Music
November 4th 2009
Preparing for takeoff
Local musician mixes business with pleasure
Alex rocks the slacks: McCowan.
When Alexander McCowan heads out to promote Thief, his latest EP, later on this year, he won’t be logging miles in a touring van and sticking to a premeditated agenda.
Instead, the Winnipeg singer-songwriter will arrange gigs around his work schedule, which will naturally take him to places all over the country. That’s because McCowan is a flight attendant by day and a musician by night.
“I want to do a fly around and do a show in Edmonton. Fifteen days later I’ll do a show in Vancouver; two days later I might do a show in Toronto,” said McCowan, 28, over the phone last week from an Edmonton hotel in between flights. “And it might not even be a show. I’m also looking into doing some busking. Everything is changing now in music. You really have to do unconventional things to get people’s attention and get your music out.”
McCowan’s career path has been equally strange.
Aspiring to be a long distance competitive runner, he tore a knee ligament in his second year of university that put a bleak end to his athletic tenure. During his recovery, McCowan picked up playing guitar from his older brother.
“I thought learning to play guitar would be a good way to spend some time. Once I picked it up and learnt a couple of Tom Petty and Neil Young songs, I was hooked.”
Five years later, McCowan headed to Ireland to explore his family’s heritage and find employment for a year. It was then that he first started writing songs.
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“They were fun songs I would write to try and impress a girl or get her to talk to me,” he said.
But when he returned to Winnipeg in 2005, he started putting more stock into songwriting and released his first demo, 5 For Free.
“I was just mimicking people. I mimicked the Springsteen style, and then I got into this Jack White phase where I bought effects pedals and started doing really bluesy stuff,” McCowan said of the release.
“I really wanted to be everything. I wanted to have a music show where you could see every kind of music from blues to bluegrass, and some folk songs and punk songs,” McCowan explained. “I was spreading myself too thin.”
Since then, McCowan has been crystallizing his full-band folk sound reminiscent of Dylan-infused Ben Harper musings, churning out the seven-song EP.
With it, McCowan admitted, he’s learned his lessons.
“I think I’m starting to get it right now. It’s good to leave stuff out of your show. It’s good to leave stuff out of your music. It helps define you,” he said. “When you try to do too much, I don’t think you place your focus and energy on anything.”
This article appeared in Volume 64, Number 10 of The Uniter, published November 5th 2009.
