UNAFRAID OF STRANGE

Years from now, science will finally admit its failure to explain the art of Hawksley Workman. Teams of experts will have discussed around tables littered with free pharma sample wrappers. Some will have been cruelly mocked for their giddy placebo highs, but they all made a ton of money, so none of us should feel badly about that. Some will have skewed their data. Some will have contaminated their samples. Some will have just left the lab lights on to keep the rats quiet at night. Nobody came up with anything solid.

The following is excerpted from one such discussion, (apparently someone took notes), misfiled under Hawking’s Working Theories. Mistakes happen. Thanks for returning the lost papers, Stephen! What a gentleman.

THE PLACE

Is it the isolation? Unlike the co!ee-photographing urban variety of the human species, Hawksley Workman’s preferred habitat has always been the wilderness setting of the Precambrian shield, site of the first continental thrust out of the sea, colloquially known as the Muskokas. Circa 2015 A.D., notable contemporary regional landmarks include Goldie Hawn and a mega quarry, and yet, our best research suggests locals have yet to attempt a joke about “Pegg’s Mountains.” Their loss.

It’s small town living at its “the other 99% of us” best. You’ll think Bates Motel, you’ll think (if you’re old) they’ve still never made another show as funny as Northern Exposure, have they, and you’ll definitely think about having an ice cream.

If you happen to go there and you happen to see a hand feeding a bird, that’ll be the hand of Mr. Hawksley Workman.

That's a Whiskeyjack.

He’s not the mayor, and he’s probably not an alderman although it should be said we’re a little unsure of what an alderman is or does, and he CERTAINLY doesn’t have a clean borrowing record at the library – Hawksley, WE’RE BEGGING YOU, PLEASE RETURN THAT COPY OF "ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME MARGARET" – but he’s been a part of that place since after before he was born and he ain’t goin’ nowhere.

THE MUSIC

Hawksley’s exothermic creative process is as close to chemical combustion as you can get without a permit. Hawksley Workman makes music the way oxygen makes fire – simply by existing. When Hawksley comes in to contact with reactive properties in his environment, for example The Conservative Government of CanadaTM, nostalgia of any kind, The Breakfast Club and other such highly flammable entities, he goes

There are some Very Famous People, not naming names, who have described a similarly spontaneous approach to artmaking, but to lob them in here would be pompous and lazy. Instead, we have crafted a simple timeline as a visual presentation of the Hawksley Workman world-view:

He’s trying to be hopeful, he really is, but SHIT. GETS. DEPRESSING.

Hawksley’s sonic (bio word check!) breadcrumb trail though bruised ballad, New Wave synth swoop or straight-up WTF genius can be a little hard to follow. He’s done it all. Hawksley Workman can be a perplexing artist; there right in front of him is a Holy Grail template of his own design, and yet, inexplicably, he makes the art he needs to make when he makes it. HOW DARE HE.

But seriously, for all of those who wonder what Hawksley might do next, or even why he might do, save yourselves the agony of not being in control and just let it happen. It’s guaranteed to be something you won’t have imagined, couldn’t have predicted, and certainly couldn’t replicate. Step back and let the man do his work.

THE MAN*

Bat my eyes and call me pretty, that Hawksley Workman sure knows how to wear a dress. As artistically elusive as he is methodically prolific, Hawksley Workman is a periodic table of elemental talents. His atomic number would be #99 if it weren’t already spoken for (looking at you Wayyyyyyyyne. And also at whatever is). He can drum. He can howl. He can shred. We’d call

Hawksley a one man wrecking ball if it didn’t conjure images of him riding naked on a giant swinging component of a very permit-less looking demolition set-up. We wouldn’t do that mostly for copyright reasons. Hawksley Workman doesn’t mind if you get a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit excited. His smash hit one man cabaret show, The God That Comes, revels, delights, gleefully flaunts taunts and goads you to feel something real, to get all fireplace scene-y.

* something about how great Mounties band is, because the live show is o! the hook rock n’ roll fun and that first album did really well at radio.