Interview with Ian Lake: ‘Each song is a postcard to myself from another time’

Toronto-based singer-songwriter and actor Ian Lake released his debut album What It Is last month, giving us eight vulnerable and heartfelt tracks encapsulating the different stages of recovery after a break-up.

‘The eight-song album is a journey starting from an emotional rock bottom, summoning some encouragement and hope, letting out a little bit of frustration along the way and ultimately arriving at acceptance and embracing the truth: That it is… What It Is,’ he said.

With a voice that ranges from the smooth comfort of a baritone, to the emotional belt of a tenor, to the raw intimacy of a high falsetto, Lake’s vocal style has evolved from his inspirational influences, including Glen Hansard, James Blake and Jeff Buckley.

The album opens with the title ‘What It is’, which marks the point of his own personal turnaround: ‘I just wrote the songs at a time from the place where I was,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting to make an album for a while. I started to write in the middle of the pandemic, I kept writing in the moment. The order I wrote them in is not the order in which they appear on the album. I didn’t understand the journey until I spoke to my producer. There were 11 songs initially but he suggested we cut a couple for budgetary reasons. The songs I cut were old songs I had written in 2017, and they were thematically and musically very different. ‘All or Nothing’ is the one song from that time that I kept. The earlier songs are heavier (laughs), the later ones, as I move through it, have a lot more energy.’

‘What It is’ is an intriguing opener, with its long, drawn out hurdy gurdy – a Celtic string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings – cinematic intro, not least because you’re not sure where the song is going when it starts: ‘I wanted people to be surprised by every song they hear,’ he said. ‘This song is the turning point in the journey on the album from the sadness to the “fuck it”. I’d stopped pining, I’d told myself it was ok to feel this way, to feel angry. That song was inspired by Arcade Fire. I wanted to emulate their energy without mimicking it. I saw them in 2007. The hurdy gurdy is from the same family as the bagpipe but it’s a drone instrument (which produces sustained chord or cluster of notes that linger uninterrupted for many measures). I always heard a hurdy gurdy introducing the song in my head. The first minute and a half is just the hurdy gurdy and the piano. For a while, I knew that song would start the album. I loved setting the tone with a very mysterious instrument and there’s a lot of bass in the song.’

As the track kicks off: “How can this road seem so long when this town’s so small? And how does it go oh, so wrong when I’m giving my all?”

‘It changed how I wrote, how I figured out the song’

He keeps the surprises coming with the second track ‘Easier’, which has more of a soul vibe, thanks to the female vocals accompanying him, Anika Johnson, Barb Johnston, and Jewelle Blackman. It opens quietly with his vocals and piano before the guitar and drums come in: ‘It’s an outlier,’ he said laughing. ‘I always knew I wanted ‘Easier’ to be track two.’ It’s both melancholic and courageous in equal measure.

As the song goes: “So why do you feel you’re burning? When all of your life, the wheels were turning. Just open your eyes and see it’s working.”

It’s evident once you’ve heard the whole album that ‘The Bottom’ was likely the first one he wrote: ‘Yeah, that was the first, I guess that’s not a surprise,’ he said. ‘I wrote it on the piano, it changed how I wrote, how I figured out the song. I always used to get stuck on the second verse on the guitar but you can “see” the music on the piano, you can move one finger and have a different chord.’ As the title suggests, the song captures his lowest point after the breakdown, opening with his question to himself “Have I hit the bottom this time, is this the bottom of my mind?” The strings ramp up as he laments “crawling into the bottom” and it’s unquestionably one of the most beautiful and fragile songs on the album.

His favourite track is what he calls ‘the seminal track’, track four, ‘Forgive Me’, which features the same backing singers as on ‘Easier’. It’s a huge song – introspective, vulnerable and incredibly sweeping when the strings come in, giving it a gospel feel as the female voices soar alongside his. It continues to build right to the end: ‘It’s my most “fuck the rules” song (laughs). It’s got one key change and two tempo shifts. I wanted people listening to it to say “What the fuck?” The gospel punk vibe at the end is wild! It’s the happiest song for me.’

As the track goes: ‘”It’s too bad, you probably need a rest from me. So forgive me if I want you in my life.”

‘He gave me a real gift, he just told me to practice but it felt like my story’

Incredibly, given what an intrinsic part of the album his piano playing is, he only started to play it eight months before the album was recorded: ‘It’s a funny thing, it’s become such a big part of my act,’ he said. ‘I’m 38, I’ve played the guitar since I was 21. I bought a keyboard in 2017 – my best friend is a prolific piano player – but it ended up in my closet, it never got played because I didn’t have space for the stand. During the pandemic, I wall mounted it in a corner. I wanted to hire someone to play on the album initially but my producer Matthew Barber said “You wrote them in a way you could play them, they are fine the way they are”. He gave me a real gift, he just told me to practice but it felt like my story. This album was the first time I got off my three chords (laughs). I’m not opposed to hiring someone with more technical proficiency to play the songs but in such a way that I could still play them live.’ He is clearly his own harshest critic, although he is learning to be slightly kinder to himself: ‘I used to judge myself so much writing that it could take me two years to write a song,’ he said.

