MUSIC OF SELF-DISCOVERY
Tom Wilson mulls his Indigenous roots
Tom Wilson, the burly Canadian musician famous for his ’90s rock band, Junkhouse, and the roots supergroup Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, discovered his true identity a few years ago.
As chronicled in his 2017 memoir, Beautiful Scars, he is not the biological son of the Hamilton couple who raised him. His birth mother was actually the Indigenous woman he thought was his cousin. Instead of the FrenchIrish roots he thought he had, his ancestry is Mohawk. Both parents hailed from the Kahnawake reserve outside Montreal.
The revelation shook Wilson to the core, forever changing the way he approaches his creative pursuits, whether it’s poetry, prose, visual art or music.
“Over the course of discovering my true identity, it’s changed how I create,” Wilson said from his hometown, Hamilton. “The intention of my writing, music and art is to reduce the gap between my Indigenous culture and colonists, and to make a more patient and loving community. That’s really the mandate of everything I’m doing now.”
The 59-year-old has also realized he was part of the Sixties Scoop, that period in Canada’s not-too-distant past when Indigenous children were removed from their families and adopted by or placed in foster homes with non-Indigenous families.
A new album of songs inspired by Wilson’s journey to discover himself and his culture came out last month, produced by his old friend, Cowboy Junkies’ Michael Timmins. Titled Mohawk, it’s the fourth outing by Lee Harvey Osmond, which is the name Wilson uses for his psychedelic folk collective. Their Juno- and Polaris-nominated first album, A Quiet Evil, came out in 2009.
In this edited interview, Wilson talks about the new music and his next book:
What’s the goal with the new record?
It’s all music that’s inspired by the book I wrote, Beautiful Scars. It’s all coming down the pike. Writing these songs was continuing to dig deeper into my story. It’s not an indulgence of mine; it’s actually the story of the Sixties Scoop. That’s how my culture identifies me. They don’t look at me as an outsider. They immediately embraced me as a member of theirs. And so telling that story feels important. Really I’m trying to show honour and respect to a culture that I’m still just shaking hands with.
Q You mentioned reducing the gap between Indigenous culture and colonists. In other words, you’re trying to close the gap that made your mother feel she couldn’t raise you?
That’s right. We’re all part of a community and a country that made it OK for people to feel bad about who they are. I think if I can do my part — it’s not going to stop in my lifetime but we have to do what we can do, and open the door of possibilities for generations to come. If that’s what my music and art and my next book can help do, I don’t have an ego that I think I’m going to make a big difference but I do believe that I can be part of something that’s going to make this a more loving place.
Q Why is this a Lee Harvey Osmond record and not a Tom Wilson record?
Well, the music I make with Lee Harvey Osmond is kinda unique to that project. It all stems from the first record we made 10 years ago when I realized that folk music was really f-----g lame. Folk music to me was always about stories from my fire, coming over to your fire and telling you those stories. I thought that was missing. I thought folk music was trying to be popular, and in doing that it had lost a lot of its beauty and a lot of the reason it existed. So with Lee Harvey, I started writing songs about addiction and Indigenous land rights and reallife things from around Hamilton. They didn’t really fit in with Blackie and didn’t add up to me playing a guitar and singing into a microphone. These were definitely Lee Harvey Osmond songs.
Q What else are you working on these days?
I have to finish writing a Blackie and the Rodeo Kings record. I’m starting some new paintings. I have to lay down some more words on the next book I’m writing.
It’s going to continue a little more about identity and about how we have nothing to offer the world until we know who we are. I really feel after years of writing and performing and creating strictly off burning desire, now I’m able to hitch my identity to this. I feel like I’m actually doing something that I think is better for the world.