Just Artists

Winnipeg – The City of Immigrant Dreams

When I moved to Winnipeg in February 1997 I had never heard of voyageurs or Pierre Gaultier de la Vérendrye, the French-Canadian explorer who constructed Fort Rouge on the site of what has become Winnipeg. But much like the Scottish and Irish immigrants who settled in the Red River and mixed their life and love with the Assiniboine and Cree, my stories and songs soon entwined with the English, French, First Nations and Metis artists and musicians I discovered.

As fate would have it I managed to arrive just in time for the snowstorm of the century. Spring melting soon turned all the snow into the flood of the century and the honeymoon, as they say, was officially over. It’s been 12 years now that I have been a professional artist writing, recording, performing and producing everything from CDs and TV shows to podcasts and multi disciplinary concerts from the heart of the Canadian heartland.

Now in 2009 the Red River has just come through the second worst flooding since 1997 and I am on the verge of another move, one that will take me a world away from Winnipeg. So I am sifting through the memories and moments of the last decade, what do I know now that I didn’t know then? What have I learned and experienced that I couldn’t have if I had lived anywhere else? What do need to take with me and what should I leave behind?

Winnipeg - The Land of Opportunity

More than anything Winnipeg has been a land of opportunity, an opportunity for this white male, from a privileged middle class background (I would never have recognized this had I not lived here) to live in an urban centre with the highest population of First Nations people in Canada. An opportunity to experience a creative climate where English, French, First Nation and Metis cultures coexist in a way unlike any other region of the country. In many ways Winnipeg is like an island. The nearest city of equal or greater size in Canada is 14 hours away, or 9 hours if you go to the U.S. So everything happens here on the Island, it’s like an incubator or a hothouse. It’s my theory to explain the massive creativity and rich artistic diversity the city is known for, if you want something you have to build it or grow it yourself. Winnipeg is the only city to produce something like Folklorama or Festival du Voyageur; which in my humble opinion is not only one of the most exciting festivals in the country, it is the most distinctly Canadian and uniquely Manitoban. Joie de vivre!

Winnipeg - Confessions of a Serial Quitter

If I’d written an autobiography before moving to Winnipeg it could have been called Confessions of a Serial Quitter. As early as six years old I have memories of my dad trying to get me to stop giving up. My family spent two weeks each summer at a lake, and as kids we’d spend countless hours every day waterskiing. I’d be eager and talking like a beaver about all the tricks I was going to do right up until it was my turn. Then I’d try to back out, I’d promise to go tomorrow, I’d swear I had a stomach ache, I’d start to cry…and the whole time my dad would be putting my life jacket and skies on, ignoring me entirely. I’d be crying as I sat on the dock holding the rope as he gave me the thumbs up and took off. Up I’d go and as soon as I started skimming across the water I’d be all smiles and screams of delight. And the next day, we’d go through it all over again.  My dad would push me when I balked, he’d holler encouragement from the sidelines at sports events, try to build me up and egg me on. Looking back I really appreciate every effort he made, but I realize that it wasn’t ultimately what I needed to quit quitting. Cause if I only had the strength and belief to keep going while someone was watching and yelling encouragement, I was screwed when I was on my own. And I have discovered living life is a uniquely solitary experience, even when friends and family surround you.

Winnipeg was what this serial quitter needed to kick the habit of giving up and giving in. I have a note in one of my journals from 2000 from the night I put our last $5.00 in the gas tank so I could drive to the studio to start recording my first CD. The studio and the producer agreed to be paid out of CD sales, so while I worked on the album I madly booked my first solo tour. It was a three-month journey that took my young pregnant wife and I along with our 3-year old son coast to coast and across England, Ireland and Scotland. By the time we returned I was able to hand a cheque to the producer for the entire recording. No grants, no tour or art council support, no endorsements or record deals, just friends and friends of friends making the improbable possible.

There is a certain ‘end of the line’ sense living in Winnipeg. Quitting wasn’t really an option for immigrants, I mean seriously, where else were they going to go? For many of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants that poured through the CP station on Higgins Ave. the money ran out here; the buck literally stopped in Winnipeg. I think I inherited some of that tenacious drive, because for the next several years I started every tour with absolutely no money. I’d put everything on my credit card just to make it to my first gig and then deposit the first nights performance fee and merch sales so Zara could buy groceries and diapers for the kids back home. But we were artists, and living in Winnipeg was one of the few luxuries we could afford. During those years the rejection letters I received from arts councils and music organizations were no reason to quit, they were an opportunity to realize why I didn’t have to. I was Frank Sinatra, doing it my way.

