DEVIN TOWNSEND: Dig Into It.
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
Devin Townsend is an ever-evolving creature, those who are fans of the Canadian musician no doubt emphatically agreeing. How else would a single entity present the world with such a rich and varied body of work under such guises as the Strapping Young Lad, Casualties of Cool and of course the Devin Townsend Project.
Having recently released his tenth solo album Empath, a record that is both a personal introspective of his own issues as well as a magnificent piece of work that is as philosophical as it is imaginative, Townsend is stripping it all back and striking out on tour on his own.
Never one to adhere to boundaries, in either his work or his life, Townsend is a kaleidoscope of colours, genres and styles, his ability to shapeshift across and through them one of his greatest assets and one of the reasons his fans keep coming back for more.
Currently touring Australia and New Zealand, I caught up with Devin to discuss his latest work. What transpired however was a honest and open conversation of how Devin returned to his roots by digging into his own fears…
Congratulations on your latest album Empath released in March.
“Yeah that was a hard one” [laughs]
[chuckles] Yes, I think you can hear that within the album itself that it is a deeply personal recording…
“Yeah, I mean they all are I think, it’s just this one… life put me in a position where I could dig deeper than usual. Maybe. You just get kinda tired of your own trip I think, and midlife certainly does that to you as well, or it did for me. I was like ‘OK well enough of this and enough of this, let’s just get to the root of this fear and this hang-up and kinda blow the pipes out with it!’ and I think that’s what Empath represents to me, kind of a purge of many years of blockage.”
View this post on Instagram
Well I think it’s quite interesting the personal message from yourself that has been published alongside the concert events:
Hello everyone, Devin here. I have been busy making my newest recording, EMPATH over the past year. It has been a complicated and enlightening experience in that I have gone back to my roots in terms of what my motivations are for making music, in hopes that I am able to move forward as a musician being as true as I possibly can to my motivations. The result is an album that I am exceptionally proud of, one that is uncompromised and diverse in ways that accurately represent where I’m at now at the age of 46.
Before I tour with a band again, I wanted to have the opportunity to play for you and meet up with the people who not only have made my work possible but inspire me to continue. In a world of computers and social media, to be stripped of all the bells and whistles is a very important step for my reintroduction to the live concert world. I truly hope you’ll join me and I look forward to being the most honest I can be with you at these special shows.
See you at the shows.
Love
Devin Townsend
When you read it, it comes across as a very honest message; there is a humility to it that I don’t think is often seen these days.
“Thank you. When I started digging into the concept itself and trying to find the angle in which I could illustrate… because that’s often what happens with records, you’re trying to identify the overarching theme and once you have done that you can kind of like colour it in.
And I think when I first started I recognised there was a certain aspect of fear within me, you know afraid of my own potential, afraid of my own output, afraid of my own lack of control or what have you. And then by digging into that and recognising pretty quickly and through a lot of extra curricular things that were going on as well – I started becoming more interested in meditation and things like this – and I started recognising that to really confront the fear you kinda got to dig into it.
On the surface you assume that your fears are going to be based on something more tangible, like I’m afraid of snakes or I’m afraid of spiders or whatever but digging into it I’m afraid of actually participating in emotions, you know I’m afraid of what it means to experience loss or what it means to experience love or any of these things
And that process just led to lyrics and concepts that required to be blown open a bit and so I just kind of went with it.”
Yes, because you talk about returning to your roots as your motivation for making music. So, would I be right in assuming that these are your roots of motivation; cracking open your fears and actually looking into what it is that you’re scared of?
[chuckles] “Maybe. I mean it changes every year. One of the funniest parts of this career for me is the amount of unequivocal statements that I’ve made publicly over the years…
[laughs]
…that on the next record I’m like ‘Oh yeah, about that’ [laughs] you know? And then it just changes. It’s kind of helped me though in a sense because there’s been people that have called me out on it, they say ‘Hey, you know I’m confused, because a year ago or two years ago we were doing an interview and you were staunchly for or against ‘x’ and now it seems like that is less of an issue to you’
The only way I can react to that is just be like, ‘Yeah well, there’s that, things change’ [laughs] and I have surrendered I think awhile back to the fact that as a result of having a life that has been public, the amount of press that I have done over the last thirty years basically documents every aspect of my trip to the point that it’s just inevitable that you’re gonna look like a hypocrite, you’re going to look like you’re wishy-washy. You’re going to look like a lot of things if your objective is to improve yourself. Because often times in order to prove yourself you have to improve yourself, you have to be willing to challenge your belief system, right?”
Yes, I agree…
“So I do. And, [chuckles] I’m OK with people thinking that I’m a hypocrite, or that I’m confusing or confused. That’s just the nature of the job apparently!”
