Skateboarding and 4ish questions with Dan Fortin.
Following the idea without picturing the end result.
Skateboarding, one of the most pure and beautiful sports. Like most musicians, I admire it from afar too afraid to sprain a wrist - or worse. It’s a sport that celebrates individual creativity while being shaped by regionally distinct styles, all the while engaging in a subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) sense of competition. From my perspective, the competition within skateboarding is a good thing. When a skater invents a new trick all their peers have to learn it for themselves- and the cycles repeats. Everyone benefits when one skater succeeds, but the scene truly thrives when everyone pushes each other to keep developing their bag.
Of course, there are exceptions—some people skate purely for themselves. But the giants of the sport often level up within the context of this friendly competition. With this in mind I bring your attention to the ‘Battle at the Berrics’ - a Youtube series that I kind of got obsessed with last summer.
I particularly like this episode because Koston pulls a muscle (love Koston), so Sean Malto fills in in a pinch. I relate to both Koston pulling a muscle, and also being the fill in.
I’ve filled in for Dan Fortin more than a few times over the 15+ years I’ve known him. We’ve been friends since 2008, when we met at the Banff Centre Jazz and Creative Music Workshop. But ever since I moved to Toronto in 2010, we’ve also kind of existed in a unspoken dynamic of friendly competition. We’re both bass players with similar musical interests, though our playing styles are very very different. It’s safe to say we have distinct approaches to the bass, yet we exist in the same scene, work with many of the same people, and often play similar types of music, we’re also more or less the same age.
I’d be lying if I say I didn’t feel a little bit of competition with Dan, sometimes he gets gigs I wish I got, and there are things he can do on the bass that I gotta work on big time. At his recent solo bass performance at the CMC I was both moved as a listener, enjoying the way he crafted his performance and made the bass sing, but I also thought to myself “damn, gotta practice”. Dan inspires me, and he often evokes a sense of competition in me the way I imagine skateboarders inspire each other, he makes me wanna get to the practice room. For that I’m very grateful that he’s around, even if he sometimes gets a gig I wish I got.
Dan’s new record Cannon is another “ok dang, I gotta up my game again”.
I didn’t see this kind of record coming from Dan, did you? I don’t think any of us did. I mean we all know Dan loves a lot of different music, but ‘he’s a jazzer’ i thought to myself - “he aint going to try and make an electronic music record” - but then he goes and does it cause Dan’s a creatively curious dude, not content to just play swinging double bass the way he does so effortlessly. He’s a bass player in 2024 and he acts like it, I love it. I love that he made this record, something so outside of his past work, its inspiring to hear him take a creative chance like this and commit so fully to the idea. Of course his skill as a composer is the backbone of the record - take away all the synths and there are some beautiful Dan compositions, and really thats why this record works, cause Dan’s a great composer. Once you write a great 4+ bars, you can do anything you want with it.
Dan’s album release show is this Sunday Dec 1st at the Tranzac
4 Questions with Dan Fortin
Let's talk about your music.
Yeah, man.
I’m fascinated by the pace in which you play solo. You don't shred. Everyone wants to shred these days, myself included. But the pace is so patient like you're playing rubato but you're not. There is a pace. There's an interesting thing going on with pace...
I think that's true - I feel like there's always a pulse of some kind in all those sections, on both those records. And actually, Michael [Davidson] and I were just texting - we're going to play an old tune of mine from Brinks at the release on Sunday, ‘But Still and Yet’, which is out of time, but I'm still picturing a 1/4 note even pulse, though we're not actually playing it. We're kind of playing around it. Even if it's just implied - it's not explicit - I feel like there's some kind of implied momentum there or something like that, you know? Some kind of a direction in terms of the pacing thing. I'm really glad to hear that by the way! That makes me happy that that's your take away from some of that stuff. I feel like, with the solo records, I’m trying to just be as intentional as possible in a way, you know? And that goes for the improvising parts of it too. I feel like being really intentional with the writing and really, really intentional, really careful - well, not careful. Careful is not the right word…
I think on this new one especially there are a couple of tunes where I want it to feel like you're sitting there thinking, or something like that. I remember seeing this lecture, this writer I really like named Ben Lerner, who's a poet and a novelist. He was talking about ekphrastic writing, writing that describes the process of looking at art, or is a vivid description of a piece of art.
