When you earn your keep in the world as a musician, painter, actor and writer you just know The Banff Centre is going to try and wring as much of creativity out of you as only it knows how to do for its audiences; which is exactly the case for Canadian jack of all trades artist Tom Wilson.
Wilson, of Junkhouse, Blackie & the Rodeo Kings and, as of late, Lee Harvey Osmond fame, will pull back-to-back double duty this week as he sits down today (Nov. 26) to take part in The Banff Centre Talks series at 4 p.m. He’ll follow up bearing his soul by curating a Musical Encounters Series session taking place in The Club Theatre Complex this Friday (Nov. 27).
Wilson shouldn’t have any problem finding words to fill the Talks series since he’s spent this year touring the latest Lee Harvey Osmond album Beautiful Scars, painting like a man possessed and getting a recent book deal from Penguin Publishing.
“Well I’m here to lecture, mentor, be interviewed and to curate a show with the artists here; that’s all stuff that I do anyway so it sounds like something interesting. When I’m asked to speak at colleges and universities and conferences and corporations, I do maybe four, five maybe six a year, which is nice, but I speak about developing the creative process, enhancing it, sustaining it – and turning it into money,” Wilson said wryly.
“Which is a magic trick, right? For one thing, I’ve never gone to school to figure out how to write, yet I’ve been writing for 45 years.”
The irony holds true since Wilson didn’t receive much encouragement towards the arts when he was growing up in Hamilton.
“Most of my English teachers, well, I remember most of my English teachers hated me. One of them actually told me to leave school and go straight to the steel company – well I’m the guy with the book deal now, it’s pretty hilarious,” Wilson said.
“For me, education has always been a lie, it’s always been a false promise, it’s always been basically living in other people’s guidelines, where even when you’re inspired or instructed to think outside of those guidelines you wait until you’re told, and really life is about making it up as you go along.”
Wilson believes people need to be told what to do, and can be stuck facing a lifetime sentence if they don’t sit down with themselves and ask the tough questions.
“They need school, they need jobs, they need churches, they need governments, they need corporations – they need to know they can go to the mall and might not realize that something they want isn’t available at the mall. They don’t realize that when they go to church or a synagogue or a mosque that there’s something greater than those walls to believe in,” Wilson said.
“Basically, it doesn’t matter if you’re an artist, if you’re working at Starbucks or if you’re at a corporation, you’re always looking for something to take care of you and the fact of the matter is there’s nothing to take care of us. We watched the hurricane in New Orleans, we watched how government and infrastructure takes care of us – it just does not.”
The artist easily admits structure is not something that readily agrees with him and his career, but is also the first to point out that he’s more than self aware that it works for him and maybe not the next person down the block.
“It’s not like I’m a he-man intellectual and it’s not like what I do is so great, it’s just that this is the way I choose to live. I can only be who I am and I can only talk about what I know, so you can throw anything at me, but I feel rather limited as to what I share with people. But what I do know, I know – I make it work for me,” Wilson said.
“Usually my first line when I go to lecture all these keen young minds that want to be writers or painters or think independently is, ‘If you don’t have to do this, don’t. If you don’t wake up with a burning desire ... you shouldn’t be doing it. Because if you don’t have that burning desire, you’re wasting your time and as a result you’re going to be wasting anyone that you inflict your creation on, You’re going to be wasting their time if you’re not into this.”
As for curating a performance, Wilson has the resume to back up a production, having curated Gordon Lightfoot’s 40th anniversary of Sundown, and the Juno Awards in the past.
“It was putting the music together, and the band together and the guests together and have Gordon Lightfoot show up and be a part of it and sing with Ron Sexsmith,” Wilson said of the experience. “I know how to put a show together, but it is really up to the individuals on what they do; it’s just me giving them a little bit of a path to walk or at least a direction to go in.”
Even though Wilson is not a fan of structure, he does have a few fast and steady rules he lives by as an artist.
“A rule of mine is you leave blood on the stage. It’s a pretty simple rule, you give everything you have for that two hours, or that two minutes. You have to give everything that you have and that’s what I would like to inspire in any of these performers – to give me your flesh, leave your blood on the stage.
“There’s thousands upon thousands of fancy haircuts walking Queen Street West, Toronto, but none of that has anything to do with being an artist or creating something interesting. Basically, we’ve created a world full of posers. It’s a sad thing and I joke about it on stage.
“I do all the business for Blackie & The Rodeo Kings, myself, my art business, my daughter and I have a promotion business ... you just got to keep doing what you’re doing.”
