LUCIDMEDIA

An in-depth interview with Hamilton rocker Tom Wilson

Written by Lisa M. Knapp Tuesday, 26 May 2009 11:01

On a cool but sunny Tuesday afternoon in April I made my way to one of Hamilton’s authentic restaurants, The West Town on Locke Street, to meet up with Hamilton’s own legendary rock and roller, Tom Wilson. The setting couldn’t have been more perfect for this interview as The West Town is a small tucked away place that takes us back in time to early 60s rock and roll.

I arrived and took a seat to wait while ordering myself a coffee. Wilson soon arrived, wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket and ordered a tea. Wilson is a calm fellow with a much lived background. He’s lived in Halifax and LA before coming back to his hometown Hamilton, and in between has managed to live the life on the road from the good to the bad with many hard times in between.

In his life he’s been in love, and been addicted to drugs and alcohol, he’s clean now though alone, but very happy and again on tour with a new project: Lee Harvey Osmund. Though the band has not yet officially released an album, there are a few video’s out in cyberspace that Wilson put up last year when this new project got started and already Lee Harvey Osmund has managed to get their name known from Canada to Europe and back again.

“I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan when I was 4 and I never wanted to be anything else but a musician because even at 4 I knew that musicians got girls and it looked like a lot of fun,” Wilson says of his musical beginnings. “The Ed Sullivan show was one of the only places, an outlet that you could watch music. It wasn’t like you could go on the internet and watch whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. There was nothing like Much Music or VH1 or anything like that.”

As we talk he stops for a moment and bobs his head to the music and says “Good song.” He got back to his story telling me about how he played upright bass in Church before graduating to play in Folk clubs. He then sold a song and moved to LA to try and make a career, but “ended up playing music and selling hash on Hollywood Blvd. instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing.”

He then came home and started a band playing punk and rockabilly with the likes of Teenage Head for most of the 80s only to quit that, gave up music and instead worked construction. “Daniel Lanois asked me to come to New Orleans to hang out, I did, it changed everything,” Wilson continued. “I came back home and started a band called Junkhouse that was really wildly successful all over the world. Then in ’96, I joined a band called Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, played with them, marriage went to the gutter, I went to rehab, gave up heroin and cocaine, and gave up alcohol.

“Now it’s 2009 and I’m starting a band called Lee Harvey Osmond with the Cowboy Junkies and the Sky Diggers and life is really good.”

So what is it that has Wilson so excited about Lee Harvey Osmond? “The band has got kind of the heart of an artist rather than a commercial directive,” he explains. “As a result people are picking up on it all around the world. It’s being released in France in June and Europe and in Canada in July. We have done a lot of ground work on the internet.”

Promotion through the internet has helped a lot, but it’s a new experience for Wilson. “The internet is the world’s greatest con man but without arms and legs,” he explains. “Also aside from it being a con man it’s a place where honest people can communicate with each other and I think I am one of those honest people.”

I recalled one video in particular on YouTube, “Queen Bee.” “We got together in a garage off Clinton Avenue in Toronto,” he remembers. “[It was] Michael Timmons and I, Josh Timmons from the Sky Diggers, Brent Tipcomb, Michael Timmons sister Margaret Timmons came in and sang, Suzie Day came in and sang, one of the Sadies came in and played and we sat there made sandwiches and made music on and off for a couple months and ended up with this record that we thing is really special and kind of represents all of us in a bit of a new light.”

I asked Wilson how he came up with the music for Lee Harvey Osmond and he replied with wisdom and some very convincing notions. “I find that music is something that I should be able to listen to across the table,” he says. “Have some tea some cigarettes and sit at the kitchen table have some conversation and come up with songs. I find that those are the best songs you can come up with are those around the kitchen table.”

Wilson continued say that these songs came from storytelling and people being allowed to express themselves in a natural flow. “A guy, Josh Findlanson and I came up with a bunch of songs that we didn’t know what to do with so that was one way. When the project started to take shape I started to write a little more around it, but not too much. Mike Timmons brought in a song, we recorded an old Velvet underground song and something by a guy that we both love named David Whitman who is a folk singer, from the 60s and 70s.”

Wilson didn’t remember how long exactly it took to record the album, but he thought it was about a week of sessions. “We also had to work around our touring schedules because the Cowboy Junkies are on the road a lot still, and the Sky Diggers and myself,” he says. “I was with Blackie and the Rodeo King at the time so it was done in pieces. We got to record a little bit and take it away and live with it a bit so that was nice.”

I changed the subject a bit and decided to ask about his life on the road. “I grew up here,” he says. “For awhile there, I was living between here and Halifax [but] I think Hamilton has more to offer an artist more than any other town in Ontario. As a musician and someone who dedicates most of my energy into music it a place away from the crowd.”

I have always thought that Hamilton has always been a dark and romantic place and that makes it a perfect place for an artist to be because it feeds your artistic ego and craft, and Wilson agreed. “It’s kind of like walking in clothes that you made at home,” he offers. “You go to big cities and you deal with artists that shop in malls but if you are in smaller cities you are dealing with artists that make their own clothes at home for the most part. If you are an artist that leaves a smaller city you are a complete individual.”

I closed the interview with a very open ended question; I ask Wilson what’s been on his mind lately?” “There are a few things that have been on my mind speaking of artists and everything else,” he replies. “We are not necessarily born in the place we are suppose to be. An artist’s reality changes continuously and we are also not living in the world we were brought into. If we keep these things in mind we will start to understand artists and artists will start to understand themselves and will start to understand the world around us better. Without those elements that things are ever changing we are lost and stuck that things are going to stay the same.”

As for his summer plans, Wilson says “I am going to be touring across Canada in festivals. There is a bit of the fire in the field for this that we weren’t expecting. Sometimes you do things and you don’t get any reaction and sometimes you do.” The waitress, calling him by his first name, asked if he wanted anything else. He replied using her first name saying “Not right now, I got to watch my heart.” I nodded my head and laughed