The Harkening and Pedro The Lion (Pt. 2)
One of the first things I loved about chunk-riff master poet David Bazan, both in his solo recordings and his early Pedro The Lion band incantation, was the fact that he was a man who was not afraid to let his voice be genuine and different.
Gaining his first real exposure as a professed Christian rock band leader in PTL, Bazan is a man who has gone through countless shifts of faith and belief, and who has never shied away from expressing those things openly - fears, doubts, worries, questions, and raw-cut honesty about life and death. I'm sure it's saddled him with some controversy and shaming from certain circles that he was once connected to, but I'm proud of his legacy and his devotion to soulful, rock-folk melodics that are all anchored through a stark, genius lyricism.
As luck would have it, I even got the chance to have a beer with and interview him, back in 2010, when he played a full-band show in Ottawa at Mavericks. We talked about many things - the church, life, death, lyrics, sweet snare drum recording tricks and the blasting guitar sounds of Jimmy Eat World (who he had recently toured with).
In 2009, I vowed to write a blog entry every day as an act of commitment and growth as a writer. Although my life has changed dramatically since those days of living in a funky basement apartment on James Street, in Centertown, bartending, administering at a community centre/church, and playing in a five piece rock band, I think it's about time to take on another task of that magnitude.
In reading through those old 2009 posts (and yes - I did write 365 of them), I realized that even though the monotony of scheduled writing annoyed me at times, it forced me to express. It pushed me. It changed me. It helped me to better formulate what I was feeling and thinking - even if I felt like after a few hundred posts, I had nothing to say. But even then, even in the dregs of discipline, I still had something to say. I think we all do.
So in my quest to be more about love in every facet of my life, I'm pushing forward. I want to rekindle my love of words.
So, here we go. Only 364 more of these to go. A harrowing quest? Perhaps. But we have each other, and we have some good music to listen to along the way. As Bazan says in one of his finest tunes Hard To Be, it truly is 'Hard to be a decent human being'.
But hey - I'll give it a shot.
