{"id":148483,"date":"2010-08-09T17:21:29","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T17:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socancom100stg.wpenginepowered.com\/hawksley-workmans-obsession-with-songwriting\/"},"modified":"2010-08-09T17:21:29","modified_gmt":"2010-08-09T17:21:29","slug":"hawksley-workmans-obsession-with-songwriting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/hawksley-workmans-obsession-with-songwriting\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawksley Workman\u2019s obsession with songwriting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les traductions pour les articles avant l\u2019automne 2013 ne sont pas disponibles pour le moment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hawksley Workman<\/strong> rarely gets a day off. And when he does, he\u2019s often in a van, talking to press. The Toronto-born singer-songwriter doesn\u2019t mind, though. \u201cI\u2019m adjacent to the St. Lawrence River, barrelling down to Quebec,\u201d he says on his cell phone. \u201cIt\u2019s a stunning evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Workman has been living up to his last name ever since he launched his career with 1999\u2019s For Him and the Girls<\/em>. In his 11-year career he\u2019s released about 140 songs over 13 records and a DVD, has penned tunes for Idol<\/em> franchises in Canada, Sweden and Finland, written theme-show songs, produced numerous albums and hammered out countless tunes that wound up on the cutting-room floor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I caught up with him, he was in the midst of a two-month cross-Canada tour, which came after a jaunt around Europe. It\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess how Workman finds time to sleep. \u201cI\u2019ve always taken a blue-collar approach to what I\u2019m doing,\u201d he says as an explanation of why he\u2019s constantly on the go. \u201cI\u2019ve never kidded myself into believing that if I sit with my feet up, inspiration will come knocking at the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He\u2019s also well aware of the struggles artists have these days, and if he doesn\u2019t keep playing and recording, he could wind up without a job. \u201cAs the record business spirals into its final moments of life, I have to believe that I have to continue to work if I\u2019m going to pay the bills and remain vital to myself,\u201d he says. That drive has forced Workman not only to write music whenever he can but also to try new things on every album. He\u2019s gone from quirky indie sounds on his debut to more mainstream rock on 2008\u2019s Los Manlicious<\/em> to electro-pop on 2010\u2019s Milk<\/em>, an Internet-only release and the companion record to the more rock-oriented Meat<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Workman chalks up the different musical styles to his \u201cdrummer\u2019s brain\u201d \u2014 he played the skins before the guitar. \u201cI have a broad rhythmic palette I draw from because my formative years were focused on becoming a great drummer,\u201d says the singer. It also helps that he\u2019s not afraid to collaborate. On Meat<\/em>, Workman wrote the songs and hashed them out with a standard four-piece band. With Milk<\/em>, he spent time working with a producer in Sweden. He had been trying to write music for Kylie Minogue and another European Idol<\/em> artist but ended up making an infectious synth-pop album of his own.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In fact, he\u2019ll tackle any genre. Workman points out that prior to his Sweden trip, he was in New York writing with Esthero<\/strong> producer Doc McKinney<\/strong>, and playing with Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest. \u201cThat had an urban or hip-hop feel,\u201d he says. But despite all the sounds the artist has delved into, there is one unifying theme in his songs: it\u2019s all pop music. \u201cThese are just catchy songs,\u201d he says. \u201cThey rarely exceed four minutes, it\u2019s almost always chorus, verse, chorus, they almost never break any rules. The melodies may be on the brave side occasionally, but they tend towards being more catchy.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Workman says he doesn\u2019t have just one approach to writing. One day he\u2019ll grab a guitar, the next he\u2019ll sit in front of a piano, and when he\u2019s working with rappers, as he did in New York, he\u2019ll create a song as if he were a hip-hop musician, letting a producer build a track while he throws on the melody and lyrics. If he\u2019s in the studio by himself, he\u2019ll record a drum track and bass line and write over top of that. \u201cEach approach produces different results,\u201d he says. One thing he hasn\u2019t done lately is sit at a kitchen table and write with his acoustic guitar. \u201cThat will be my next record.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What really keeps Workman going, though, is what he describes as his relationship with songwriting. \u201cIt\u2019s like a marriage,\u201d he says. \u201cIn most marriages there comes a time when you have to renegotiate your passion for each other.\u201d When he was 23 and writing For You and the Girls<\/em>, he was just beginning to discover what it meant to make music. When he looks back on that record, he hears a \u201clusty kid discovering what would one day become his conventions and habits.\u201d While those habits have been fine-tuned over the years, making him a more thoughtful songwriter with each album, his relationship with his craft has always stayed strong. \u201cI\u2019m as obsessed with songwriting today as I was when I started,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd obsessions don\u2019t go away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catch that tune<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-non-categorise"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}