Ian North

IAN NORTH BIO

North's new album Everything is Incomplete is a powerful collection of melody-rich and image-laden songs that will stick in your head. It's an eclectic, sophisticated layering of modern sounds, blending electronic-folk, roots, pop and jazz.

He is often called a "songwriter's songwriter" for juxtaposing familiar and off-beat references from music history, literature and pop culture. Many of his stories and images come from real life journeys and some from fictional ones. China Moon was inspired by stories his wife told him about growing up in Toronto and playing in the ravines, building treehouses and playing make-believe. Sonny Rollins Said is a song based on a true story of jazz great Sonny Rollins, evoking the urban atmosphere of New York City after midnight.

His lyrics are smart and his message is sharp and edgy at times, covering a wide range of topics, from lost love to politics to existential theory. With a scathing take on the world, tempered by occasional musings on life in utopia, Ian North offers unique perspectives and poetic insights on subjects surrounding the human condition. At the same time he provides a measured glimpse into the nature of the man behind the poetry.

Ian presents a new twelve-song album project called Everything is Incomplete which is scheduled for release in August 2024.

A CONVERSATION WITH IAN NORTH

Ian North reflects on his childhood in the playground. Like most children, he enjoyed the fun of summer and swing sets, which is a theme running through his new album Everything is Incomplete. You will see on the back cover of the album, a swing set against the backdrop of an old abandoned drive-in, a photo that Ian took himself.

When describing the fourth track on his album History of Swings he explains that the song reflects on his own experience as a father, pushing his own children on playground swings. It came to him that this was a circular journey and that swing sets and playgrounds are the meeting place and thread between life stages, from childhood, to adolescence and through adulthood. The sensation of weightlessness is never lost when we imagine ourselves back in our past lives as children.

That’s the kind of thing he’d notice, being a songwriter since he was a lad. North took piano lessons at a young age, then switched to clarinet at age 10 or so. “I got a guitar for my 14th birthday,” he says. “It was $12.95 from Sears, and I think I started writing songs right away. Pretty bad ones, probably, but I didn’t know how to play other people’s. I saw myself as a writer even then, and still do, more than as a musician or performer.” The first pieces of music that knocked him out were “Home on the Range” by Roy Rogers (when he was four), and “I Want to Hold your Hand” by the Beatles (at age 10). These days, he consistently returns to Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, as well as Miles Davis and Bach. North is also a huge new music fan and enjoys discovering new artists and revisiting old ones, including ambient and free improv. North enjoys other artists such as Prefuse 73, Kim Hiorthoy, Portico Quartet, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Steve Reich, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny and Keith Jarret, to name more than few.

Typically, North plays and writes in his mornings, and runs errands in his afternoons. He’s one of few songwriters who’s equally adept at both confessional and narrative writing. “When I write about myself, I treat myself as a character,” he says. “I fictionalize, conflate and alter real events, so that it’s not real autobiography, but using ‘what I know’ to talk about something other than myself, like a theme or insight or whatever. When I write about someone else, or in the voice of someone else, I’m trying to imagine what that person’s experience must be like from the inside.” This is evident in songs like Landscape Architect, Thief, Tumbledown and Freak. North explains “In the end, all writing is partly autobiographical, you cannot help but insert your own experience.”

Born and raised in Ottawa, North has lived in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and points in between (Kingston, Madoc, Stouffville). He now lives north of Toronto in Orillia.

This latest album is somewhat of a miracle, coming after Ian’s recent brush with death. He spent the last year in rehabilitation after suffering from a double-lung pulmonary embolism. The album is the result of a long journey back from the edge. Everything is Incomplete delivers on the promise his wife made him while he was in a coma, that she would help him through the process of releasing more music to the world.

THE MAN

Father. Thinker. Songwriter. Reader. Guitar picker. Theorist. Witty commentator. Singer. Man of few, well-chosen words. Scathing cynic. Hopeless romantic. Honest but private.

Distinctive voice. (Perfect in a three-song mix, between Bruce Cockburn and Blue Rodeo.) Great songwriter. Catchy riffs, memorable melodies, learned lyrics. Poetic, subtle, emotional. Sparkling, tingling guitar. Always finds that unique passing or turnaround chord that makes the song shine. A songwriter’s songwriter. Juxatposes the familiar with the off-beat, real life with fiction. Audibly influenced by Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.