So I've been thinking about it and, you know, I haven't done any more real research into it, but that’s sort of the idea with some of the improvised things. Giving the listener the impression that they're sitting down and playing. It's like there's a kind of carefulness, a thinking thing going on. I think that's the case with the tunes Minty and Aplomb. I feel like I'm being kind of vague, but I like this idea that as a listener you're suddenly aware of the act of listening, or something like that.
Going back to the pace thing, when the listener is listening, it can feel like you're playing along - because things are not sped up, you can clearly hear each phrase.
Obviously with any record you can have it on in the background and that's fine. But I definitely like the idea of a record that kind of makes you sit down there and just focus on it. Which could be any record, right? But it's almost like I'm picturing that act while making the music. I'm almost picturing myself listening to it after the fact while I'm playing it. Maybe it comes down to that, that thing about just trying to be super intentional.
I didn't realize that there were parts that were improvised. To me it sounds like everything is through composed.
Yeah. So I'd have to go through it kind of piece by piece, but Minty and Aplomb, both of those pieces start with melodies that are written and then after that it's just improvised. I also like the idea that like, you know, as a composer or as an improviser, you can write something composed that feels improvised, or you can improvise something that feels composed
But that's a level of what you're talking about, intentionality or restraint that is not common to the average jazz musician.
Yeah, that's maybe true, you know, and I feel for me with the music, I'm trying to combat what my natural tendencies are. Cause I feel like so much of my thinking is really kind of like a stream of consciousness in a way. And you know, I love a lot of humor that's like that, right? There's a real kind of improvisational, kind of free flowing, constantly free associating kind of thing going on, right? So I feel like I'm trying to make music that's sort of… not the opposite of that, but it's like, trying to boil that down or something. You know what I mean? Does that make sense?
I do know what you mean, yes. I'm very into the idea of distillation, I'm very obsessed with that as well.
I think with the record too, when I brought the tracks to Joseph, they were pretty raw. You can hear string noise, and there are a lot of moments where I wanted it to not feel too polished. It's such a studio kind of record - It was kind of built ‘in the box,’ so to speak. But because a lot of it is improvised too, I still wanted to kind of preserve that live feeling of it in a certain way.
So again, there are opposites at work, like the composed versus improvised (not that they're opposite… but there are opposing ideas or approaches coexisting.)
I mean, as a listener and hopefully I'm not projecting, but I mean, you have a clear sensibility that you're trying to achieve whether in your compositions or in your improvising. And I think you do a thing that is hard to do, which is you don't flip the switch from improviser to composer. You don't draw that line in between. It's all in the same mode. And you don't suddenly be like, right now I'm soloing and I'm playing my, my thing, my licks.
I think that's the thing that I aspire to, especially with these records. But yeah, I mean, even playing on standards or something like that, I'll just try to play melodies. I like playing with that line between the feeling of composed and the feeling of improvised, you know?
Let me hopefully not project again, but I feel like maybe there is a sensibility in this. Like there's a 90's rock kid. I think it was like the tune that features Karen [Ng] - it’s kind of a shoegazy tunes. And I wonder, as I try to unpack the mystery of the pace of this record, I'm wondering if this is a secret shoegaze record.
I think that's spot on. It's funny, actually, just the other day I was taking the train into Toronto and was looking through those NTS Guide To shows that they have and they had one that was a guide to shoegaze in 2024. And I was listening to so much of it and I was like, ‘this is what I really do.’ I'm so drawn to this sound, you know?
The tempo, and the 5ths.
Yeah, the harmonic thing, the 9ths. Like, I love that sound.
And you play chorus pedals throughout most of the record.
