Back in the loop

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/07/2021 (1573 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Starting over isn’t easy. For Alex Maher, it became the only option.

Last November, the professional musician left Vancouver — where he had been performing for two decades — and moved to Winnipeg with his wife and their dog, Billie Howliday. The couple was already considering a move away from the West Coast housing crisis when the pandemic upped the timeline.

“COVID kind of pushed anyone’s decisions that were on the table,” Maher says. “My wife grew up here, so we had already been coming here every year for Christmas and summer at the lake. And Winnipeg has always been a really good music city.”

Good music city or not, the local scene was in a state of suspended animation. Back in Vancouver, the multi-instrument loop artist — which is something of a one-man-band situation, without the knee cymbals and backpack bass drum — had gone from gigging six nights a week to playing livestreamed concerts and working odd construction jobs amid the pandemic.

Maher was eager to get back on stage, but with few Winnipeg connections and no live shows, it was difficult to make inroads.

“It’s scary,” he says of restarting his career in a new city at 41-years-old. “The fear of oblivion was really strong.

“It’s not like in Vancouver, where I was just kind of letting the party come to me; I had to really start engaging what was available.”

Maher went back to basics: open-mic nights — although these performances took place online, rather than in a well-worn pub. He became a regular contributor to the Whoop and Hollar Folk Festival’s virtual open-mic events and was invited to perform in real life at the Portage la Prairie festival on Aug. 27.

“That was like one of the highlights of the beginning of the summer; just being like, ‘Oh my god, I actually have (a show) coming up,’” Maher says.

He has since booked a slot at The Beer Can on Sat., July 31 and has strung together a small western Canadian tour now that provinces are opening back up.

Maher comes from a musical family and has fond memories of his dad playing remixed covers of Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie around the fire during camping trips. He fell for the saxophone in grade school and began taking private lessons and playing in jazz bands. In university, he opted for the practical path, pursuing a degree in molecular genetics and psychology — all the while playing music on the side.

Science fell by the wayside when his college band Flannel Jimmy signed with Nettwerk Music Group, a label that managed the likes of Coldplay and Sarah McLachlan in the ‘90s. The band released one album and toured with Wide Mouth Mason, Colin James and The Proclaimers before parting ways in the early 2000s.

Maher started another band, DNA6, before striking out on his own and developing a sound that blends his jazz background with soul, funk and electro-pop. Maher performs live with three keyboards, two microphones, a sax, two guitars, a drum console and two loopers — the latter allow him to blend all those instruments into one cohesive sound as a solo artist. Last February, right before lockdown, he released his second EP, Dream Final.

Committing to a career in music is a gamble at the best of times and Maher has considered quitting more than once, “especially this year,” he says.

“If things didn’t reopen, I had a window of September to make a move and do another pivot,” he says. “I still could do that if things go fourth wave on us, but I don’t want to.”

Right now, music feels viable again and Maher is enjoying life in his new city, where he survived his first Winnipeg winter with aplomb and is relishing the chance to grow vegetables in the yard of his West End home.

Visit alexmahermusic.com for details about upcoming performances.

 

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney