secretly canadian

Music has many functions. People listen for different reasons. Some bind songs to memories. Others use them as outlets of emotional deliverance. For singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joey Dosik, his own journey with music became a form of therapy.

While recovering from reconstructive knee surgery, Dosik found a balance between physical healing and expressive restoration. Marrying his love for music to the pastime he’s most passionate about, basketball, the concept EP “Game Winner” was born. Recently re-released on Secretly Canadian and featuring four bonus tracks, the mini-album serves as a harbinger of the full-length he’s currently working on, one we’re eagerly looking forward to.

We recently sat down with Dosik to find common basketball ground, what it’s like promoting “Game Winner” a second time around, and why you can hear a little bit of every genre in the music you listen to these days.

TrunkSpace: You’re a big Lakers fan. Full disclosure, we’re Boston guys.
Dosik: (Laughter) Right on. That’s cool. That’s fine. You know, I used to date a girl who is from New England and I remember finding her green Celtics’ Starter jacket in the closet one day and just being terrified at the sight of it.

TrunkSpace: You heard the record scratch to a halt in your mind?
Dosik: (Laughter) Completely. I’ve got respect for Boston fans though. Boston fans are great.

TrunkSpace: When fans of two rival teams are in the same room, there needs to be a “love the game” policy taken.
Dosik: Exactly. That’s a good policy.

TrunkSpace: We just discovered “Game Winner” a few weeks ago, but for you it’s been a part of your life for some time now. Even with the re-release, do you feel like a creatively different person now than when you put that together?
Dosik: Absolutely. The EP sort of represents a moment in time that was vulnerable for me because I made it while I was recovering from reconstructive knee surgery and there’s something about that time that was… the EP sort of froze that moment forever for me. I’m a different person since then and I’m excited for some of the music that I’ll be getting out. I’m kind of finishing a full-length record here. But, yeah, I mean, you know, it was a moment in time where I tried to make the best of a tough situation and I’m so thankful for it because it allowed me to bring the thing that I love as much as music, which is basketball, kind of into my creative fold and it’s been a blessing for me.

TrunkSpace: How do you go about getting into the mindset to promote the record all over again as you’ve already creatively moved on from it?
Dosik: Well, I spent a lot of time thinking about songwriting, and in songwriting I always try and see if there’s a way that I can make the songs sort of… what’s the right word… make the songs a bit adjustable to different situation. So, with a song like “Game Winner,” or a song like “Running Away,” or “Competitive Streak,” I feel like I can do the songs in a lot of different ways. I can do them with a full band. I can do them myself. I could do them in a broken down setting. I played “Game Winner” at the Garden last year. I can play it just me and a piano.

So, the crazy thing about songs is that sometimes you write them and you say, “Okay, cool. Here’s this weird basketball love song.” But now looking back on what it is that I did, I realize that it really was a sort of music therapy and the song continues to bring different meaning to me in my own life as I get older. And the cool thing about “Game Winner” is that they’re going to just keep happening. I mean, we just saw last night how the women’s American hockey team shot a game winner in overtime. So, it’s kind of that, hopefully, songs can be the gifts that keep on giving.

TrunkSpace: And the beauty of songs is that they can mean different things to different people. Five people could sit down and listen to “Game Winner” and each one of them could pull something different from it.
Dosik: Right on. Yeah, that’s the kind of thing that really excites me, man. The fact that that’s happening just kind of makes it all worth while – all the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into making a record.

TrunkSpace: So on something like your new full-length, do you have more creative freedom than you did on “Game Winner” because that was specifically a concept album? Is there more open space to create?
Dosik: Definitely. Limitation can be oddly freeing, but the album that I’m working on is not just basketball related.

TrunkSpace: Do you consciously add multi-layered meanings into your music or do you just write what’s honest to you as a songwriter and then let people find in them what they may?
Dosik: I’ve heard a lot of songwriters say that once you write and perform it and release it, the song is no longer yours, and I kind of see both sides of the coin. It’ll always be mine because it came out of my brain, and like I said, the songs do kind of mean different things to me as I get older and go through different life experiences and continue to perform them, but, yeah, I’m more than happy to hand the songs off to listeners and let them find their own meaning in their own lives. That kind of stuff always excites me.

TrunkSpace: You play multiple instruments. We know there are probably multiple ways that you go about creating new songs, but is there one instrument in particular that usually serves as the launching pad for the earliest nuggets of songs?
Dosik: It could be a lot of different things. Usually it’s chords from the piano or a melody from my voice, or just words. It’s also fun to write to a drum beat. It’s also fun to write to a bass line. I think piano being my first instrument, and the voice kind of being so close to my body, I think those are the things that usually first inspire me.

TrunkSpace: You play the saxophone. We are lovers of all things ‘80s saxophone solos here and think we need more of them like Eddie Money’s “I Wanna Go Back.” Have you ever written a pop song specifically for the saxophone?
Dosik: When I was a jazz obsessed saxophone player I wrote many songs for the saxophone, but they weren’t pop songs. My family, every time they come to see one of my shows or when they listen to a track that I’ve made, they always say, “You know, you should really take out the saxophone again.” And so I’m getting the full-court press from the family to try and come up with it, and I would love to figure that one out. So, hopefully that’s next on the docket.