The chorus, so much of that was Joseph Shabason’s idea: “I think this needs to be on here.” And I was like, ‘yeah, no, you're right.’ I was a bit resistant with a couple tunes at first. I definitely made him like, dial it back a couple times. But he was totally right. And I think, you know, he probably hears that same sound.
This is like a low key solo electric bass shoegaze record.
Yeah, I think it kind of is. I think that's true. I was definitely picturing Nirvana’s Bleach or something like that with this one, you know? But I also like the idea of a kind of agnosticism when it comes to genre, where the record can sort of sound like a shoegaze kind of rock thing, or it can sort of sound like a more experimental sort of jazz thing. But it doesn't sound really intentionally like either one of those. It just kind of balances them both in a way, if that makes sense.
But to dial it back to composing, it seems like you wrote this music originally to be all done on double bass, right?
The Latest Tech came out in November 2020 and I think I started writing some of this stuff maybe the summer before that, but I really got into it in January 2021. And at first the idea was, yeah, just to just do volume 2 of The Latest Tech. And then Zazu [Dan’s partner] was working in Calgary for a few months during the pandemic. And, you know, all I was doing was teaching online. So I went out there a couple times and on a whim decided to pack an electric base, partly partly because I was like, ‘well, I want to have an instrument,’ and I just do not feel like dealing with my travel bass, my Chadwick bass in the airport during COVID. So I brought i along on a whim and kept working on the music and just found myself improvising on it with the electric bass. And with The Latest Tech, some of that music I worked out on electric bass, but always really picturing double bass, whereas I kind of stopped doing that and just started picturing this music played on electric bass.
But you said you wrote most of the material before you started picturing the electric bass, right?
Yeah. And then, and then once a lot of it, maybe like maybe more than half of it was actually written, I started actually playing the tunes, and improvising on them a little bit. I was just experimenting, trying to record some stuff on my own, do some demoing - you know, like we all were at the time. And all this stuff that I had pictured being for double bass. I realized it actually does work well on electric. And you know, electric bass really is my first instrument, though it's more like my second instrument these days: I don't really play it as well as I play the double bass now. So it kind of brings out a different thing in my playing. And I think that has something to do with the pacing thing too: I just don't really have the same kind of chops on the electric bass. So I just play it a bit more slowly and a bit more carefully than I do on double bass just because I'm actually just less confident with the instrument. And to a certain degree, you know, most of the stuff I have played on electric bass has been more in the pop realm, as opposed to improvised music.
I'm familiar with your discography, yeah.
Yeah, so I think the electric bass made me see new things in that music, and also just brought out a different kind of playing that I hadn't really really explored very much. And then that's where I started working on a lot of it. I recorded a lot of the bass stuff in Calgary during that time.
Good old Calgary, we see you Calgary. We love you, Calgary.
We love you Calgary. Shout out Ol’ Beautiful Brewing. I went there a lot. Shout out Recordland.
What were the challenges of playing these compositions on electric bass? And I realize it's a dumb question because obviously electric bass is physically an easier instrument to play. But you know, things resonate differently, the release, attack, all this stuff. It speaks so differently. The electric bass doesn't sing like the double bass.
No, not at all. Especially my setup - it's pretty dead, you know.
Right. Yeah, me too. I like it dead.
I think the big challenge was - I mean, not that there's a ton of improvising on the record, but the couple tunes that have improvising, developing an approach to those was kind of tricky just 'cause I knew I didn't want to play something with a lot of flash, because I just don't really do that, you know? So that was something I had to think through. There's also a bunch of chordal stuff, like one of the tunes that I wrote specifically for electric bass was Uh Hundred, with David [Occhipinti]. It’s all three note chords on the electric bass, which kind of only work on electric bass.
Can't play it on an upright.