I personally think that is the nature of being a human being. We evolve our thinking, how we view the world changes with age, with children, with marriage, with relationships, with work…
“Yeah [laughs] totally. But if you have had that entire process documented not only through press but through music… like every step of this trip for me whether it’s like SYL [Strapping Young Lad] or Ocean Machine or Infinity. I mean SYL was all about anger, Infinity was all about drugs, Ocean Machine was all about death. Each one of these periods, the musical output that comes along with it, illustrates that in its glory and in its weirdness. And then you compound that by interviewing the whole time and of course you’re going to appear like you’re this fluid identity throughout the years… if you’re doing it correctly in my opinion.
The people that I would be suspicious of are the ones that after thirty years, they have the same beliefs and the same thought processes and their music is just an extension of what it was off the first record. Not that that’s bad, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it is doing the same process that I find so important, right?”
Yeah, and as I said I think evolution is important. The human spirit and the human soul evolve constantly, and I agree, if somebody is still the same thirty years down the track, either you’re a robot and somebody hasn’t updated your software…
[chuckles]
…or something is just really wrong.
“You know what I find is interesting too, is the amount of people that are confused by the fact that I change year to year. They’re like ‘You know, let me get this straight, because the last time – this is really weird to me – the last time you said this and now you say this?’
You have to take a deep breath and be like ‘Yeah, well, you know, I’m not … uh … I’m not … dead.’”
[mutual raucous laughter]
“So let me try and break this down in a way that doesn’t sound condescending, but fucks sake man, you’re telling me you haven’t changed since last year? C’mon!”
Exactly, you consistently experience new things; you’ve met new people, you’ve seen new art, you’ve heard new music. All of these things they feed into our consciousness.
“For twenty-five years I was a vegetarian and then all of a sudden, I was like ‘Why the fuck am I a vegetarian?’ and not … not like why do I think this is bad, or why do I think this is good. Not that. Just like ask yourself, why have you been for so long. And the only answer that kept coming up was, ‘Well I think that’s what a spiritual person is supposed to do’ as opposed to ‘Oh I know unequivocally why.’
So, I started eating meat again, like full bore too. Just because I wanted to see what it would make me feel; and I remember a bunch of people coming up who were fans of the music – this was maybe six years ago or something – and they were like ‘We heard that you eat meat now’ and I was like ‘Yeah, well I need to know why, if I’m vegetarian or if I’m vegan. I need to know why. I don’t want this to just be based on ‘Well I’m afraid of getting punished by some intangible thing’ I need to know, and if I come out of this at the end of it, ‘Oh I know now by doing this why I do it then I can do it.
I remember when I was in my early twenties, like really thinking about ‘Are you gay?’. Because if you’re gay, and you spend the rest of your life having not thought about it, and then you live this life like you are … not even unfulfilled … but just unactualized, because you didn’t allow yourself to consider it a possibility. And then when I recognised that ‘OK, I’m not gay’, I understand now. The concept of sexuality, its no issue now. You know what I mean?”
Yes, very much so.
“And it’s the same thing with meat. It’s like now after having gone through eating meat again, I’m like much more attracted to veganism, just because I know. [laughs]
A bunch of people I know work at this Buddhist centre, and I remember explaining that process to them thinking that they were going to be really critical of it and in fact they were super supportive. They were like; absolutely, you need to know. You need to know where you stand, and if you feel in your heart that the decisions that you make are right for you, then there’s a confidence that comes from that. And say hypothetically, that you start eating meat again and you decide ‘You know what, meat’s alright by me. I’ve seen the videos of the animals being slaughtered. I understand what it does to my metabolism. I understand what it does… but I’m cool with that’. Then you’re cool with it.”
Yes!
“And I think that is an important step that a lot of times people aren’t willing to take because it’s not socially accepted to really figure out who the fuck you are”
[mutual laughter]
I can completely understand that.
“Totally. Drugs too. It’s the same thing. I remember some of the fear in my early twenties by just going down the psychedelic road, and how I recalled so many parts of my belief system into play and had I not followed through with that afterwards and gotten to the point where now I’m like meditation is really important to me…
Because ultimately there was something that I experienced through that fear; that I was able to recognise my own need for control and the fear that I have of the fundamental aspect of life which is truly chaotic.
