Europe throughout 2002, playing to thousands and thousands of would-be fans and eventually becoming something of a star throughout French-speaking Europe. His stellar status has only solidified with “We Will Still Need a Song,” the impassioned anthem off his new album Lover/Fighter that recently surged up the French charts right to the top of the anglo heap. But despite all the tangible romance and complimentary baguettes of France, when it comes time to set his music to tape, or to produce albums with other artists like Sarah Slean, the obscurity and isolation of his rustic Canadian studio beckons like a sensuous snow siren.

“I love the romance of winter, as any good, old-fashioned Canadian should. It’s great for sex,” says Workman, waxing poetic about “the colours and the smell of minus 40.”

Hidden away in the woods three hours north of Toronto, the studio was set up in the one-room schoolhouse where Workman’s grandmother was taught as a child, only 20 kilometres from his own childhood home in a rural Ontario ghost town. However, being a century old, the house is porous, prone to flooding and wood-heated.

“This was one of the most arduous winters I’ve ever experienced. It felt like I was at war with the cold. I had to keep a very militant mindset and get up in the middle of the night to stoke fires, so there was a constant physical struggle going on simultaneously with all the artsy-fartsy stuff.”

Roses/guns

Apart from skiing excursions and the occasional sushi run, Workman hibernated in the “insular womb” of the studio through the long cold snap, away from the urban pace and populace of his Canadian base, Toronto. Workman loves the T-dot and its bicycle-friendly ways, but the city is conspicuously absent in Lover/Fighter’s lyrics (at least in name), whereas Montreal gets a prominent, sleazy aside in the chorus of “Smoke Baby.”

“Toronto is one of the least poetic words I’ve ever fucking heard,” he states, calling Montreal (where he lived briefly in his teens) “easily the most beautiful city in the country, a city of peculiarly displayed turmoil and decadence.” Workman has taken on the mission to romanticize Canadian cities, long overlooked in pop music and overshadowed by ubiquitous U.S. towns. “If I hear one more fucking L.A. or California song, I’ll fucking flip! Even Canadian artists are doing it, and as much as I fucking love California, we don’t need that. Really.”

Hyping the northern allure was a small goal on Lover/Fighter, but the big goal was to create a bigger, more intense and cohesive work than what he calls the “scattered” sound of his previous LPs For Him and the Girls (2000) and (Last Night We Were) the Delicious Wolves (2001). Indie rock diehards may not like where Hawksley’s headed, but he’s built up a sonic grandeur fit for the masses and the massive shows he stages in Europe.

“How do you connect intimately with 15,000 people? It takes a certain kind of song,” he says, naming the arena-sized triad of U2’s The Joshua Tree, Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors as his template.

“What is it about ‘Where the Streets Have No Name,’ ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ and ‘You Can Go Your Own Way’? Those songs could never exist in a club, they’d blow the roof off the place. So that’s where I went.”

Workman went his own way on his own, as usual, the lone kid in the schoolhouse crafting every note, riff, line, beat and sequence on the album, aside from fleeting cameos by Graph Nobel and his brother Aaron (vocals) and producers Doc and Matt Dematteo, who each co-wrote a song.

“I’m a bit selfish,” he admits. “I love playing all the instruments and I don’t know if I’d ever want to give that fun away. Being on tour is very much a public lifestyle and it’s so abusive on your system that it’s nice when you can come home and be the master of your own life again. But it’s funny, after about two months off the road, I’m usually starved for the abuse.”

With Phaser and Arcade Fire at
Club Soda on Saturday, Sept. 27, 9pm, $15

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