Canadian Musician - September/October 2020 | Page 38

BABY ON BOARD
How do professional musicians with kids make it work?
If
you have a child, or especially
more than one, you’ve had this
realization: you had no concept
of how free, flexible, and relaxed
your life actually was. Yes, kids
bring an oddly-indescribable type of happiness
into your life, but that is mixed with
thoughts of, “Can we afford a kid?” and
“What does this mean for my career?” It’s all
part of that constant mental conversation
we have with ourselves. It doesn’t really
matter who you are; children add a literal
lifetime of unpredictability into the mix –
and this is true whether you’re a banker or
a builder.
But let’s be real. Some jobs are easier
to balance with parenthood than others.
Adding the unpredictability of parenthood
to a professional musician’s already unpredictable
work life makes for one hell of a
balancing act – but one people have been
ably performing for decades.
There’s rarely a “perfect time”
for a baby
When you’re expecting a child, or even discussing
the prospect, a commonly-shared
bit of wisdom is that, for most people, there
is no such thing as the perfect time. Whether
it feels like your career is going up, down,
or sideways, there is always a reason to think
that later would be better. What you’re often
told is some version of, “If you have a kid,
you’ll figure it out one way or another.” And
like so many of those parenting clichés, well,
it’s mostly true.
“The band was literally taking off. All
these doors were opening and everything
was happening; all this great stuff was coming
our way, and we were travelling and
having this intense, intense point in our career.
That’s when I found out I was pregnant,”
recalls Walk Off the Earth’s Sarah Blackwood
about her first pregnancy in 2012. She and
her partner/bandmate, Gianni Nicassio, now
have three sons: Giorgio (seven), Luigi (five),
and Romeo (three). “I actually knew I was
pregnant while we were on tour and I was
like, ‘I’m not going to do a pregnancy test
until I get home because a tour is already so
exhausting. It was like, ‘I cannot know that
Kelly Bado
on top of this right now!’”
For Jarrel Young – a chart-topping DJ,
producer, singer, and songwriter who just
launched a solo career under the moniker
Jarrel The Young – his three-year-old
daughter arrived at a turbulent time in his
career. He and his creative partner in the
duo Young Wolf Hatchlings were signed to
a major label, had recently won an ASCAP
Pop Award for the Fall Out Boy track “Uma
Thurman,” and had worked with a number
of other high-profile artists. But Young could
feel their group’s momentum was waning
and that was exposing simmering problems
between them and with their business team.
“For me, it was a very high-stress time.
But at the same time, I didn’t know where
I was going to go. I was still signed and
things were relatively positive and I had
some type of trajectory…. But in retrospect,
I could see that things were crumbling,” he
shares. “Obviously, I think the main thing for
anybody who travels like I do is just being
around. You want to be present for everything.
Luckily, as I was saying, things were
slowing down, so it never really came to
it, but I think my biggest concern was not
being there and not being able to support
my family the way I needed to. I think a lot
of that was me compensating for not necessarily
having a lot of other things figured
out. I didn’t know where the next set of
money was coming from and I didn’t know
what the next steps would be, concretely,
but I really wanted to make sure that I was
going to be there emotionally and support-
38 CANADIAN MUSICIAN