Photography by Rebecca Blissett
To my mind there are two very distinct kinds of artists in the world: those who create because they can and those who create because they have to. Vancouver Singer-songwriter, poet and playwright Rodney DeCroo, without question, belongs to the latter. The work not only fits the life lived and the experiences undergone, but precisely because its creation is a matter of survival, the insights offered come to us in full form, no empty platitudes or easy answers. What one knows best is what one has been through, and the songs, the poems, the plays, like beacons in the night, open up paths for similar souls to follow. While we each walk our own, familiar stories and songs go a long way as our companions on those singular, treacherous roads that lie ahead. DeCroo describes music as a road map back to himself. "How I survived those years" Rodney says, "is still a mystery to me. Songs express the mysteries of being human that go beyond my ability to talk about them. That's why we need them." AHC: What has this journey in music, so far, been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? Rodney: Music is a world of high stakes for me. It always has been. My work has been frequently called too dark, too intense. Which is kind of amusing since there are musical forms that are way more intense and emotionally loaded than my songs. I once participated in a blue grass circle and was asked to play my song War Torn Man. After I finished the leader of the song circle said in a dismissive way "Whoa, that was depressing." and then started playing Knoxville Girl, which is a horrifying song. But I think what upsets people is that my songs are a way for me to address the trauma of my childhood and how that has impacted and shaped my adult life for good and bad. My early adult life was a complete shit show. I had already become a full fledged alcoholic and drug addict and was doing everything I could to stay disassociated from my traumatic past. I had no self awareness, no capacity for self-reflection or introspection, the ability to have authentic relationships with others or myself. How I survived those years is still a mystery to me. I nearly died several times. Music has been a road map back to myself. It has allowed me to express traumatic memories and become more whole in the process. The truth is the answer to your question is in my songs. I don't think I can say with too much confidence this is what I know concretely about myself, these are the life lessons I've learned without sounding trite. Songs express the mysteries of being human that go beyond my ability to talk about them in this context. That's why we need them. AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? Rodney: I did not grow up in a musical home, actually, my home was impoverished musically. My mother had a few cassettes of bands like Sha Na Na that I would play and try to sing to, but it wasn't anything that stayed with me. My father didn't listen to music. I suspect that was linked to his experiences in the Vietnam war and having PTSD. When my mother became a fundamentalist Christian we were only allowed to listen to Christian music, stuff like Jimmy Swaggart, which was dreadful. I found a transistor radio that I hid underneath my bed and at night I'd listen through an ear piece to the rock stations in the Pittsburgh area. That's when music began to excite me, but it was pretty standard fare for the time AC/DC, Bob Seger, Journey, KISS, John Cougar and so on. I had no access to alternative music. I quickly outgrew most of that music and then as I hit my late teens and early adult years I was too drunk, too wasted all the time to care about music. It wasn't until my late twenties that I discovered Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle. I was inspired by the poetry of these songwriters. The truth is I began my obsession with poetry in my late teens and I think it influenced my musical tastes later on. AHC: You are also a poet and playwright, did the poems precede the music for you or did they both come into your life and absorb into your being around the same time? Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote or played? Or that first moment when you picked up a pen and realized that you could create whole worlds just by putting it to paper? Rodney: No, I don't remember the first song I ever wrote or played. I spent several years writing bad songs and playing them for anyone I could force to listen to me. I didn't start writing songs or playing guitar until I was thirty so I guess I had a lot of ground to cover. I do remember writing two songs Bring It On and Blue Rooms that came early and were clearly better than anything else I had written. I think they gave me hope that I could write better eventually. Both of those songs were on my album War Torn Man. Actually, I wrote the song War Torn Man about a year after I started writing songs. Those are the moments I remember, writing the first songs that I knew were good enough to put out into the world. I don't remember when I started writing poetry, but I remember when I was a kid I'd get a pen and paper occasionally and words would tumble out of me. A teacher found some of what I had written in my desk and said it was poetry and told me I could be a poet. That stuck with me. I think at that point that someone believed I could do something and that something was special in some way, that really hit me. It gave me hope. I desperately needed to believe in myself in some way. I think I genuinely needed to write, but I also needed to be special in some way because I felt like such a piece of shit. And when I started reading poetry I was stunned by it. I couldn't understand most of it but I knew it was a rare thing, a beautiful thing and I wanted to do that and to replace the ugliness of my world with what poetry offered. AHC: Which musicians have you learned the most from? Or writers, artists, filmmakers, teachers/mentors etc? Was there a single, seminal influence, whether artist, poet or musician, who first opened up the creative possibilities in you, perhaps more than any other? Someone whose work you could not imagine yourself living without? Rodney: Musically it was John Prine, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Lou Reed, etc. The poets who first resonated with me, that I saw myself in, were Charles Bukowski, Al Purdy, Philip Levine and Sylvia Plath. I loved Yeats, the mysticism and the music of the words but I couldn't understand it- I mean how can you not be impressed by lines like Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, Spirit after Spirit! OR That dolphin torn, that gong tormented sea.? When I became older a teacher at a community college I went to called Langara encouraged me and told me I could write. Later on a fine poet named Russell Thornton befriended me and had a huge impact on me as a person and as a poet. He initiated me into the art of writing poetry. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? Rodney: I can feel it as a physical sensation. The song arrives in my body first and then I get a line or two of lyrics. When that happens I start working. It's a kind of intuition and I don't like to talk too much about it. I don't understand it and I don't control it. I'm a bit superstitious about it and respect the mystery of it too much to pretend it's something I possess. Songs and poems are gifts. They are given to me. