A global pandemic eh? Who’d have thought? Well actually epidemiologists have been predicting this for years, but the majority of us are so wrapped up in getting on with our day to day that it was a shock to be stopped in our tracks.
Everyone’s story of 2020 is going to be very different depending on what you do and where you live. I am so grateful and recognize my privileged position to have been able to keep on working right the way through, in fact, having one of the busiest years yet. This is largely due to the fact that when I moved to the country to set up my studio in 2018, I was already working as Music Lead for a games studio on a huge project, “Age of Empires IV”, and simply transferred my full-time in-house position to an almost-full-time remote contract position. This project has taken a huge amount of my time and focus over the last few years, and while it is drawing to a close, I was really lucky to have had no bumps in the road with the whole move to “working from home” as I was already doing that. I can’t wait to be able to talk about this project once it’s released.
At the end of 2019, I’d been successful in a grant application to Creative BC to help finance a series of songwriting and recording weekend workshops. The first one, in November 2019 (which feels like an eternity ago now!) was a huge success. My goal was to bring in around 6 songwriters of different ages and different genres, and give everyone a challenge of coming up with a brand new song, with brand new collaborators in a short space of time, as well as doing demo recordings of the songs. The first workshop drew in 7 writers, aged 17 to 60+, from hip hop to jazz, blues to folk – they were grouped into 3 groups and three new songs were written and recorded. The vibe was awesome and I was stoked to continue the series in 2020. The next one was in early March, a women-only workshop to celebrate International Women’s Day. This was another resounding success, with 6 women forming three different groups to write three brand new songs. News of Covid was only slowly ramping up at this point, but not to the extent that any of the safety measures we’re now so familiar with were implemented. I think the only thing I did was put paper towels in the washroom so that we didn’t share a handwashing towel!
Shortly after this, I hosted a week-long teens Spring Break camp. By this time (mid March) things were changing rapidly by the day. I only had 3 sign-ups and one cancelled last minute due to Covid but I decided to continue. Two friends, both 12 at the time, came along and I loved their spirit. Both of the girls had some amazing musical ideas and I loved seeing how just in the space of a couple of days their confidence grew, coming up with production ideas too. Covid was unfolding by the day, and by day 4 we shifted to working online. Despite these challenges, we wrote three songs and were able to record two of these in the time we had together.
Right after that, BC went into full lockdown. This was the most challenging time, as it was a case of trying to get work done, with young kids at home too. My son, then 7, struggled with the online learning, and as his little sister was only 2, she was pretty distracting and they just wanted to play all day! My wife had only recently started a new job which shifted to working from home. Those three months of two adults working while trying to entertain and home-school 2 young kids is a bit of a blur! It was intense, as our hours were all over the place while tag-teaming and making up work time really early in the morning or really late at night… but we got through it and were so grateful we had moved here, with all the space we have. Our hearts went out to families in the same position in built up urban areas in small condos trying to navigate the same thing.
When the Province opened things up again in June, I decided to hold the three remaining workshops, with strict Covid Protocol, including limiting participants to a maximum of 3. The first was in celebration of Sunshine Coast Pride, for our LGBTQ2S+ community. As things had only opened up again very recently, this one only attracted one participant, but it was a case of quality over quantity, and I loved spending time with an interesting, talented young woman Sacha, writing a breezy romantic song called “Raspberry Whiskey”. The next weekend workshop was in August, and it drew two participants, both of whom had attended a previous workshop, but they hadn’t met each other before. The three of us had an amazing musical connection, and despite (or perhaps because of) our different musical influences, we ended up writing and recording a three song EP that we then released on my label Boomsmack Records. Check it out!
https://boomsmackrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bae-baracus-flow-fire-ep
The workshop series was rounded off with a final teens workshop, which saw the two girls from March return, writing and recording two more songs. It was great reconnecting with them and hearing their perspective on 2020 from a young teenage point of view. I loved the songs they wrote over the two workshops and would encourage them to release the songs, as they have something pretty cool going on!
I’m really grateful for the opportunity to host these workshops and would love to have the opportunity again in 2021, if funding permits.
Finally, one of the most exciting developments for me in 2020 was to revive my boutique record label, Boomsmack Records. http://www.boomsmackrecords.com/ I had set this up a decade earlier to release a few different projects, but game audio had really taken the front seat the last several years. It was time to shift that focus back to making songs. As well as the Bae Baracus project, I had also started to focus on some of my own tracks, a project called Julia Sound. This is a collection of tracks that feature different singers or rappers on each of the tracks. The next single and album is coming out in 2021, but I released 2 initial singles in 2020. Here’s one with collaborators Jo Megasonic & Keely Halward:
I was also really thrilled to collaborate with Kinnie Starr on two songs, also slated for release on Boomsmack Records in 2021. Kinnie is a powerhouse of an artist, and I loved working with her on these two songs. It turns out we were near neighbours, although most of the work was done collaborating remotely with just one session in my studio. I’m really excited for the New Year to release this new work to the world on Boomsmack.
I was honoured to be selected again as a judge for the Juno Awards 2020, judging the Jack Richardson Producer category, amongst several other categories. Congrats to all the winners and nominees – Canadian music keeps getting better every year 🙂
Finally, I picked up some press too! Professional Sound did a full profile on me:
And Canadian Musician featured me in an article about remote working:
2020 presented so many challenges, and like everyone I’m glad to see the back of it, but also I’m really happy with my creative output as well as the many seeds sown for the New Year.
Big respect to the doctors, nurses and all essential workers who are working so hard to keep us all safe. Hang in there everyone… we’ll get through this.
