Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2013 (3452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Remember that Little Drummer Boy music video from two years ago? The one shot in Winnipeg that had the boy the with piercing blue eyes wearing shorts and banging on his drum kit in the dead of winter? That boy was Sean Quigley and that video has racked up over 2.6 million YouTube hits to date. Quigley described the video as his version of a love letter to Winnipeg.

Two winters after the video went viral, it’s as though Quigley walked straight out of Drummer Boy and into a café in the Exchange District to meet Winnipeg Free Press intern Jessica Botelho-Urbanski. He looks exactly the same — still decked out in denim cut-offs, a tuque and Hudson’s Bay mittens on this blustery -37 (with the wind chill) evening.

Quigley acknowledged the cold, but said it doesn’t deter him from wearing shorts. “I don’t really own pants. I have one pair of pants and they’re my dress pants.”

He’s evolved from a 16-year-old drummer boy to an 18-year-old Oak Park High School graduate turned full-time musician. A tattoo on Quigley’s chest peeks out from under the collar of his T-shirt and he’s accompanied by a 20-year-old blond, his fiancée and bandmate, Karli Gerbrandt. The duo are in the midst of recording their debut album under the alias, Bold As Lions.

Free Press: How long have you been engaged?

Sean Quigley: Just a few months, but we’ve been dating for almost a year.

Karly Gerbrandt: He told me he was going to marry me when he was 15.

SQ: And it’s actually happening!

FP: And you’ve started a band, too. How did you come up with the name Bold As Lions?

SQ: It’s actually from an old proverb that says “The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as lions.” [Proverbs 28:1] We want to be a light in the darkness in the music industry — just complete transparency and honesty. I have my own personal beliefs and faith that I believe in strongly, but I have nothing to hide. I’m just as broken as the next person, and I’m perfectly fine letting the whole world know if it’s going to help someone. After Drummer Boy it’s almost like I got pigeonholed, like my music was given a faith. Music doesn’t have a faith, people do.

FP: You said the video pigeonholed you. How do you think you’ve changed as a person before and after Drummer Boy?

SQ: I think it definitely made me think a lot more about why that video had such success. I never intended it to be what it was and I never saw where the future would take me. It really made me think more about how I can use my own personal experiences to help other people. I’ve always had a heart for social justice, I’ve always had a heart for helping… It’s so easy to feel hopeless, meanwhile, I believe in my heart that every single person has something they can bring to the table.

FP: You gave all the money from the Drummer Boy CD profits to charity.

SQ: Yeah, obviously there were certain things where I had expenses that needed to be paid, but I didn’t keep a penny from any physical-copy sales. It all went right to Siloam Mission.

FP: Did you raise a lot of funds through CD sales?

SQ: I remember at one point in time, selling physical copies, we raised thousands of dollars a day. I did a mitten drive, too, because everyone loved that I wore the Canada mitts in the video. The Hudson’s Bay Co. called me up and was like, ‘Hey, we love that you did the mitts! Do you want to promote them for us?’ And I was like, ‘Yes absolutely, IF we can give a portion away.’ We did this whole campaign that was like Buy a Pair, Donate a Pair, so you’d buy a pair and get a pair for free. So with every pair that was bought, they donated a pair to Siloam Mission. It was a Winnipeg thing at the Bay Downtown. I think after one day we sold close to 700 pairs of mitts. So I could walk down Albert Street and see someone begging for money wearing those mitts and think, hmm… I was never given the opportunity to do that stuff before.

FP: When you made the video did you have any idea it would blow up like it did?

SQ: No idea. Honestly, my original intent with the video was just to express how I was feeling and it was a way that I could get across what I think Christmas is about and what it means to me. Apparently a lot of people can relate!

FP: Are you planning any kind of sequel to Little Drummer Boy?

SQ: The sequel for Little Drummer Boy as of right now will not happen. I just want to leave it. You know an old artist friend of mine told me, ‘Sometimes you just have to leave things alone and say it is what it is’. It was a moment of inspiration in time, that can’t be recreated. Even if I tried, it’s impossible.

jessica.botelho-urbanski@freepress.mb.ca