TrunkSpace: You’ve mastered many instruments, but are there any that you’d still like to take up and add to your repertoire?
Dosik: I don’t know if I’d call myself a master at any instrument. I can definitely play them and I still really desire to get better at all of the instruments that I play. I guess the one that I think about a lot right now is drums. I’ve played drums on recordings of mine but it’s an amazing instrument. It’s really just a bunch of instruments combined into one and I really enjoy recording them and getting sounds out of them. So, I guess drums is one that I’m thinking about a lot.

TrunkSpace: You’ve written and performed in many genres. As you look forward in your career, are you hoping to continue to expand your creative horizons and write without musical margins? Are you an artist who is willing to go anywhere creatively?
Dosik: Yeah. I feel like genres are just there for record stores and are there for people to write about it, honestly. There will never be a substitute for actually hearing music. It’s also a way that we communicate with others about what it is that we’re hearing, but I think the interesting thing about music nowadays is that everything is so boxed in so whenever you hear something it’s usually a combination of at least three genres of music. Nothing is necessarily that clear cut anymore. When you listen to pop music you’re hearing so many different types of music. So, yeah, I hope to continue to evolve and explore all things that inspire me.

“Game Winner” is available now from Secretly Canadian.

Joey Dosik tour dates can be found here.

Song Title: “Percy Faith”

From The Album: The Horizon Just Laughed (art pictured at left)

Single Sentence Singles Review: If the singer/songwriter genre came with a secret sauce, Jurado would have mastered the recipe in the kitchen with “Percy Faith,” a musical course best served frequently.

Beyond The Track: The Horizon Just Laughed is out now and will be available for streaming July 6 via Secretly Canadian. Although Damien Jurado is finishing up the last leg of his North American tour now, he’ll be out on the road throughout the summer playing festivals and will then travel overseas in the fall. For a full list of dates, visit here.

Artist: Joey Dosik

Album: “Game Winner”

Label: Secretly Canadian

Reason We’re Cranking It: Dosik’s latest offering (being re-released with four bonus tracks), loosely inspired by the game of basketball, is a soulful, shoulder popping good time… a slam dunk. With a natural and seamless ease in the way he delivers on each track, the impassioned piano man ignites recollections of long lost pick-up games with friends while the radio sat on the blacktop pumping out songs that would forever be tied to memories. There’s a shared sentimentality to the EP that makes everyone who listens to it a member of the same team, and in crafting it in such a way, Dosik has created a true game winner.

What The Album Tells Us About Him: Looking past the fact that he’s a Lakers fan (we bleed Celtics green here!), Dosik is impassioned and wears his heart on his sleeve, combining two of his loves, basketball and music, into a tell-all tale of who he is at his core. We can’t wait to hear what he shares with us next.

Track Stuck On Repeat: To steal yet another term from the world of sports, the title track is deserving of an instant replay. If “cool” had a signature sound, “Game Winner” would be it. Picture Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield, cruising around in a long lost scene from “Pulp Fiction,” one hand on the steering wheel and another holding firm to a Big Kahuna burger, as he grooves out to this song en route to lay out some epic monologue that people will recite for generations to come. That should give you a pretty good sense of just how cool this song is.

Coming To A City Near You: Joey Dosik tour dates can be found here.

And that means…

It’s Monday, so that means Musical Mondaze!

If the devil is in the details then the details themselves are in the She-Devils. At least in their music, which goes well beyond the piecing together of a creative puzzle to also include an almost mathematical formula. The Montreal duo, whose sound is a hypnotic trip through a small town fun house that you want to continuously ride, are set to release their self-titled debut on May 19^th.

We recently sat down with Audrey Ann Boucher and Kyle Jukka to discuss how their vision came together, sampling their own music, and where they hope their devilish details take them.

TrunkSpace: You guys met while you were both living in a sort of jam space. How quickly did you guys find that creative connection amongst yourselves?
Boucher: It took me a couple of years.
Jukka: Yeah. For a while we weren’t necessarily doing anything except for occasionally jamming together.
Boucher: Yeah. It took a bit of time before we could kind of understand what our strengths were and what we could bring to each other.
Jukka: And also just sort of feeling motivated to do something, kind of…
Boucher: More serious.
Jukka: Yeah.

TrunkSpace: So what did that path to where you are today look like? What was it that ultimately led to She-Devils?
Boucher: I guess when we started using samples. I think that really helped. Especially, in the beginning, we were using samples from 50s and 60s songs and for me… because I had listened to so much of that music… it felt extremely natural for me to just start singing in that kind of palette. That definitely really helped me. I guess in the past when we tried to jam, I’d just completely freeze and I couldn’t sing at all. I couldn’t even talk or anything because I would be way too shy. I kind of got over that and was able to do stuff on my own too instead of in front of Kyle.