Winnipeg – A City of New Beginnings

For a few years my music took a supportive role to raising two small children and financing Zara’s apprenticeship at Metamorphosis to become a tattoo artist. I contributed songs to some compilation projects during the years and kept touring in Canada but it wouldn’t be until 2006 that I’d release another full-length CD. By that time I’d spent eight years writing, recording, booking and producing my own tours, managing a music career that was actually paying the mortgage and putting food on the table. It seemed as if all the time, money, energy and resources I’d invested in my craft and career were about to pay off in a Big Industry way.

I met a world-class engineer/producer who was eager to produce my project. A friend who had been a FACTOR juror went through my grant application before I submitted it for optimum success.  I met with the President of Manitoba Film & Sound who talked me through my submission process. I attended every workshop Manitoba Music offered and envisioned getting a Real recording grant, and Real tour support, possibly securing a booking agent…maybe even a MANAGER! OMG…the excitement kept me up at night!

I mean in an industry of overnight sensations and a steady stream of the Next Big Thing’s here today and gone tomorrow, I’d been around for 8 years! (for those of you who don’t know, an artist’s career is actually measured in dog years, so it was like I’d been a professional artist for 56 years) Someone was sure to recognize the commitment, the ingenuity and dedication. In the end I received rejection letters for every grant application I’d submitted. After eight years as a successful independent artist dreaming of how exciting and earth shattering it was going to be to release my next CD, I found myself in a cold, partially finished basement in Winnipeg, by myself, staring at a computer screen facing the biggest hurdle to date, my perception of my own limitations. If it ever felt like the writing was on the wall; that was it. But this was Winnipeg; this is where I learned to quit quitting. So the question wasn’t, ‘what am I going to do now?’ (the phrase, ‘would you like fries with that’ came to mind) it was, ‘now how the world am I going to produce a new CD with no money?’

I like to think I tapped into the immigrant heritage sown into the fabric of the North End, of the desperate people driven by desperate circumstances to transform this sparse prairie landscape into a field of dreams. I renegotiated our mortgage and spent the next 6 months working on my CD. Of course I was only able to start recording after the kids had gone to bed, after a full day of navigating school schedules, making lunches, snacks, doing puzzles and playing tickle-tag along with Zara’s apprenticeship schedule and the host of domestic chores that entail running a house. Nothing like reality to nip an old fashioned God complex in the bud. I called the CD ‘…now is the winter of our discontent’ and it was, an amazing, cold, lonely, solitary winter full of personal accomplishments…it remains one of the most profound seasons of my life.

Winnipeg - Invest in what you Value

Winnipeg has been an opportunity to learn to invest in what I value while living in a city that often doesn’t share those values or make the investment easy. For instance, Winnipeg is a city with no bike lanes that mixes a post-war car culture mentality with new millennium road rage, making riding a bike to work a death-defying extreme sport. Public transit is both expensive and inconvenient, and in the case of the #18 that runs up North Main, an odiferous gauntlet to run.  I’ve had to teach my kids to recycle while living in a city that leads the country in the amount of garbage it produces. Former Winnipeg Mayor Glen Murray once tabled a proposal to allow a maximum of two garbage bags per week per household, with every additional bag costing $1.50 You would have thought he’d proposed legalizing the indentured servitude of pre schoolers in state run grow ops to subsidize daycares. Some Winnipeggers came unhinged, and for weeks the airwaves and letters to the editor were filled with citizens promising to dump their extra garbage on the steps of city hall and hold midnight vigils around burning barrels in Transcona. Apparently is it a Manitoban’s god given right to produce as much garbage as they want; environment beware!  In this cultural malaise we continued to use non-toxic green alternatives in a city that leads the country in pesticide use and holds the dubious distinction as the only major centre in Canada still spraying Malathion. But so what if the city doesn’t make it easy to go green, eat organic or ride a bike to work, so what if they don’t subsidize and cheerlead every noble pursuit, it’s not a reason to quit, it’s a reason not to, and to make sure you’re thinking for yourself. In Winnipeg, I learned to invest in what I value cause there is no guarantee anyone else is going to.

Winnipeg - The North End Home…Where the Heart Is

“Up above us all, leaning into sky, our golden business boy, will watch the north end die.” The Weakerthans, One Great City

Boutiques, trendy cafes and art galleries do not exist along the North Main strip, in their place are pawnshops and Dollar Stores, fast food outlets and run down hotels gone to seed. There are corner stores on every other corner that survive by selling copious quantities of junk food and cigarettes, while fresh fruits & vegetables and organic produce are virtually non existent.

