Moir’s songs turn more personal
Edmonton-born songwriter draws from day-to-day life
Daniel Moir With guests: Braden Gates, Billie Zizi Where: The Artery, 9535 Jasper Ave. When: Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $10 advance from yeglive.ca, $12 at the door
On his recent video for the song Sorry, Vancouver’s Daniel Moir takes a paintbrush to a snare drum, a guitar and then himself, though it doesn’t leave the old guitar he used as a prop in very good shape.
“It didn’t do too well,” he laughs
In the end, it’s a colourful, cross-media portrayal of the songwriter’s craft.
“I don’t know if songwriting comes easy to anyone,” says the singer-multiinstrumentalist.
“For me, it’s like pulling teeth 70 per cent of the time. Sometimes I can’t come up with anything for weeks and I wonder if I’m done, then in two days I’ll write three of my best songs, almost as if it’s passing through you, like anything creative.”
Like many musicians this time of year, Moir is happy to be home for the holidays. Back in hometown Edmonton, that is, connecting with family, friends and the music scene that helped give him a start before he moved to Vancouver in 2011.
At his homecoming date Saturday, he’s performing one or two new tunes on top of material from his latest album, Monday Morning. That third release was his first to feature a few love songs, aided and abetted by the end of a relationship.
“Until Monday Morning I’m not sure I’d ever written a love song because I used to think they were so cliché. Then I found myself so affected by it. But I tried to write about it in a different way, like ‘love is awful,’ more like breakup songs.”
Given that, Monday Morning is a surprisingly upbeat album. Moir says it’s simply “the way I write” and says he’s a glass half-full kind of guy.
Lately, his writing has been an outlet for songs of a more personal, thoughtful stripe drawing from day-to-day experiences.
“They’re like my personal diary in a way and my ideas just spill out: quantum physics, metaphysics, events or my outlook on life, spirituality, but not in a religious sense.”
He’s not much of a political writer, though his environmental concerns led him to donate $1 from each CD to EcoJustice, a national organization focusing on the environment.
The impressive part is the way Moir takes what spills out, shaping it into a something compelling in his folkpop style, adding a catchy hook or unusual cadence, with his raw, youthful enthusiasm and serious talent for playing most of the instrument parts to sound like a band.
Nursed on childhood piano lessons, Moir was 12 when he chose to pick up drums, then sax and finally electric guitar, which led to a various other string instruments.
Within a year or so he played his first gig with a cover band at a community hall. Like many teens with a Jimi Hendrix obsession, Moir found his guitar was handy for writing and he gravitated toward more alternative influences.
“I still appreciate a good instrumental but now I see the guitar as more of a composer’s tool.”
Moir’s first band based around original songs, Orange & Light, lasted for about three years and even made a recording before he split to go solo with his 2008 EP The Country And The Sea. That project also marked his introduction to Vancouver and work with Monarch Studios producer Tom Dobrzanski (Said The Whale), who got him his first coffee house gig on the west coast. A tune from the EP wound up on the NBC television series Mercy.
A stint backpacking around Europe inspired some of the travel-oriented songs for his 2010 release Road. Recorded in Calgary with producer Russell Broom, it involved a larger backing band than Moir had used before, including trumpet and violin. His first crossCanada tour followed, along with his first dates in the U.S. By late 2010, he had relocated to Vancouver and some of the songs for Monday Morning were already taking shape.
He hopes to start recording again soon. With more studio experience in the studio, he hopes to add more electronics to his next set but stresses “I want to keep the organic element.”