Like you can’t fear it. You just have to kind of roll with it, and that experimentation and that process isn’t rooted in just random firings. ‘Oh I really wanna see what happens if I touch the electric hamburger and fuck my life up’
It’s more like, I don’t want to be afraid of who I am, I want to write from a place of compassion and I want to write from a place of love and if that means I have to confront my hatred and if that means that I have to confront the fact that I have tons of hang-ups, then let’s get on with it! Why would I be wasting time pretending otherwise right? I don’t know…”
No, that’s what I was talking about earlier, that honesty. And I think that honesty also comes out – and it’s not the first time you have done it – when you refer to your age. You are very open about your age and where you are in your life currently which I personally find very refreshing because we seem to be surrounded by musicians and actors who are constantly falsifying both their image and their age…
“Well you know, I totally agree with that. And the amount of stress that that would put into someone’s life, if knowing they have to go into a public situation and portray this lie that they set for themselves…
Like there’s this ad in Vancouver now for Bernadette Peters playing a show, and Bernadette Peters – I remember her as a kid – is probably in her seventies now I would say. A seventy-year-old human female. But all the ads for her are so air-brushed, and so photo-shopped that although maybe on some level its super gratifying for her to see herself represented like that, what happens when you just come out in public and people are like ‘That’s not what you look like!’
The stress of that I think is so much more than the stress of saying ‘Look, I’m a seventy-somewhat year old human being and that’s what happens, And for those who don’t want to accept that humans change, like maybe just don’t come to my show…”
[mutual laughter]
“If that’s going to bother you so much, just don’t come to the show, because if you can just come out there and say ‘This is what I bring to the table’ then you don’t have to defend it. You don’t have to pretend, you don’t have to do anything.
I think through the experiences that I’ve had, the amount of creative freedom that comes from not having to relegate sixty percent of your emotional energy into holding your face a certain way so that your audience thinks you look vaguely like the photo shop version of yourself that you’ve been selling. You know that’s sixty percent of your effort that could be delegated to much more useful pursuits.”
Oh god yes! I look at artists like Mavis Staples and PP Arnold, and I love the fact that they are who they are. They have lived, and they are not afraid to show it. It shines from within them actually.
“Yup, gorgeous!”
It’s just a beautiful thing. And yes, we all get old. Get over it. [laughs]
“Well I also think that it’s like… trying to really home in on what your demographic is and what your objectives are as well. Like I think that if you’re using fame, or if your using notoriety to fight some sort of internal, unresolved thing like I never had a chance to be with enough sexual partners or I never had the interest of this certain demographic of the population that I’m interested in romantically.
I mean if your objectives are that, then you’re going to be really hung up on that shit I think. You’re like ‘Well I gotta make sure that people don’t know what my age is, or I gotta make sure that I’m presented like a sexually viable product. But if that’s not your objective, like I don’t care, I mean shit I’ve been married for so long – I’m not trying to get laid …
[laughs]
…you know what I mean. And when it comes to the demographic that I have, I’m not looking to attract young people who are looking for a model. I’m just looking for human beings that are interested in what I do musically because in it somewhere lies some semblance of authenticity and I don’t care who you are really [laughs] what you age is and who you are.
So not having that as my objective is super liberating!”
I can imagine…
“Even the management, they’re just like ‘Man, you can’t wear your crocs in a photo shoot…’
[raucous laughter]
…and I’m like ‘Anybody who is interested in what I do, the fact that I wear crocs is not going to stop them from listening’ [laughs] And so they’re like ‘OK, but just don’t wear them in the photo shoot’ but not only do I wear them, but if you look at the Empath pictures as well, the crocs are like in them, they’re like in front of the guitar and all that and lo and behold it didn’t matter!”
[mutual laughter]
Speaking of Empath once again, for me personally ‘Genesis’ is a track that I just can’t get past; the drums, the small mewls that peek out through it. Just quickly before we go, what were some of the processes behind the creation of that track?
“Every time that the song changes and goes to a different vibe, literally I was in the studio and I just got bored. I thought ‘Oh fuck it, I’ll just do this now’ and that was as subtle of a thing as it sounds like to say out loud.
It was like a whole quantum shift for me, because I didn’t realise up until that point that I was like ‘Yeah you can go ahead and do that, it doesn’t matter’; you’re allowed to do whatever you want, you can put ‘Why?’ after ‘Hear Me’. You can have all these structural and absurd changes in ‘Genesis’, go for it’
And so anytime I found myself stuck while writing – as tends to happen with any of this – there was just really this thing, where I was like ‘OK, well just do the first thing that comes to your mind, like just go for it’ and it was like these crazy little explosions and I used ‘Genesis’ as almost a template for the rest of the record and it acts almost like a mission statement for that sort of creative freedom.
I really enjoyed making that song because I recognised that any of the parameters that had been on me for so long were by in large self-imposed and … great to know.”
Devin Townsend will be performing a one-off show tonight (Friday 6th September 2019) at Auckland’s Hollywood Avondale Theatre. Tickets are still available from plus1.co.nz but get in quick as they’re selling fast!
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