No, you can't play it on an upright, but even playing those chords on a guitar or a piano or vibraphone, it just doesn't quite… there's a timbre thing missing. There's a certain way the notes rub together - it's a precision bass thing, I think. I even tried playing that piece on a jazz bass and I was like, ‘this is too clean.’ The p-bass had this kind of raw thing going on that I really, really liked. There were definitely some other things, like a couple of the tracks that I wrote for double bass originally, like Sparkwood with Thom [Gill]. I realized, ‘oh, I can't play this.’ So when I realized I could play it on electric bass, it was a great relief. I actually did that on The Latest Tech. The second last tune, this tune Tallow. Iwrote a bunch of it on electric bass and then when I had to play it on double bass, I thought it was going to kill me. It was so hard. I haven't played it since I recorded it. I should try to get it up, get it up to speed again, but anyway…
I'm still fascinated, though, that these compositions sound the way they do. And I'm curious, you know, it's not Bach. I mean, there is an element of like cello suite-ness to what's going on.
Yeah, I mean, I like you remember when we were in Banff 2008?
Sure do.
Well, Dave Douglas was working on all of this music that was sort of inspired by Jimmy Giuffre and his trios. Do you remember that? He did a show with Hugh [Marsh]...
and Thomas Morgan, I do remember that.
I remember talking to Dave about it and he was saying that he was writing these 3 voice chorales basically. So I think that's something that's kind of coming out of Bach. That's certainly what that first tune is. It's a three voice chorale that David Occhipinti wrote a melody on top of.
But the three voices are all being played by you on electric bass?
In that case, all by me on electric bass, yeah. There are a few others too though, like that tune Palms is kind of a 2 voice thing. I think because of the rock influence and having, you know, the sound of power chords just absolutely drilled into my brain, I hear 2 voices: not necessarily as fifths, but like a low voice and a high voice.
But when you write it, because you are a smart dude, do you write it with a piece of pen and paper with the electric bass in your hand and you're actually trying to write a 2 voice counterpoint?
Kind of, yeah. I think in those cases, I mean, everything's different. Speaking of contrasting approaches, I can't decide whether I want to be very organized with composition or just be like, full chaos. And I tend towards full chaos. Like my process is completely different every time, like different instruments. Sometimes I'll write the entire thing then put it down on paper. I remember taking a lesson with Reid [Anderson]. I think this was Banff too, actually. And he said ‘OK, we're gonna write a song’. And it was really a lesson in intentionality and being sure of what your idea is. So he asked ‘what's the first bar?’ And then I would write the first bar and he would be like,’ OK, what's the second bar?’ And then I play the second bar. And then he'd say, ‘OK, play the first bar in the second bar’. And then I’d do that and he'd say, ‘OK, that's good. But, you just changed the first bar. So now we have to go back to that first bar and figure out exactly what it is.’ So I think sometimes that's my approach: ‘no, this is exactly what I mean’. That's kind of a distilling thing going on. There's some stuff I've written where I start with bar one and then I just keep writing it sequentially - but as soon as I hit a roadblock, I have to start at the very beginning and play the whole thing in sequence, verbatim, which I think has an affect on the pacing too, just being very clear: ‘here's this bar, here's that bar, here's this bar’. But the entire time, I'm trying to be really wedded to whatever the original idea was, to be very clear about what that is. I always think about David Lynch talking about how when you get an idea, it's the best thing in the world, and you have to hold onto it. I can't remember what his metaphor is: it has to do with fishing.
Sometimes it's just scribbling a weird idea down and then coming back to it every few days. That’s certainly happened in a couple cases. And I have actually written directly into like Sibelius before, still doing that same process, bar by bar. But I just don't trust the playback with Sibelius. I don't trust the way it sounds.
It’s also making decisions regarding your intentionality for you that maybe you don't want made.
You're kind of able to write too fast. Being forced to slow down is really, really helpful. But yeah, I think I've kind of veered towards not actually developing any kind of routine or any practice, composition wise. And you know, I'm pretty good with routines and like being organized in other aspects of my musical life, but not with the writing thing. The writing thing, I've let it be like the Wild West a little bit.
It's hard as a bass player to not let it be that way 'cause so little of our life is composition dependent.