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing/reparative art, an imperfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, states of rupture/rapture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener? You've been very open about your struggles with PTSD, early trauma and devastating losses later in life, though music and art can perhaps never totally right for us what feels wrong, do you have the sense that who you are now may have been completely different if not for the ability to channel it into songs, poems and plays? Rodney: I've partially answered this in my responses to other questions here, but I can say a bit more. Songs can be many things for many people. I think songs give us what we need from them. My needs were pretty huge. I think for me, the structure of a song is like a small ritual process wherein traumatic energies, memories, anger, fear, deep pain that have either been trapped or completely repressed can be safely expressed lyrically, rhythmically and melodically and that process is a healing process and one we can return to again and again. I think they bring us into a fuller experience of ourselves and our relations and our place in the world. And when it is shared through playing music with others especially in the presence of an audience the songs becomes more powerful vehicles for what I've mentioned. That is why music is often a huge part of religious traditions, gatherings and rituals. I also think songs fulfill deep human needs that we don't understand and many that we do. They tell us that we're not alone, that others have experienced the feelings, desires, fears, joys that we've known. They create connection, create beauty out of pain, can even be vehicles for rapture and transcendence. In my early teens I was deeply lonely and troubled. I had experienced sexual abuse, violence, neglect both physically and emotionally and didn't trust anyone to talk to about it. I was alienated from other kids because of the ways I acted out and my inability to connect with others. Because of the trauma of sexual abuse and violence I had no trust in adults especially those whose roles were to guide, protect or teach us. At the age of 12 I was already abusing alcohol and drugs regularly and thought constantly about suicide. My grandmother was a Southern Baptist and my mother was deeply involved in the church through her. They were basically fundamentalist Christians and I found the whole experience highly oppressive. However, one Sunday night a gospel group was performing for us at the church. We were singing with them when the tips of my ears started to burn. The next thing I knew I was in this space- like an outer body experience- that was shot through with gold and white light that was intensely warm, soothing, and pleasing ( like an opiate high ) and from deep in my stomach and from the center of my chest a molten like substance seem to flow up and out of my mouth. The substance was very hot but not painful. When it was released from my body through my mouth, the sensation was rapturous. When it was over I was standing in the church and everyone was staring at me. Apparently I had been singing for over twenty minutes and everyone had stopped and listened to me. People in church said I had been touched by the spirit. I remember some of the younger members of the traveling gospel group asking how I had "done it" or were they songs I had memorized. I actually have no recollection of what I sang, just the sensations. I knew that the experience was mysterious and that it was connected to music and singing, I also knew it wasn't - for me- coming from the place the church members believed in. I had experienced a rapturous event. I think it was something I desperately needed and music and poetry gave it to me. I might have killed myself as a teenager either as a direct act of suicide or as a result of my self destructive and risk taking behaviors. So, I had experienced the power of music, song and poetry when I was young. For me it was powerful and rapturous. I've been going back to music and poetry and art in many forms ever since but I've never experienced something of that magnitude again. I know some people scoff at the idea that art is therapeutic or that it impacts us in these ways. I guess they don't need art to do these things. This poem of mine from my new book Next Door to the Butcher Shop which is being released by Nightwood Editions the same time as my new album speaks to this. The Suicide Doll Behind my left eye is a room with a locked door. Dry bones and rags litter the old linoleum floor. Sometimes a word, scent, sound, face or flash of light unclamps the lock and puts me there. I sit on an empty milk crate, in the room's centre, the door closed. In the corner, the suicide doll, wrinkled and small as a premature baby, and blue all over like night. With cloudy eyes it speaks to me. It says I'm a stupid, ugly thing that can't be loved. It tells me to burn or cut my arms, to bruise my face, drink until my mind goes black, drive needles into veins to punish myself until I sleep. It offers me peace. My lips flutter and twitch like stuck worms on cement as I mouth the words from memory. The room is a deep freeze. I knead white knuckles into arms and legs, to make blood flow through flesh, to make me feel. My teeth are clacking spasms. They cut my tongue. I tell myself the doll is a liar. I tell myself the doll isn't real. The room is silent now, The moon through the broken window silvers everything. A breeze stirs the rags and bones. They begin to move. They rise and gather in the air, become a dancing, human shape. I clap my hands as it begins to sing. AHC: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town? On-tour, on-the-road? Rodney: I honestly don't know. I have wonderful musical experiences all the time and my appreciation for them varies at any given time. I don't think that way. AHC: When you set out to write a song, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell? Rodney: I write the songs that show up. I don't know what I'm going to write about. But my songs come out of my life and I live in the world so yes those things influence my songs. AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you tell yourself when you begin to have doubts or are struggling with the creative process? Or what kinds of things have others told you that have helped push you past moments of self doubt/creative blocks? Rodney: There's only one way that I know of. Write, write, write, write, write some more, keep writing and then write some more. Don't stop. And when you're not writing listen to great songwriters and poets. I believe if you can stop then you're probably not a poet or a songwriter, but don't listen to me or anyone. Just keep going. The doubt hurts but the doubt pushes you forward. I still doubt myself and it still hurts and it propels me to write more. AHC: You just released your latest album, Old Tenement Man, can you talk us through some of the themes of this record, what life events were inspiring/driving the muses of this work, how quickly or slowly did these songs come to you? Rodney: Listen to the album. The answers are in the songs. To purchase Rodney's latest album, Old Tenement Man visit: rodneydecroo.bandcamp.com/ Website: rodneydecroo.com/
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