Brad’s battle for the life he wanted
Brad Battle drove by that same tree every night in St. Catharines, rarely taking notice. Just another drive home after another exhausting midnight shift, another night full of bad thoughts. He hoped to feel better the next day. He wouldn’t.
And now, that tree had his attention.
It was big enough to do the job, he decided. This would be the one he’d casually steer his car into soon. If done right, it would look like an accident, sparing his family the realization he killed himself. It would be better for everyone, he thought.
“I remember being afraid to tell anybody about it,” he says, talking about that night four years ago which feels like 100. “I’ve got young kids. If I start telling (my wife) some of the things I’ve been thinking, is she going to say ‘I’m outta here?’ Will they not let me see my kids?
“I remember just driving home and I wasn’t giving it any thought. It was like ‘That one … that one there.’ Just looking at the different trees down First Street, thinking which ones would do it. Which ones would not do it.”
At one point, Battle was a guitarist in one of Niagara’s most highlytouted bands: Confusion of the Senses, later renamed Round 4. It was a group he started with friend Tim Hicks, now a Canadian country music star. They were a can’tmiss prospect. At least that’s what everyone kept telling him.
But they did miss. And Battle blamed himself. As he saw it, everyone in the band was so talented, he had to be the reason they failed.
This misery stayed with him for years. He couldn’t find his way out of the forest. So he focussed on just one tree.
YEARS LATER, friends and family still can’t believe Battle sunk this low. He was always smiling, always appeared happy. Depression, he realized, wasn’t like he saw in the movies. He didn’t mope around, giving off signals. He forced it inside, letting it fester.
But this time was different. He had loved music virtually all his life, and now music was the reason he was so miserable. Made him feel like a fraud.
As a kid, he remembers his neighbour’s dad being an “amazing guitar player.” When he watched him play, his course was set. Just one problem: No cash for a guitar.
He started stashing money from his paper route, dreaming of a cool six string. Cue disappointment No. 1: His parents insisted their neighbour accompany him to the music store to choose the guitar for him.
“He picked out a guitar that I thought was ugly. I didn’t want it, but he said it’s a great guitar for the money, and that’s the guitar you’re going to get.”
He would not be Eddie Van Halen right away, but he made his peace with the orange, unsightly thing. More importantly, it sounded good. He could do something with this.
While taking music lessons at the Ontario Conservatory of Music in Niagara Falls, instructor Tim Miller placed him in a trio in order to enter a local music contest. Battle was volunteered to be the singer as well as guitarist, and recalls he was “horrible.” At the end of the set, the audience had to be urged to applaud.
Battle was angry. If he was going to sing, he would devote everything to it, until his mom would have to say “I think that’s enough for today.”
It magnified something he had been battling since childhood — he was overly emotional. He was a popular kid, “but I could get my feelings hurt real easily.”
That sensitivity would serve him well as a singer/songwriter. It would also haunt him when things went south.
While at the Conservatory of Music, Battle found himself in a rivalry with a good-looking, keyboard-playing kid named Tim Hicks. He won all the contests, got all the praise. Battle was jealous, but in the midst of that envy a friendship was born.
At 17, Battle was determined to form a band with some of Niagara’s best players. Hicks was one of the first people he called, and the resulting band — Confusion of the Senses — quickly made an impact in the early ’90s. Even before they had a drummer, they were opening for the Rainbow Butt Monkeys.
Once the trio of Battle, Hicks and guitarist Sherman Arnold Jr. added Andrew Gordon as drummer, they made their mark. They released two CDs and during one five-month stretch, played 108 shows.
But with a new manager and publicist came a new name. Round 4 was chosen “because there was an Oscar De La Hoya fight on at the time.”
With Battle and Hicks (now a guitarist) as the chief songwriters, Round 4 seemed like a lock. As the gigs piled up, record companies started paying attention. After opening for Blue Rodeo in May 2000, at Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls, Jim Cuddy sang their praises backstage.
“You’d always have people coming up to us, without prompting, and say, ‘Man, you guys are it. You guys are going to make it.’ That was a common thing, and it actually got to a point where I would almost resent hearing that. Because we were never getting over the hump.
“We finally got to do some showcases for record labels in Toronto, and it was always ‘Great, we want to hear a little bit more.’ We’d keep going back to the studio, recording more songs, dumping more money into it.”
While doing a radio tour in the U.S., Battle felt something shift. Hicks, the most talented of the bunch, was the first to bail. He left to play in a Beatles tribute band on a cruise ship for a year. Round 4 finished the radio tour with a replacement guitarist, then pulled the plug.
And then the guilt started.
Why did they fail, Battle kept asking himself. Hicks, Gordon and Arnold were all superior musicians. All great performers. Battle started breaking it down, and came up with a reason: Himself.
