Older, wiser, still rocking: Hawksley Workman heading to Nunavut’s capital

Hawksley Workman has spent half his life on stage as a touring performer and he’s learned a few things. “The physical element, the sexual element of the archetype in music is so important to people. No 40-year-old guy is going to go into a record company and go, ‘Geez, what do you think, can I get on MuchMusic?’ It’s like, not a fucking chance. It’s a business that once your youth starts to dwindle, it’s terrifying. I went through some pretty dark years.” (PHOTO BY DUSTIN RABIN)

Hawksley Workman is on Twitter looking for green tomato recipes.

You may know Workman as a prolific songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist with a vocal strength and range beyond most of his peers. It turns out he also grows vegetables. And makes soups.

Workman, who heads to Iqaluit for three days of workshops and an Oct. 22 concert courtesy of Alianait, put his green tomatoes aside Oct. 11 to say a few things about Canada, show business, aging, pride and a longed-for bucket list trip to the Arctic.

“I’ve seen this on the books for a year and it’s finally here,” says Workman, over the phone from his rural Ontario home.

“Both me and my piano player, who are fairly well travelled guys, have quite an excitement to see a part of the country that we obviously hear a lot about. I just want to put a face to the name.”

He’s been called glam rocker, pop dandy and balladeer. They’re all true. He keeps evolving. Today, he’s reflecting on half a life on stage—some of it good, some not so much.

He just turned 40 which can be harrowing for an artist in an industry that demands youthful sex appeal and proven musical formulas.

What’s a middle-years musician and songwriter got to do to maintain musical fascination and dignity these days? Discard the image machine and get real, apparently.

“I’m a Bruce Cockburn fanatic. He’s been my guy, forever. He is my talisman when it comes to that stuff,” Workman says, in admiration of Cockburn’s strength of conviction and ability to stay grounded.

“He’s off in war zones as an observer. He’s putting himself in places that no human wants to be. And he’s been doing it for decades.”

Workman, speaking from his home near Burke’s Falls, Ont., where he lives with his wife on 50 acres of land near where he grew up, says he struggled for years chasing stardom and hating himself for the compromises and humiliations along the way.

“Drug addiction and egomania, it’s cool for a documentary, but really? It doesn’t serve the culture to say one must follow this path to make great art,” he said. “That’s just bizarre.”

And while he still works out, he’s not the bushy-haired waif he was 20 years ago when, he admits, he starved himself to fit into the thin-equals-attractive showbiz mould.

He sounds scarred but wiser and he’s keen to see what his 40s will bring. So far, they’ve brought a lot.

He just released his 16th album, Old Cheetah, and, in the past year, played some 40 Canadian shows across the country, according to his online tour schedule.

He went to New Zealand in March to perform in a play called “The God That Comes,” an enlightening opportunity to hang out with real artists who have no delusion of fame or fortune.

“No one goes into theatre believing they’re going to get rich,” he says. “Consequently, everyone in theatre is there for the right reasons.”

If that wasn’t enough, he also helped to form a band called Mounties with a couple buddies—Steve Bays of Hot Hot Heat and Ryan Dahle from Limblifter—which gave him a chance to retreat to the drum kit and share the stage with some talented peers.

Their 2014 album, Thrash Rock Legacy, long-listed for a 2014 Polaris Prize, was critically acclaimed and a second album is on the way, Workman says.

And in September, he released a children’s book, Almost A Full Moon, based on a song he wrote for a 2002 album of the same name.

“Rock and roll is an image based thing. It’s not always a comfortable place to be when you’re trying to maintain some manufactured image of yourself,” he said. “This has been such a more fulfilling time for me, these past five years.”

In the midst of that creative renaissance, Workman’s heading to Iqaluit with keyboardist Todd Lumley, also known as Mr. Lonely because of a misheard stage shout-out that was published in the London Times 20 years ago.

Like most touring Canadian musicians, Workman admits he doesn’t know much about Iqaluit or Nunavut but he’s thrilled about seeing a place few southern musicians do and meeting the people who call it home.

Having grown up in Huntsville, Ont., barely double the size of Iqaluit, he knows what it’s like to crave, and be denied, a local music scene.

“Live music experiences were so few and far between. My first concert was Glass Tiger and it had such little effect on me. I think it was the first time I smelled marijuana in the air but other than that, I remember very little,” Workman said.

“For young people who are on the Internet, there’s a virtual world that can be seen and accessed with ease,” he says. “I may sound like an old fart but that really doesn’t stand in, in any way, for a real human interaction especially because music has devalued itself so much by becoming so fabricated.”

Music is not exclusive—it’s not something only rock stars can do, he says. It’s for everyone.

Workman plays the Inuksuk tisi block on Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. Advance tickets are $24 and $27 at the door, $15 for youth aged 13 to 18. Elders are free and so are children under 13, accompanied by an adult.