Emmanuel Jal says he sees Canadian audiences appreciating music differently, either in spite of or because of the cold.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
It occurred to me on stage the other night, near the end of the coldest February in Toronto's history, that the way I play and the way I feel when I sing is different in winter. There's something distinct about performing when the weather outside is cruel, bitter and harsh. In these conditions, music provides both escape and salvation, a tonic for our chilly suffering. Singing with my band the Circumstantialists in a mid-winter gig, I'm physically embraced by the music; bolstered, chuffed. The notes travel like electricity through cold-weary bone. Looking out at the crowd standing in a shallow pool of melted slush, I feel a camaraderie; an alchemy formed by the music that has brought us together.
Turns out other musicians have felt it, too. Casey Laforet is one-third of Elliott Brood, an alt-country revival rock band based in Toronto. In the 10 years the band has been together and performing, most of their tours have been in the winter. "It's definitely more dangerous and more intense to travel around a rough country like Canada in the winter," he says. "But when the show finally happens, and you've got an audience clomping into the venue in huge parkas and Sorel boots, everyone's looking for a place to put their coats, these bars feel even more full and the audience is just so ready. At a winter show, the audience really wants to be there."
In the two years he has lived in Canada, Emmanuel Jal has been struck by the intensity of the mid-winter concert experience. Jal grew up in South Sudan where he was a child soldier – he became known to film audiences for his role in The Good Lie opposite Reese Witherspoon. But his regular gig is as a hip-hop artist; he has just wrapped up a tour for his most recent album, The Key, nominated for a 2015 Juno for World Music Album of the Year. He says he sees Canadian audiences appreciating music differently, either in spite of or because of the cold: "I was shocked by the turnout at our show in Windsor when it was minus-20 degrees. I'm never sure anyone is going to show up when it's that cold outside. But when they do, it means they have stepped out of their comfort zone, which makes for an extraordinary connection during the gig. The cold really unites people here."
Even inside on a cold Canadian winter's night, there's a certain ferocity to a performance. The transmission of raw emotion takes on an urgency, the stage becomes a hearth around which a crowd gathers for warmth, to stoke the embers of an inner fire. Communing in mid-winter song is soul-replenishing, a reminder of joy that pushes back against the oppressive chill. I've often wondered if that's what the Strumbellas were referring to when they titled their debut album We Still Move on Dance Floors.
Patrick Sambrook, who manages the Tragically Hip and Sam Roberts Band, got his start in the business managing my first band Bag of Hammers, out of Montreal. "Winter in that town feels like it goes on forever and that definitely generates an angst," he says. "And it drives people inside with such intensity. There's a willful determination to connect with a performance that is so different than it is in the summer. Let's face it," he sums it up, "bad weather makes great music."
But is there a creative difference when the days are short and the nights are long? Does the leafless and colour-muted palette of winter affect the songwriter?
"Winter is a journey after all," Gord Downie says. "It is coming, and nothing can stop it – like the gallows, winter can certainly focus the mind." He likens his winter-weather creative process to the Leo Lionni picture book Frederick that was always a favourite with his children. While other mice feverishly collect physical supplies in advance of the long winter, Frederick soaks up the colours and smells and richness of a warm-weather landscape, to comfort himself and his family when all other sustenance has been drained. "Like Frederick, I sort of think that might be all we're ever doing as Canadian songwriters, storing up impressions, thoughts, colours, poems, songs, stories for the journey ahead."
While many find the cold and the empty landscape to be an excuse for burrowing into lethargy, some songwriters find it sharpens their focus. "I wrote my first songs during cold January days after moving to Toronto years ago. I was broke and cold and dreaming of what I was going to do," Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter Melanie Doane recalls. "A cold winter day is urgent and unforgiving; it forces you to man up and do something. … That kind of honest fear can be motivating and even exciting."
Downie agrees, admitting that he's "always been grateful for it."
When the wind has the power to find the smallest crack between window and frame, between scarf and coat collar, and reach its frosty fingers mercilessly down the neck, it takes a toll on the psyche. For me, making and sharing music in winter is fighting back, reclaiming the zest; it's like lighting a fire in the ice. A winter campfire throws more comparative heat, feels somehow hotter set against the snowdrifts; the crackles of burning branch pierce crisp dry air in a way we don't always hear in the easy lull of summertime.
In a crowded bar, or concert hall, drum beating like the sustained crackle of a roaring fire, Canadians on both sides of the stage can forget about our cracked lips, our collective itchy skin, the chronic ache of up-clenched shoulders, and snatch back the hair-tossing insouciance of an easier time. We feel a connection with the song that just grows stronger every time the door is opened, letting in a gust of reality as another soul makes their way inside to the hearth.
Gill Deacon is the host of Here and Now on CBC Radio One in Toronto.