It’s funny that “Sukiyaki” ended up on my first album. Originally, it wasn’t even on the list, which I finalized in 2020. But in 2023, I swapped it in at the last minute. This little song captivated me with its charm and simplicity. It replaced another song that had been causing me a headache with its complexity. “Sukiyaki” was straightforward—I played all the instruments myself, and its structure felt intuitive and compelling.
The song has an interesting history. The chorus hook was one of my first original hooks, created when I was about nine. Back then, I didn’t even know it was a hook; it was just a catchy riff to play on the guitar. Music was everything to me as a boy growing up on 165 acres, half an hour from Lumby, BC. Then, when I was 17, I got kicked out of my home and had to fend for myself, which left little time for music. Note to kids: play all you can before you get kicked out!
That year, I was in Australia, and I developed the hook into a refrain, but I lost passion for it. In 2018, a friend showed me some lyrics he had written, and somehow, the fragments from my music in 2000 merged with his 2018 lyrics. His words were about people facing hard times—a theme that resonated, especially in the challenging year of 2022.
I took my friend’s lyrics, made some edits, and named the song “Sukiyaki” because its musical motifs are derived from a slow Japanese folk song that gained popularity in the 1960s. Shout out to John Newton from Vernon for mixing and mastering, Craig Newnes from Salmon Arm for assistant mastering, and my close friend Cory Mae Menezes for the beautiful female vocals.
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