Folk music with a message!
Taking his authentic sound all over town
Minutes after wandering into Barros Luco, a Chilean restaurant in the Mile End, I meet Neil Holyoak, a singer and guitar player who makes folk music. He's meek, unpretentious and best of all, on-time! We sit down and he suggests something to order.
Photo courtesy: Neil Holyoak
I'm extremely hungry, so I go big and order a burrito plate with rice and salad and he gets the house burger. While we wait for our food, we get to talking.
AC: How would you describe your current sound?
NH: Surrealist, 1970s influenced outlaw country. That's the kind of music that's felt the most alive to me the last few years. I was listening to a lot of country music, Townes Van Zandt, Hank Williams, David Allen Coe, and reading symbolist French poetry, Charles Beaudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Eluard. I wanted to capture the sound of those old recordings, so I made my newest record at Breakglass Studios here in Montreal, on a 1970s Neve mixing board, to capture that sound.
AC: Do you play a lot of shows?
NH: Yes, a lot. I'm always trying to get shows lined up, once or twice a month. I've also been traveling to New York, Los Angeles, Toronto and Chicago. I just made a video in Hong Kong; In Montreal, I've played at Casa del Popolo, Le Cagibi, Divan Orange, Il Motore, La Sala Rossa and many other venues.
AC: What have you put out so far?
NH: Four records: "All These Mountains Look the Same" in 2007, "Holy Oak" in 2009, "Better Lions" in 2010, and the "Silver Boys EP" last year (2013).
Suddenly our food arrives and we take a moment to dig in. Then it occurs to me:
NH: I feel like music is one of those things that you don't really choose to do, it kind of chooses you. I felt compelled. Listening to songs made me feel less alone as a kid, less disconnected from the world. I wanted to do the same thing, sharing the experience of life with people who felt disconnected or strange. I'd listen to The Smiths and Belle and Sebastian, English and Scottish bands, and they put me in a totally different mindset. I felt like I was there with them, in a different country, living through their lives and the stories they were telling. I'd relate the songs to my own life, and they validated the ways that I was feeling. I want to play music to give other people that same feeling of validation or acceptance. Like, "don't worry, you are never as strange or as alone as you may imagine yourself to be".
AC: When did you get your start? What was your first song?
NH: I started at 16 in California, then went to Montana then Colorado then settled in Montreal for the past 6 years. In Montana at 18, I was living in a halfway house. I wrote a song called "The Baron and Me" inspired by a German man who worked at a food bank with me and played the harmonica. He had a look in his eyes like he had a crazy story behind him.
AC: What's your fave song you've written and your fave to cover?
NH: From the new EP, 'Silver Boys' (the single). I enjoyed the process of recording it. We did it live at Hotel2Tango, and all stood around in a room, no headphones, watched each other, sang and played it. We'd never really done that before in a studio, where everyone played at the same time in the same room. I love the song "Only Him or Me", by Townes Van Zandt. It's one of those songs that really captures the sensation of time passing. Townes sings: "You're gonna drown tomorrow, if you cry too many tears for yesterday". I think it's pretty powerful. People can feel different in so many ways, and feel like they can't relate to one another, but everybody is here together, moving through time, excitement of youth turns to memory, we grow old and eventually die. The song is about capturing the joy of fleeting moments, not dwelling in the past, and everybody on Earth can understand that sentiment.
AC: What's been your most memorable gig?
NH: I played at this big dance hall in Colorado when I was 19. I was just starting to play and we (my band and myself) just sucked. I wasn't singing in tune, it was a big crowd of people that wanted to dance and it was a college thing. They kept telling us to stop playing and plug in the MP3 player and we were singing sad, slow folk songs, but we just kept singing. My buddy Anthony, who was playing trumpet in my band, finally jumped off stage and got into a fist fight with one of the frat guys. We didn't know what to do, so we just kept on playing. I was actually glad that he stood up for us because we were trying to do something, we just weren't doing it very well. After the show, one of the frat dudes came up to me and was like, "hey, nice show man". That made it all worthwhile.
AC: Wow, I'm afraid to ask but, what was your worst?
NH: I think that show in Colorado was probably my worst, but also the best.
AC: Any not so great moments here in Montreal?
NH: Well, my first or second winter. I didn't know the city or the scene and found it hard to focus.
AC: What makes making music worth it?
NH: Feeling like I'm connecting with people. A friend posted a song from YouTube on my Facebook wall that I didn't even upload and it had a ton of views. I read the YouTube comments and someone even wrote out all the lyrics and I was really touched by that. It wasn't even from my YouTube channel. It was pretty cool that strangers found value in what I was doing.
AC: That's great! Where can people see you perform? Got any gigs coming up?
NH: On March 27th, at Peut être, a Polish friperie on Parc and Van Horne. It's a performance/EP release for a friend Nic Scribner, who plays guitar on the 'Silver Boys' EP and my unreleased album. After that I'm playing with S. Carey (the drummer in Bon Iver's band) at Il Motore on April 18th.
AC: Ooh, an unreleased album? When can we expect its release?
NH: I'll hopefully release the album this year, maybe later in the summer, on a record label or self-published. There'll also be a series of five (5) videos to be released as promos for the new record.
Many thanks to Neil Holyoak for this interview and to Barros Luco for that burrito plate, I was full for days! Sorry but for the first time in my life, I didn't take a pic of my food. Next time! :)
Neil and Tamara Sandor, a singer in his folk band
For more on Neil Holyoak, check out his music here on Our City Radio Montreal's Folk Station, his website, Bandcamp, Facebook and YouTube.
Written by: Ariane Collman
Original article: http://montreal.ourcityradio.com/uncategorized/neil-holyoak
Shortlink: http://montreal.ourcityradio.com/?p=2522
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