Songwriter’s new EP is something to write home about

In an early May rehearsal for a UMFM studio session, CEC is the team captain.

The Manitoban producer and songwriter — a signee with Misfit Music Inc. & Odd Doll Records’ newly launched Misfit Live agency, alongside other LGBTTQ+ artists Kimmortal, Ralph, Quarterback Baby and Vivek Shraya — knows that net goals don’t happen without selfless assists.

Since entering semi-retirement from a hockey career that included stints at Dartmouth University and with the Spanish international team, Cec Lopez, who uses they/them pronouns, has had group projects in mind other than morning skate, and eyes on results other than the Walter Cup.

Returning to Winnipeg in 2024 after wrapping up graduate studies in Ottawa, CEC — whose mother Tamara played three years of volleyball and basketball at the Canadian Mennonite University — began the process of refining and refinding their idea of chosen community.

As an organizer and artist mentor, CEC — pronounced Seece — found support through Good + Plenty, an organization started by Lana Winterhalt in 2020 to open up the production field for more women, trans and non-binary musicians.

In the meantime, the artist worked with Misfit Music Inc. in an administrative capacity and began to connect with other creatives seeking a quiet sanctuary to create loud noises.

That’s how CEC — whose soft-spoken voicemail message is set to R&B singer Teddy Pendergrass — wound up in an Exchange District loft above a boxing gym and a record shop and below an accountant’s office.

CEC’s backing band for the UMFM session — drummer Paul Klassen, bassist Fred Warner and pianist Tirian Plett, each of the jazz trio No Fuss — settles into the jam space at Good + Plenty’s Clubhouse; the bandleader explains the desired volume level. Taken in the groove, a few times Klassen makes the upstairs calculators shake.

Across 45 minutes, the group is running through Briefly, the second EP from CEC, named after Ocean Vuong’s epistolary 2019 novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.

While the public gets to hear Briefly as of the EP’s release this weekend, CEC hosted a letter-writing listening event with two sittings on May 16, inviting guests to write or type appreciative, responsive letters to strangers that will be given out Saturday night at Sidestage (700 Osborne St.), an installation through local initiative The Love Post.

“Everybody kept telling me how special it felt, which was so pure, because people really felt they were part of the EP, or I don’t know, the world?” CEC says. “The first group of people was mostly friends, and the second group of people had a lot of strangers, which is also cool, and different for me, because I feel like I’m starting to branch out of friends-and-family-only listeners, which is interesting, you know?”

Featuring lead single Enormous, Briefly, like the most treasured letters, is worth revisiting over and over — a book not worth logging on Goodreads because you know you’ll remember exactly where you were when it found you.

CEC plays Saturday night at Sidestage with Roots In Harmony Choir and Dream+Flow (Marisolle Negash with Kevin Waters). Tickets are available at sidestagewpg.com. After a tour that includes stops in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, CEC and Ila Barker play Poor Michael’s Emporium in Onanole on June 27.

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