Taylor Kirk

Mystery is an Option

A few hours before a recent Saturday night concert by Timber Timbre in London, Ontario, the debris outside the Aeolian Hall on Dundas Street East was whipped up by a spring storm. Little whirlwinds of fast food wrappers, commercial flyers, and take-out coffee cups danced off the sidewalks. Rain threatened and came and went. Dark clouds rolled above the city. The sun emerged through the clouds to the west. Soft light hit the wet pavement. The street felt creepy yet oddly refreshed.

It is rare that the mood outside a venue sets the tone so perfectly for a show ready to unfold indoors. Timber Timbre is the moniker of singer and guitarist Taylor Kirk. He is the sole permanent member of the band, which plays a uniquely eerie style of folk blues. In concert, the Toronto-based musician aims to build an atmosphere that permits mystery and eschews predictability. His songs are awash in ambiguity. Kirk himself seems slightly removed on stage. All this makes his live show one of the most captivating and unusual experiences in contemporary Canadian music.

Kirk released two albums independently, Cedar Shakes in 2006 and Medicinals in 2007. A third album, just titled Timber Timbre, was released initially in January 2009 on the small Toronto label Out of This Spark. With interest growing in his uncommon aesthetic impulses, Kirk subsequently signed with the prominent Arts & Crafts record label in the summer of 2009. The Timber Timbre album was released afresh with much wider distribution. “I couldn’t really afford to pass on that,” the young songwriter allows. “I’m very happy with the way it’s been going. Obviously Arts & Crafts has quite a lot of reach, and it’s brought a lot of people to the music.”



The show at Aeolian Hall was distinguished by mesmerizing versions of several of his latest songs. ‘No Bold Villain’ opened the set, followed without pause by a terrific, expansive version of ‘Trouble Comes Knocking’, which melted into the pulsating ‘Magic Arrow’. Mika Posen played violin. Simon Trottier handled the lap steel and autoharp. One of the finest moments of the night was the stunning rendering of ‘Until the Night is Over’, highlighted by Kirk delivering the memorable lines ‘I ain’t no doctor baby / I ain’t no doctor’s son / But I’ll cool your fever / Until the doctor comes’. The end of the show brought a standing ovation from the crowd.

Taylor Kirk is simultaneously affable and reserved in person. The following interview took place in the concert hall two hours before he took the stage. He discusses the audience his music seems to attract, and he laments the way in which images are unavoidably attached to his songs through photos and videos, perhaps muting the impact of his art. “I would actually prefer not to have a visual presence at all, but it’s impossible of course,” Kirk states softly. “There will probably be people here tonight with their phones, taping the show and stuff. I don’t know. There’s no mystery anymore. No one will allow it. It’s not an option for some reason.”

He goes on to reveal a fondness for the paintings of Andrew Wyeth, which he says remind him of scenes from his upbringing in rural Ontario. (As an aside, the stark loneliness that Kirk achieves in his song ‘Lay Down in the Tall Grass’ matches especially well the classic piece by Wyeth called Christina’s World).

The interview concludes with Kirk speculating on just how long he will keep up his life on the road. With a number of concert dates jammed into the coming months, ranging from shows in Quebec with Patrick Watson to performances in Europe with Broken Social Scene, there are countless miles stretched out before him.

CI: The Aeolian Hall here in London has interesting acoustics, open timbers across the high ceiling, and it strikes me that, for your songs, the venue must matter a lot, the atmosphere to really bring the songs to a height. Have you got a few favourites? As you’ve been touring around, have there been a few nights where you felt that the venue really suited your material?

TK: Yeah, we did a tour supporting Final Fantasy – or Owen Pallett rather – and it was mostly big, beautiful churches. I forget the name of the church in Calgary. What was it? Knox? … Sorry, my memory is shot at this point, but yeah, that particular show was really wonderful, something about how every sound that you made on that stage just seemed to hang in the air there. It was really amazing.

I remember the first time actually I played here. I played by myself a year and a half ago, opening for Great Lake Swimmers. It was the first time that I’d been really impressed upon by a space, and I was nearly sick before playing. I was so nervous! There seems to be a lot of history in this place. I was really intimidated, but now these are my favourite kinds of places to play.

The Music Gallery in Toronto is always a favourite too. We played the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco about a week ago, I guess. That was pretty incredible. I don’t know. Last night we played this loft space in Sarnia, and that was just a whole other thing. The space doesn’t always dictate how well we can create an atmosphere, or how attentive the audience will be.

CI: The interesting question is about the audience. When you make music that is a little murky, a bit dark, what sort of audience have you ended up with when you look out into the crowd?

TK: I don’t know. I think it’s - actually, I don’t know who they are! I think it’s the indie rock audience. I think. It’s the people who look the same as us. Not that I identify as indie rock. I think maybe it is becoming more of an eclectic crowd, at least in Canada. It seems to be a more broad demographic. That’s the most exciting thing for me. I really hoped to make music that wasn’t for kids necessarily, or for a specific demographic. I think it’s opening up.

CI: In the live shows, how faithful are you to the originals on the album? Do you stretch it out a lot?

TK: We don’t attempt at all really to recreate the recording. I don’t know. I never really set out to record definitive versions of songs with the recording process. Recording was just about getting things down and finished. What happens with the band is something totally separate, I’ve always thought. We never actually practise together. We just get together and play. It’s nice. It’s really special. I think a lot of people have a hard time with that, especially because it seems like such a straight pop music approach to making a recording, whereas what we’re doing here is more open-ended, experimental – hopefully not to the point of being alienating, but we stretch things, yeah.

CI: There is an interesting collaborative group approach to making music in Toronto right now with you, Forest City Lovers, The Wooden Sky, and others, sharing musicians and ideas. How did you fit into that group originally?

TK: I think originally I actually didn’t. I was just making music as a solitary endeavour. I was doing it at home in my free time. I didn’t even play live very much, and when I did, I played by myself. That community seemed to be really close knit before I ever got involved. The last recording was originally released on Out of This Spark. Eventually I became pretty immersed in that whole group, that Toronto scene. It’s amazing. It’s really wonderful. I don’t know what it’s like in other places, but it’s a very healthy scene and community. It’s quite amazing.

CI: As the album came out first on Out of This Spark and then got picked up by Arts & Crafts, and now they are giving it support, what is the main difference in the shift going to Arts & Crafts?

TK: I don’t know. I think it’s all different. It’s all completely different, and I was really apprehensive. I was excited to have support with Out of This Spark. I was really happy, and I felt that was the perfect fit for me in terms of my obligations as a musician, as a person. I didn’t have big aspirations to tour. I still wasn’t thinking about being a musician as a career, wasn’t ready to look at it that way. But the opportunity came up. I couldn’t really afford to pass on that. I’m very happy with the way it’s been going. Obviously Arts & Crafts has quite a lot of reach, and it’s brought a lot of people to the music.

CI: As I’ve listened to your songs over the past five or six months, and especially again in the last few days, it seems to me that the most recent record especially has this unique capacity to not really intrude on silence but sort of accompany it, and almost provide a moment for contemplation, which is strange. Often music takes over a room, but your music does not. As you’ve built this sound, this very distinct sound, over the years, did you give some thought to whether you wanted it to create that atmosphere for the listener where they can just sort of get lost in their imagination?

TK: I don’t know. My approach to recording was always about using what was available, and about restraint and limitations. I liked the idea of making recordings with whatever was available to me in the room, which meant not getting carried away and not making something dense. I’ve always been of that mindset that less is more, that sort of aesthetic. I don’t know if it was an intention to make something that was contemplative or meditative, but I like that. That’s nice. I like that that’s the effect. That makes sense. We’re not really putting on a rock show, an exciting rock show. We’re more creating an atmosphere. It’s important, I guess, that people engage that way, and they are able to get lost and participate that way.

CI: I live in an old farmhouse. When I walk outside, there are hundred year old pine trees, and when the wind goes through them – like it did tonight – I think of Richard Manuel’s song, ‘Whispering Pines’, and think of him and The Band. It struck me that the sense of loneliness in your songs almost seems like a continuation of that feeling of empty rural land that came through in some of the songs by The Band. What was the instigation for that rural feel? Did you grow up on a farm?

TK: I did, yeah, not a farm per se, but I grew up on land. I don’t know. I do write about it a lot. I think about it constantly. It’s something that I didn’t really appreciate when I was there, and I escaped as soon as I could. Now I get it. Now I understand what was so valuable about that. It’s something that I really think about a lot, and probably romanticize a lot in my writing. Yeah, you’re very lucky! I hope to be there.

CI: Well, with all our attachments to technology, our day-to-day existence seems very much one of disenchantment. Everything is at our fingertips, and we can get explanations for anything. In your songs, I felt this sense of mystery and this creepiness lurking that maybe we’re ignoring because we’re not as attuned to nature, the woodlots and the dark spaces. It works in with that atmosphere of contemplation to sort of look at what is around us more.