Yeah, absolutely. That's a good point actually. I mean, there's some kind of a predisposition there in a certain way, you know? But yeah, you were talking about the pacing thing, and I think part of that is a result of the actual writing process, and the fact that as soon as I don't know where it's going, I have to go back to the very beginning and start it again, which is a kind of a compulsive behavior. But I actually find it really helps me clarify my ideas. I think it makes you make every note really count, too. There can't really be anything excessive there, you know, there can't be anything too extra.
My process is often the same - if I get to a bar, and I don't know what to do. I go back and play it from the beginning, I go back and play it all.
Yeah, and sometimes it's like the fact that you've hit a roadblock makes you reconsider everything that you've done before. It's like, in order to not hit that roadblock, I'm going to have to change something in the third bar and see what that does later on. And maybe that doesn't work out and you go back to what you originally had. And I mean, for that purpose, I'll try to do that without writing anything down, just trying to really focus. For me, the hardest thing about writing music is focusing and not getting distracted by the phone or whatever, you know, I'm better at that with practicing and not as good when it comes to writing. So that practice where I don’t write anything down until late in the game is kind of helpful.
I'm the same way. Practicing is easy to focus on. Like, all right, I gotta do this. Gotta sort this out.
Yeah, yeah.
'cause you know, the target is clear.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely, writing the target is not clear.
It's not at all. I won't fight that either. I've totally written music while watching baseball or whatever. Like, with Seinfeld on in the background, or Trailer Park Boys or something like that. I kind of like that. I remember reading that Wayne Shorter would do that: he would write with the TV on. So it's like you're there and you're engaged, but you're also kind of in between spaces or something like that.
It's the thing you can do when you play either electric bass or guitar.
Yeah, that kind of process kind of makes sense to me. Because with music, we focus so much on the qualitative and quantitative, the things you can describe. And I really like being able to preserve the part of it that is kind of mysterious. And for me, the writing thing is totally mysterious.
And I know there are great ways of organizing it. And I've thought about it too, like going to study with somebody. But for now, I still kind of like this. I always feel like I'm reaching around in the dark a little bit. And if I get an idea, it's like I’ve gotten really lucky. And, oh, man, like David Lynch says: you’ve got to cling on to that idea, you know? But also for me, sometimes I'll go ages without getting anything down on the page. And I'm like, well, that's OK. You just didn't find any ideas, you know? So as a result, some pieces take forever. I have a song I wrote - Stoner on a Myriad3 record. I think I wrote the first part in 1/2 hour. And then we played it in the band and they were like, ‘well, it needs another section.’ And then I sat down and wrote the other section in like 20 minutes. But then there's a song on The Latest Tech, the title track, that I started in my undergrad. I kept coming back to the idea, thinking ‘that song that I finished sucks, but there's an idea in it that I like’. I should have just let it go, but I kept playing with it. Although it's kind of funny 'cause that song is actually my least favorite one on the record and it's the title track. These are the opposites at play. Like ‘you're gonna name the record after your least favorite song?’ I don't know why, but I'm compelled to do that. There's actually a song called Cannon that didn't make the cut for the new record, but ended up being the album title. Another funny thing with this record is that I knew the track listing, the sequencing, while I was writing the music. I had five tunes and I knew what order they were in. And at one point Cannon was the 6th track. Actually. David Occhipinti wrote an actual canon on it - we should try that again, that was cool. But as a solo thing, I was not as convinced. Although that's one of the tunes that I put a lot of chorus on, on my own volition, without Joseph suggesting it!
One more example of this competition I see around me. I sometimes play bass for the Holy Oak Family singers. Its a very loose, casual night of covers, a who’s who of the Toronto singer songwriter scene steps up to sings a cover with the house band. There really is no sense of competition to be seen in this setting, its a bunch of singers cheering each other on, very beautiful in that regard. But I can’t help but notice, some of these singers, they have a tendency to level up if someone else steps up and sings their guts out. Is that competition? Not really, but its something, being inspired by your peers i guess?
Speaking of…