Canadian Musician - September/October 2020 | Page 40

BABY ON BOARD
at soundcheck. So, while Bado was lucky
to get grants to help her attend showcases
in Montreal, Ottawa, and New Orleans, she
was on her own for childcare, which was a
strain. Thankfully, beginning in 2020, those
organizations now include childcare as a
touring expense that the grant can be used
to pay for.
“I felt really exhausted after the few
showcases I had. I was too exhausted. Like I
said, just having to carry him alone and no
grants to pay for help, and all the physical
effort that this required
and the fact that he
was crying because
he felt like he was not
home, it was hard on
me. So, I really wasn’t
helping my case either
way,” Bado says she
realized in retrospect.
“I feel like if I had taken
that year – and it sucks
that it took COVID for
us to realize this – but I
would’ve had the year
to take care of myself,
take care of the baby,
spend beautiful time
together, and take my
time to prepare grants
and an album. Nothing
would be rushed.
I really felt like I was
rushing because I was
expecting and things had to be done before
the baby comes.”
The efficient use of his creative time is
the big lesson Young learned in the first
year of his daughter’s life. For years, he was a
studio rat, spending all night tinkering away
on a track until it fell into place. It was an approach
that worked for many years because
he had the luxury of time, but time is a not a
luxury parents have. As such, he’s learned to
do a lot more prep work before going into
the studio to maximize that time.
“In the beginning it affected my creativity
a lot because I almost didn’t know how
to be efficient. Part of being a professional
songwriter is being proficient and being
professional. Those are great things, but
a lot of music-making for me came from
playing in the sandbox. Like, I was confident
I would get it at some point between now
and tomorrow if I’m in the studio for 20
hours, you know what I mean? I wasn’t as
confident in, ‘I’m going to get it in six hours.’
So, I struggled a little in the beginning to
be proficient in shorter periods of time and
then being able to turn that creativity on
and off,” he reveals.
It was the same experience for Blackwood
and Nicassio, who would often pull
all-nighters in the studio or work 18-hour
days to shoot and produce a video in their
childless years.
Walk Off the Earth’s Sarah Blackwood &
Gianni Nicassio with their sons
“Obviously, once I got pregnant, that
started to change – even just naturally because
my body was like, ‘You can’t do this;
you need to get on a better schedule,’” she
says. These days, they set stricter parameters
on their schedule, and it’s about “meeting in
the middle with what our management and
team is expecting or hoping we’ll do and
what we actually are comfortable with doing.”
Young says the turning point for him,
in terms of finding a healthier work-life balance,
came when his daughter was about a
year-and-a-half old. With a family vacation
approaching, he’d been working non-stop
to finish a Young Wolf Hatchlings album as
well as one he was producing for R&B artist
Zolo. The albums got done, but it left him
burnt out.
“I had a nice balance going on when I was
a free dude, but when you add the weight of a
child on top of that, things shift and I got really
unhappy and really unsatisfied and stressed
out. That is when I realized I needed to
change,” he says. “To be honest, I wish I could
tell you I came back from that trip and was in a
perfect flow, but I’m still learning to be a better
dad and a better professional every day. It’s a
process and a commitment.”
“I think one of the challenges I was having
as a father and husband is, when I was coming
home from any tours, it was adjusting
back to family life. I was finding it really, really
hard adjusting back. Because when you’re
out travelling, you’re alone and just responsible
for yourself. You have a busy schedule
and are doing stuff, but it was adjusting
back to home life
and making meals for
the kids and getting
them up for school
and helping them
with homework. Those
things were really challenging
for me initially,”
says Adrian Sutherland
of the band Midnight
Shine.
In a number of
ways, Sutherland’s
experience balancing
a music career and
family life is very different
than most. For
one, he lives in the flyin
Cree community of
Attawapiskat in Northern
Ontario, which
means travelling takes
on a whole other level
of hassle and expense. But importantly,
Sutherland and his wife already had three
kids – and a fourth came shortly thereafter
– in 2009 when he decided to pursue music.
His wife, Judy, was supportive, but also
understandably worried about him leaving
a well-paying (albeit time-consuming and
stressful) career for the financial instability of
a music career.
“It’s always been a tough conversation,
to be honest. As parents, your biggest priority,
first and foremost, is always the kids,
and a lot of times parents end up sacrificing
things that they love to do and dreams that
they may have. I think if anyone sacrificed a
lot, I would say it’s my wife – especially being
committed and allowing me to pursue
this music career and the support I’ve had
from her has just been amazing. But those
40 CANADIAN MUSICIAN