TK: Yeah, absolutely, I feel like we’re so inundated now with such violent stimulation. We almost don’t know how to comprehend. Simple things seem really alien now. It’s hard to go back. I don’t know. I don’t consider myself old-fashioned. I hope that my music is not anachronistic. It borrows from old forms and older methods and stuff, but I don’t know …

CI: It’s not anachronistic if you’re giving shape to what still exists but is not recognized. You’re still very much in the time. And I wanted to ask you about one song in particular. Sometimes musicians don’t like the question about the origins of a song, but the last song on the most recent album – ‘No Bold Villain’ – it is just such an interesting way to end that record. What were the origins of that song? How did it come to be?

TK: It’s hard. It is a hard question because it’s all so personal. It’s all airing dirty laundry, and I hate to divulge anything specific about the meaning or origin of songs.

CI: Here’s an easier one. On the actual process of songwriting, what are the best conditions? What do you prefer?

TK: I’m not actually super-particular, but I seem to be more productive at night, late, late at night when everyone is asleep and there’s not a lot going on. It’s very strange for me. Songs don’t usually come in one movement. You hear lots of songwriters talk about songs coming from a ‘song star’, stuff beaming down. Even Neil Young talks about things like that. It’s never been like that for me. Most of the music I make is really deliberate and made under certain conditions. Sometimes it’s working and sometimes it’s not. I’m not ritualistic about it, really. I mean, it’s habitual, but I’m not doing this at the same time everyday, you know? I don’t know if that’s a good answer or not. I don’t need to light candles or anything like that …

CI: In a number of the articles that I’ve found about you, there is always some mention of how, on the album cover or in some of the photography, there is a bit of a distancing between yourself personally and the musical entity that the band is. I didn’t find that necessarily with the videos. The one for ‘Demon Host’, for example, that’s you straight up. That process of putting images to these songs – did you find that challenging? These are songs that spark the imagination. Was it hard to put specific images to them?

TK: Very much, yeah. I was working with a particular filmmaker, Scott Cudmore, who is actually from London. I kind of gave him carte blanche and believed in his aesthetic. I probably wouldn’t do that again. I probably wouldn’t. He makes music videos the way music videos are meant to look. …

I kind of hate to do it. I would actually prefer not to have a visual presence at all, but it’s impossible of course. There will probably be people here tonight with their phones, taping the show and stuff. I don’t know. There’s no mystery anymore. No one will allow it. It’s not an option for some reason.



CI: Are there certain authors, painters, or filmmakers maybe that have had a measureable impact on your songwriting? My first instinct when I heard your songs was sort of that southern gothic, that William Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor kind of feel, but I thought maybe that was too obvious.

TK: No, no, that’s about right! I love those two. I don’t know Flannery O’Connor as well, but people have always asked me that and made that connection. Yeah, I don’t know. Painters? Andrew Wyeth I like a lot, that imagery; I always identified with those images. That looks like my upbringing, to me, even though it’s nowhere near it geographically. I don’t know. I like the subjects that those writers were writing about, and the way in which they executed that - the spareness.

CI: Your tour schedule has been pretty busy, and you’re covering a lot of ground: Mexico City, the southwestern U.S., the Pacific northwest, here and on to New York, then touring Quebec with Patrick Watson, and off to Europe to open for Broken Social Scene. That’s a nice stretch! Are you able to write on the road, or do you just sort of collect thoughts to process later?

TK: I don’t even collect anything. It’s really hard. I find that touring is totally debilitating. I feel like nothing can happen when I’m on tour. I feel that I can’t even really read a book when I’m on tour. It’s just all encompassing. I don’t know if it will always be like this, or if I’ll adjust to it. It’s still a new thing. It’s frustrating. I think that I was just preparing to get ready to start working again, and we’re gone until fucking June or something! It’s crazy, but the shows that we’re doing now are great. We just did a tour with The Low Anthem, a really beautiful band. The Watson tour should be amazing. We’re getting good spots now. We had some really rough tours, especially through the U.S., but people are starting to come around. I guess it’s important. I don’t know. I don’t know how much longevity we have with touring, or at least how much I have …

CI: Do you mean for how long the audience will come, or for how long you can actually do it?

TK: For how long I can keep it up! I would like to live somewhere like where you live, say, and be just writing and working. That would be the ideal thing for me.

Date of Interview: 04/03/2010
Location: Aeolian Hall, London, ON
Link: www.arts-crafts.ca/timbertimbre