For the first two years in the city I had the opportunity to write and rehearse in the heart of the North End in the basement of a drop in centre on the corner of Selkirk and Main, The street community that frequented the centre during the day would hear the drums pounding through the walls and pound on the doors until we were forced to acknowledge their persistence. In the bitterly cold winter months conscience would insist we let them in to warm up, and it was in those unbearably uncomfortable moments, staring into the eyes of another human being that looked like death warmed over, smelling of solvent, piss and shit that I learned that a five-minute rock song can be the best five minutes of someone’s day. It was living in the North End that I lost my faith in the excuses white males from privileged middle class backgrounds use to explain the abuses of the past…and the present for that matter.

Many Winnipeggers are familiar with the sign on the roof of Boyd Auto Body you see as you come over the Salter Bridge that says, ‘Welcome to the North End…People over Profits.’ It plays great as an anti capitalism slogan in an area known for its poverty, failed social policy and deep immigrant roots. I love that the actual story behind the slogan involves a disgruntled worker, recently laid off who climbed up on the roof in the middle of the night and tagged ‘People over Profits,’ not as a statement of worker solidarity, but as a casualty. By rooting my discovery of the world in the North End I encountered a palette of possibilities that allowed me to imagine a bright, generous future that includes everyone and not just those in charge. Of course doing business and usual and maintaining the status quo are the first casualties of innovative and imaginative thinking, but as Eric Hoffer said, in a time of change learners inherit the future, and the learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

Winnipeg - The Artist Next Door

When I moved to Winnipeg in 1997 all I had recorded were 3 songs on a live compilation CD from a show in Kelowna. My entire career has happened since moving here. I’ve been featured on 5 internationally released compilation CDs as well as releasing 4 full-length CDs of my own with combined sales well over 40,000 copies.

In 1998 I founded Tribe of One, a performance collective that today features English, French, First Nations and Metis singers, musicians, dancers and painters. In 1999 Tribe had the opportunity to perform at a United Nations Benefit Event in war-torn Kosovo with Bruce Cockburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Cape Breton’s Men of the Deeps.

I’ve toured full-time since 2000 self-managing all aspects of recording, booking, promotions and production. In 2003 I was hired by the Trillennium Media Group to be the Assistant Producer, Music Guest and ‘shit-disturbing’ panelist for 24 episodes of Free TV’s nationally broadcast 4th season filmed in Winnipeg. In 2004 I helped initiate the North End Artist Collective along with Judy Wasylycia-Leis, MP for Winnipeg North. In 2006 I founded JUST Artists, to represent an emerging affiliation of socially active performers and producers from across the country. That led to producing the JUST Art Showcase series and an opportunity to perform on Parliament Hill. In 2008/09 I’ve been the host and a producer for two seasons of The Artist Next Door TV series. In a little nod to the accumulated activities of the last decade, Judy Slivinski, President of EDGE Cultural Management recently nominated me for the Winnipeg Arts Council 2009 ‘Making a Difference’ Award. Everything that has happened for me as an artist and activist has happened here in Winnipeg…it really is one great city.

Winnipeg – A City of Discovery

Marcel Proust said, ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.’ The last 12 years in Winnipeg have been such an eye opening experience I feel like I’ve discovered a world so big I can only fit it into a suitcase. I discovered the value in failing, the value of struggling, pain, discouragement and mining the silver lining of the dark night of the soul for myself. It dawned on me recently that neither the lack of industry investment in my career or the support of a local audience has prevented me from realizing the potential of my creative projects and productions. I’ve toured, recorded and produced CDs, videos and TV shows without the validation of cheerleaders or the support of the gatekeepers of the industry. What a gift - I’m free. I can go anywhere I want, do anything I want and all because of my time in Winnipeg. Being free of the rewards of the system brings a freedom from the punishments as well. I mean seriously what are they going to do, ignore my next release and reject my grant application? They already do, so there really is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I’m stronger than I was when I came here, more confident and humble. I appreciate the little things in life and I’ve learned to enjoy the moment. I can do anything I want, and right now, sharing the sights and sounds I discovered in Winnipeg with the rest of the world is what I want to do.

During the Zoo TV zeitgeist of the early 90’s, U2 flashed a statement on a screen that said, ‘Everything you know is wrong.’ Now while that may be a shocking paradigm shift to consider, I find it less complicated than, ‘Everything you know isn’t right.’ Instead of chucking everything, you’re forced to sift and sort and learn to read between the lines and find the baby bobbing along somewhere in the bathwater. Many of my expectations of Winnipeg were wrong, and everything I think I know probably isn’t right, but tonight as I look to the future through the lens of my past, the view takes my breath away.

- Rik & Zara Leaf are selling their house in Winnipeg and finalizing plans to travel the world with their two kids for a year.