After a decade in the studio producing ten albums, Hawksley Workman is on his way to Australia. Stephen Bisset spent some time with the Canadian discovering some of the work behind this most recent album.
There must be something in the water over there in Canada. The country, once described by comedian Robin Williams as “…a loft apartment over a really good party”, has produced a seemingly endless stream of great songwriters. Artists such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Downie, to today’s crop of creative Cannuks like Dan Bejar, AC Newman, Joel Plaskett and Spencer Krug, who have all left their indelible mark on our collective musical psyche. Oh, and let’s not forget the Juno award winning Hawksley Workman, who is hitting our shores in late December to promote his tenth studio effort, Los Manilicious. It’s his seventh Australian tour.
Workman says it is Canada’s vast and sometimes unforgiving environment which provides a fertile breeding ground for artists. “First of all, I’m a fiercely proud Canadian,” Workman enthuses. “I think it has something to do with the fact that we all came from snow. There are quite incredible extremes that we have to live through and remain ourselves throughout.”
“Also, we really don’t want to be Americans and Canadians are more culturally inclined to watch rather than act, which gives us a more introspective cultural outlook that is perfect for songwriters,” he continues.
While this may be so, Workman explains that he is still looking forward to escaping the blistering cold of his home country for an Australian summer. “We’ve had the most abysmal weather over here of late. We had like one metre of snow yesterday, and then it warmed up and a massive deluge of rain came. I actually had the Pentecostal roof shovelling people over the other day and I made some comment about it feeling a little like Armageddon…I don’t think they were too impressed,” he says.
For the uninitiated, Hawksley Workman (real name Ryan Corrigan) has been plying his eclectic blend of passionate rock and cabaret pop for ten years across ten studio albums, and has been described as a ‘one-man epic pop orchestra’ and drawing not overly hyperbolic comparisons to Bowie, Tom Waits and the criminally ignored Canadian band The Rheostatics.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Workman released two albums this year – Between the Beautifuls and Los Manilicious which broke the Hawksley Workman tradition of producing his own albums – the latter, rockier effort employed a number of producers such as Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, Jane’s Addiction) and fellow Canadian songwriter John Southworth.
Workman says stepping back from the desk on this album (he still produced a couple of tracks) allowed him to concentrate on the record from a musician’s perspective. “One good thing about it is that [producers are] responsible for finishing the record,” he says. “If someone is doing all the grunt work that comes with making an album, it totally takes the pressure off me and allows me to concentrate solely on the performance.”
For Workman, who has also notched up a rather impressive resume as a producer in his own right (Tegan and Sara, The Cash Brothers, Great Big Sea), spending time behind the desk is a bittersweet experience.
“It really is a terrible job, I both love it and hate it,” he laughs. “I like it because it gives me the opportunity to work alongside other artists. I’m a big fan of people with ideas and sometimes artists can’t see how they are special and I like the idea of bringing that out in them as a producer. But again there is an awful lot of grunt work involved and there is such a sweeping landscape in being a producer, so sometimes it can be a bit daunting.”
Living outside his comfort zone is something that Hawksley is used to after travelling to Bangladesh in 2003 as part of a documentary looking into Bangladeshi sweatshop labour – an experience Workman says informed his songwriting and outlook on life immensely. “Going to Bangladesh was great,” he muses. “I’d never been somewhere so vastly different from what I knew, although I felt right at home with the simplicity of it all. Some of the images I’m left with are just so colourful and indelibly locked into my brain.”
“There was just so much poetry going on over there,” he continues. “I saw a farmer lead a cow right through the city to the only park in town and there were all these kids playing cricket and they just started bouncing the ball off the cow. It’s stuff like that that stays with you.”
Hawksley workman can be seen 31st December at the Peats Ridge Festival, 12pm, Glenworth Valley and 7th January at Lizottes, 8pm, Kincumber.
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