“If all of those guys weren’t the reason, then I was the reason,” he says. “I had a few opportunities to maybe jump back on the horse after we stopped playing. Honestly, I didn’t have the confidence.”
Battle was in a despairing loop — the band gave him confidence as a musician, but blinded him into thinking he was a passenger. He wasn’t part of their success, just their failure.
“I really beat myself up about it,” he says. “I’d run into people and they’d say, ‘Are you still playing in the band?’ ‘No.’ ‘That’s too bad because I thought you guys were pretty good.’ Over and over, and then it got to that point where I was like ‘Stop asking about music … I don’t do music any more.’”
It would get worse. Battle was thrilled when Hicks signed a record contract, but it also convinced him he was right: He was the reason Round 4 went nowhere. “That was the evidence for me.”
He put his guitar down and walked away from music. Instead, he worked at Food Basics, then as manager at one of the Niagara Falls casinos. The depression mounted, his weight went up. He got married at about 150 pounds and was now 230 pounds. Battle heard from his sister that her kids didn’t recognize him in a photo.
“That was a real downturn for me … here I am, Fat Uncle Brad,” he says. “The further away from playing music, the gap widened for me, feeling more and more lost. I would replace it with working more, eating more.”
Hicks’ very first single as a country artist, Get By, went top 10 in Canada in 2012. He followed it up with his debut album Throw Down in 2013. Battle was insanely proud of his friend, but his own “bad thoughts” were getting worse. He would dream of people he knew getting hurt. He felt lost without music, but couldn’t bear playing again.
And that tree by the road seemed to be the answer.
Once he made the decision to end his life, something clicked in. He drove home in a daze, then broke down to his wife Jodi. He needed help, or he wouldn’t be around much longer.
“He’d had ups and downs for a long time,” recalls Jodi. “He came to me and told me how he thought about driving into a tree. I was scared, I was worried, obviously. I asked how long he had been feeling this way and he said awhile.
“Then I just hugged him and said you need to go see someone.”
IT TOOK A WHILE. There were days he resented the medication, resisted the fact he was depressed. There was the usual stigma, the shame. “He thought, if you’re on medication that means you’re crazy,” says Jodi. “Which is so not true. You just need to balance yourself out.”
His doctor assured him taking pills for depression is no different than taking pills for blood pressure.
More importantly, he started thinking about music as a way back. As an ally again.
A phone call with Hicks led to some time writing together. The guitar felt good in Battle’s hands again, but he wasn’t ready to commit just yet. He couldn’t deal with more disappointment in this state.
One night, his eight-year-old daughter Lilli asked if she could be a teacher when she grows up. Battle didn’t even hesitate: “I told
her she could be anything she wanted to be if she worked hard.”
She paused, then replied: “So you can still do music?”
Battle felt like a “schmuck.” Of course he could.
That same night, he told Jodi he was booking a trip to Nashville. Just six months after he nearly ended his life, he was going to kickstart it again in a place where plenty of music careers begin and end. He knew the risks.
“It was a really emotional, scary moment to say I am going to go for it. Because music is who I am.”
The process felt different. Instead of waiting for someone else’s approval, Battle was recognizing his own merits. Songs were coming together. They meant something to him. He was sure they’d mean something to others.
“People who had heard me sing for years were saying, ‘I don’t remember you sounding like this before.’ I wasn’t trying to sound like anybody else. Wasn’t trying to sing like Steven Page from the Barenaked Ladies.
“I felt like I’d found my own voice, and that’s really when people started opening doors.”
The machine felt refuelled. Released in April, Battle’s six-song EP Always Easy was an assured slate of country aided by producers like Dave Thomson (formerly of Wave) and Dean Malton. It led to five nominations at this year’s Niagara Music Awards in September, tied for the most.
He ended up winning for songwriter of the year and country artist of the year. Battle can barely describe his emotions that night.
“It was such a good feeling to stand in front of peers and have them say ‘We see you. We appreciate what you do.’
“The biggest motivator for me now is my kids. As far as they’re concerned, Daddy’s a star. They’re in their bubble in St. Catharines. They go to Uncle Tim’s house and he’s got gold records hanging on the wall. Their dad’s got a couple silver records hanging on his wall. To them, it’s all the same.”
In recent months Battle has been working on a new batch of songs with a country ‘all-star band’ for an album coming out in February, produced by Bart McKay (Gord Bamford). One song stands out for him — a cover song called Say Something.
It’s full of things he wishes he could say to himself four years ago.
“I didn’t have anybody in my life (then) that could relate to that, that maybe could have smoothed it over,” he says. “I wish I could go back to that person and say … you win as a team and you lose as a team. When you were winning as a team, part of that was your contribution.”
There are still down days, says Jodi. Days he doubts himself. But they’re shorter now. Against depression, that counts as a win.
“I try to stay positive when things don’t work out,” she says. “I’m learning to pick him back up and keep going.” jlaw@postmedia.com