TrunkSpace: So when you started to tap into that 50s and 60s sound, was it difficult to use that music to not only play off the sounds of the past, but at the same time, make it all sound modern?
Jukka: It’s not really like retro music completely. It’s not like we’re recreating that sound. I think, at least for me, the way I put sound together… before doing this I made music that didn’t really sound as inspired by 50s and 60s stuff, but I kind of just have my own algorithm in terms of how I piece sound together and how I work on sound. So I guess it’s now just about feeding that fabric into the way that I work on music, so it just kind of gives it a more modern context pretty intrinsically.

TrunkSpace: You mentioned the algorithm. It does seem like there is a mathematical side to music that people often don’t consider or completely overlook.
Jukka: Yeah. Totally.

TrunkSpace: Do think that mathematical side of things applies more so to what She-Devils is doing compared to some other bands out there today? Instead of just using the creative side of the brain to write songs, do you tap into the analytical side as well?
Jukka: Yeah. There are places where it’s more upon your imagination and there are aspects of sort of creating music that’s a bit more, at least where I subscribe to, of kind of a vision of where you sort of manufacture it. You just kind of get into a pattern.

TrunkSpace: There’s always stumbling blocks with any creative endeavor. What was the biggest stumbling block for She-Devils in terms of bringing it all together and getting ready to release your self-titled debut?
Boucher: I guess we were trying to get out of the sample world. For a second there, it was kind of scary. It was like, “Oh… what do we do?”
Jukka: Yeah.
Boucher: Then once we got into the studio, it felt like we could just do that… we could still record instruments, but then still apply that kind of samply feeling by just looping the instruments rather than recording a full track.
Jukka: And also the guy we recorded with kind of specializes in recording gear pre-1975, so just the way he records… it just kind of all came out sounding a bit from that era texturally.

TrunkSpace: So it sounds like you guys kind of started sampling yourselves?
Boucher: Yeah.
Jukka: Exactly!

TrunkSpace: Was that a daunting process when you got started… knowing that it all sort of fell on your shoulders?
Jukka: I think once we got going, it actually was just really fun and creative.
Boucher: Yeah.

TrunkSpace: Has it altered the way you guys do things in a live setting now as opposed to when you were starting out sampling mostly other artists?
Jukka: I guess so, yeah, because now instead… it just gives me more freedom. I can sample even more and peel more parts away and sample just the bass or just the guitar and just have more ability to layer things differently.

TrunkSpace: So as you’re gearing up to release the album, do you feel any pressure either creatively or from a standpoint of your own expectations of how you’d like it to be received?
Boucher: Yeah, I guess. I’d say we’re both that way, but we’re already kind of thinking about the next thing. It’s hard to kind of focus on the present when you’re so focused on the future. I think that’s just a bad habit that we need to break out of.
Jukka: I wouldn’t consider that a bad habit. I think it’s pretty natural.

TrunkSpace: It’s certainly difficult for creative people to spend so much time on one creative endeavor and then expect them to continue to focus on it once it’s finished. As creators, you create… not necessarily nurture after the item is created.
Boucher: Totally.
Jukka: And there’s something kind of nice about that because it means you’ve worked on something and you’re really engaged with it at the time that you’re working on it, but then after you’re done with it… you have new goals. You can kind of just release it into the world and it feels kind of casual.
Boucher: Yeah. True.
Jukka: You’re not necessarily feeling like super precious about it because it’s something you’ve already made.

TrunkSpace: And with songwriting, you’re creating something at a time in your life where you are being influenced by those happenings at that particular time. By the time you’re done with an album, you’re being influenced by other things, so naturally it would feel like it’s time to move on to something new.
Jukka: Totally.

TrunkSpace: So where do you find yourselves drawing that new inspiration from these days?
Boucher: Well, when we wrote the first songs I was really into Annette Funicello and Brigitte Bardot and now I’m more into dirtier rock like The Cramps. Something that’s just a bit more mean.

TrunkSpace: Does it ever hit you that while you’re finding your own inspiration in places, somebody somewhere may be finding inspiration in the music that you’re creating?
Jukka: I think that would just be ideal. It means you’ve done something that fulfills it’s purpose in a sense. It almost doesn’t really matter if you sell records or if the critics like what you do, what’s most important is that it in some way gives back into that cycle of inspiration.

TrunkSpace: So as you’re putting the album out into the world and creatively putting it behind you and as you look towards the future, what’s on the band’s bucket list? What do you hope to accomplish?
Jukka: I personally just want to make better and better albums and hopefully be able to get a little more money to make them and work on the sounds more. I’m really sort of like a sonic head. I really like a lot of music that’s been engineered, so I’m really into that side of things… just working something.
Boucher: I’m definitely really into the other aspect of the project, which is kind of the branding. I’m excited to just get better at making music videos and just seeing how my art evolves with time as well.

She-Devils arrives on May 19^th via Secretly Canadian.