We all love to people-watch. Sitting in a café as I wait for a friend or enjoy a drink, I watch people pass by the window and like to imagine their professions, how they spend their free time, what their relationships are like, what makes them happy or sad. I, and my fellow raconteurs, imagine and create the stories of their lives. It’s our indirect way of trying to make human connections in such a busy and big world. Gavin Gardiner, The Wooden Sky’s front man, says he often wonders about the lives behind the faces he sees through car windows.
“I have this weird sensation when I’m driving on the highway and I look into someone else’s car and see someone there. They have an entire life story that they’ve gone through, and experiences that they’ve had: pain and loss, happiness and joy,” he says. “I’ve just sort of been thinking about that lately—the bigger picture of other people’s lives and trying to find my place in that.”
The third album of the Toronto alternative country rock band is a collection of bittersweet stories where, for a moment, we may enter into the lives of others we are often curious about. After moving away from storytelling on the group’s second LP, the band was comfortable returning to that form of expression. Though the lyrics in the album are poetic and fictional, many of the stories in the songs are not just imagined, but are in part based on Gardiner’s life.
“‘Child of the Valley,’ for example, is a story song, but it’s also based on my mom’s family and her upbringing, and how that has influenced my life, and trying to understand how it has influenced her life,” says Gardiner.
While the lyrics of “Child of the Valley” express a story of overcoming burdens (told by three narrators: a grandfather, a mother and a daughter), the melody emphasizes the weight of the stress. The heavy bass drum encumbers the narrators throughout the verses. The guitar mimics the trotting of horses as if the story is told on a long journey, and the searching tone of the chorus reveals the vastness of the terrain to be covered. Gardiner’s deep voice gorgeously emits a haunting sentiment, giving the tune a lonely cowboy sort of feel.
“Malibu Rum,” takes us into another story, this one of distance and disappointment. The “ooo’s” of the back up singers, along with the dreamy melody, capture that hazy, warm feeling of being tipsy that temporarily comforts the narrator from his sadness.
“I was trying to explain to everyone what kind of feeling I wanted it to have, and I said, ‘What I’d like it to sound like is, you’re in Las Vegas and you’re going there to get married, but you end up in a shitty hotel and the air conditioner is broken and it’s dripping water onto the carpet. It’s supposed to be this happy moment, but it’s kind of sad,’” says Gardiner.
Gardiner has a gift when it comes to storytelling, as most of the lyrics show a story, rather than tell one. Hannah Arendt, a great thinker who has some extraordinary thoughts on understanding others’ actions, once said, “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” Gardiner does exactly this as he attempts to explore forgiveness throughout the LP by placing himself in the shoes of others.
“A lot of the songs I wrote on the record … are about trying to understand this idea of forgiveness—how you can actually forgive someone who has done something awful to you and put you through so much and to actually have the forgiveness to still show the person compassion. It’s a process I have been trying to understand, especially from someone else’s point of view.”
The process of understanding was even included throughout the recording of this album as the band told these stories in different spaces. Some songs were recorded in an enormous church, allowing the group to really hear the music and their voices, almost creating “a sense of empathy,” as Gardiner put it.
In order to keep these songs close and personal as they tour the album this winter, the band hopes to do a series of house shows. In such a cozy setting, Gardiner will be able to cross the threshold of the car window he’s always looking through to connect with the person behind it, and of course his fans can get to know him beyond his stage persona.
“It is a very intimate setting when you are coming into someone else’s home,” he says. “It’s fun to not have a huge divide with the stage, and in a big venue you don’t meet anybody that comes to your show. It’s just that interaction, that connection that we thrive on while we are on tour.”
The Wooden Sky will be joined by Toronto alt-rockers Great Bloomers this Saturday night at the Seahorse Tavern.
Recent Comments