The Silent Partner
Persevere is the personal motto that guides Courage My Love bassist Brandon Lockwood
Tattoos can be slow artistic torture. “I spent nine hours in a chair once — with smoke breaks,” said Brandon Lockwood, the ink-stained bass player for the all-Kitchener power-pop trio Courage My Love. “Full day, right?” How many tattoos does Lockwood have? Hard to say, Lockwood admits. The intricate images blend into each other on the epidermal collage of his young chaotic life. “I’ve lived a lot in 24 years,” he said. So Lockwood, who left home at 17 for a vandriving excursion into the musical scenery beyond his Kitchener existence, has longfanged bats and saber-toothed cats in his bodyart belfry.
The determined owl on his chest is lugging a heart in its talons while being shot by arrows. A guardian angel, drawn to ease his worries after a good friend initially went into a coma after crashing his car into an Ottawa Street pole seven years ago, wraps an assuring embrace around his right arm.
A scroll with the words “The Great I Am”
unfurls across one forearm in depressing tribute to a sad A graceful song that Lockwood once figured could play at his funeral.
His first tattoos? His mom Sharon took him on his 16th birthday to get a treble clef and a bass clef for his left arm.
“I’m sure she kind of regrets that now,” he said.
There are also sparkling stars and a glaring skull and a heavenly harp. A harp is fitting.
Lockwood — who grew up skating and running floors with future NHL stars Tanner Pearson and Mark Scheifele, as well as National Lacrosse League MVP Dhane Smith — is somewhat of a silent partner in Courage My Love.
He’s plays a muted Harpo to the Halloween-born Arn-Horn twins, singer-guitarist Mercedes and drummer-vocalist Phoenix.
The identical 22-year-old sisters, who’ve appeared in TV dramas and chicken restaurant commercials, deliver most of the proscenium punchlines to inquiring media minds.
He’s fine with that. They’re his best friends and cherished collaborators, he says.
“It seems like everyone is usually talking at them,” said Lockwood, who succeeded David BlakeDickson as band bassist nearly four years ago after a tour of Japan.
“They got it covered. I don’t really need to say anything.”
But Lockwood’s jarring tattoos, like his background vocals on the group’s forthcoming album “Synesthesia,” scream out his story of a Kitchener kid who long struggled to find his comfort zone.
“It’s hard for me to find something I’m comfortable with,” said Lockwood, whose big fear is being stuck doing what he hates doing. “I don’t enjoy a lot.”
Eventually, he soured on the minor sports his stepdad Russ encouraged.
The politics of puck, which once took him on a hockey trip to Japan where the vending machines in the hotel halls dispensed beer, now tormented his sense of fairness. And the in-game fisticuffs that always landed him in minor-hockey purgatory were mangling his hands.
Those hands felt best gripping a guitar, like the one his dad Alex — who was also a bass player in his youth — bought him when he was six.
In Grade 11, he skipped class for a few weeks at Resurrection just to go on tour with a band. Selfish? Sure. But the musical intermission from daily drudgery made him happy.
“I wasn’t really thinking about anything else, just kind of doing me,” he said.
“My mom probably was pretty upset.”
The living arrangements on his musical journey have varied. He stayed with his beloved grandparents for a while. He’s also slept on friends’ couches and floors. He band-hopped too. Funny, but Lockwood left a band called The Twin to join the Courage My Love twins. Is that double-up destiny? Or just determination meeting happenstance?
Tattooed cross his knuckles, written in cursive over two hands, is one word. Persevere. The owl on Lockwood’s chest is wounded, but flies on, he says. He’s not easily discouraged.
“All the tattoos that really mean something to me, my artist didn’t want to do.”
But Lockwood insisted. Hung over, he sat for five hours in the tattoo chair to get that owl traced into his chest. He pondered all the possibilities in a life struggle that still sees him selling skateboards and hoodies part-time at the big mall down the street from his dad’s apartment, where Lockwood is staying these days.
Inside, Lockwood churns with ideas and lyrics for songs, plus concepts for the clothing line venture (www.lifelinesupply.com) he recently launched with two friends.
“My mind is always racing,” he said.
“I’ve always got a thousand things on the go in my head.”
Taming his galloping creative impulses wasn’t easy. He tried medication. He didn’t like it. Over time, he says he has learned to harness the hyperactive pace of his thoughts and ride out the restless contradictions. He’s constantly busy yet he always has free time.
“I can’t really just sit still,” he said.
If you want to be happy, go out and make yourself happy. That’s what his mom, who now lives in Chatham, told him. Being on stage and playing music makes him serene, content.
“I become a different person on stage. I kind of take myself out of my own head for that half-hour or hour. It feels great. I don’t have to think. It’s just what I do. It’s just so natural. I’m just comfortable. That’s my place.”
In June, his place was with Courage My Love in Italy.
Before a show in Vicenza, he and the twins decided to get matching band tattoos. This week, he rolled down his right sock to show off the words he had written above his ankle, between rows of sharply drawn teeth. In Bocca Al Lupo. It means “in the mouth of the wolf ” and is a perverse way of wishing performers good luck. That’s what members of an Italian band called Halflives explained to Mercedes.
It’s the equivalent of telling an English actor to “break a leg” on stage. To bring about the best, you say you wish for the worst, the jaws of the beast.
“And then, you kill the wolf,” Lockwood said of the Crepi! response.
“And you persevere from that.”