‘More’ was the last song he wrote for the album: ‘It has the most toe tapping energy’ he grinned. ‘It starts off all romantic (laughs), all “I wanna touch your body, all sexy” but then the lyrics move onto that the person doesn’t want to be around you anymore. I wanted to write an upbeat sounding love song that’s actually about loneliness. The song came from the discovery of what it feels like when two people just don’t want the same thing. The line “I wanna be around you more, more than you wanna be around” was the starting point: it was something I jotted in my journal when I finally came to terms with the reality of it.’ 

As the song kicks off: “I wanna be around to know what’s on your mind. I wanna be around to play this role for you. I wanna be around to call on you anytime. I wanna be around you more, I do. More.”

Interestingly, ‘More’ started with the song ending: ‘That was the first part that came to me, then I found the second verse but after that I was soooo stuck!,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t figure it out. I thought I would just smoke a joint and try to write the rest of the lyrics in the bathtub (laughs). I was at that point where I thought “Is it THAT bad that I want to have you in my life in some capacity?” In the bath, I didn’t finish ‘More’ but I ended up writing ‘Forgive Me’. The songs are about someone who had a profound impact on me. Every time I play the outro, the party break, in ‘Forgive Me’, I can’t play it without laughing. I get so happy playing that part, it’s such a release. You can’t manufacture that kind of joy. In other songs, like ‘Easier’, you have to fight back the emotions.’

‘I got used to that being the backdrop to the record’

The last sound you hear on the record is of a truck and it turns out there’s a story behind it: ‘I was recording the songs on my phone in my apartment at first and sending them to a friend. In most of them, there was the sound of a truck backing up or a clock ticking. I got used to that being the backdrop to the record, so for the actual record, when I heard a truck, I ran downstairs to record it! I wondered if I should include the clock but the ticking sound was too much (laughs).’

Next up, he’s focusing on a different kind of grief: ‘I’ve got a lot of songs for what I want to record next, it’s more explorative,’ he said. ‘For my next recording, almost all of my songs are about grief. Right now I’m calling it ‘The friends and family EP’ but I have one song in particular about a friend I lost, called ‘Why Couldn’t You Stay?’ I had to write an instrumental section so that I could compose myself when I play it live. I’d rather use my grief in that way. I might be struggling and remember a lesson from a song I wrote, I’ve repurposed my grief in that way.’

He asks what my favourite song is on the album and I say that it changes depending on my mood but on the day we chat it is ‘Fishing for Promises’, which also has a gospel feel: ‘It’s my most vulnerable song,’ he said. ‘I initially wrote it on the guitar, it was very finger picked. I switched it to the piano but it took me a long time to fix the rhythm of it. The bridge lyric “missing you doesn’t mean I don’t want you where you are” came from “you know my heart, I don’t have to explain it to you”. It’s this feeling of being misunderstood but your words are nothing, you have to live it and show it.’

‘A song will tell you what it needs’

However, ‘Fishing For Promises’ has also been reworked significantly since he first wrote it: ‘I bumped it up half a tone,’ he said. ‘G# is my key. I started playing it that way (up half a tone), we recorded it that way but when I heard it back, I hated it but couldn’t say why. I just felt that it was too self-aware. We sent it off to the cellist who was going to play on it and I spent a weekend in agony thinking “something is wrong with this song”. I went back to the demo, which is really raw and fragile and I realised that this is how it’s meant to be. I told my producer to get the cellist to wait (laughs) and we slowed down the bass, drum and piano by 6%, which took it down a semitone. I practiced singing in a low, shaky part of my voice. We added the cello and when I heard it, it made me cry. It’s not supposed to have confidence. One of my best friends said to me “A song will tell you what it needs” and I realised that the more ‘ego’ version was the version I wanted if the girl I wrote it about was listening to it but the original is not for her, it’s for me and for other people who have gone through that. The songs on the album are all inspired by that time but they’re not about them. The songs don’t belong to me or her but to the people listening to them.’

As the song goes: “Though I’m wishing that all of this will somehow lead me to you, you can save yourself. I won’t make you have to explain yourself to me, so if it helps you, I can let you be.”

Born in Vancouver, Lake moved to Montreal at the age of 20 to study acting at the National Theatre School of Canada, and eventually landed in Toronto – where he quickly established himself as a professional actor, appearing in films such as Star Trek: Discovery (2017) and The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019) as well as a stint playing Macbeth (2017). Most recently, he has played Bolton in the hit Netflix series Locke and Key, an American fantasy horror drama. I say that I have recently interviewed another actor-musician and that storytelling, which is such an intrinsic part of a good movie or song, must be something that’s very important to him and he gets very animated: ‘Definitely. I have a few friends who are actors and musicians. I come from the theatre where there is a more acute sense of storytelling. I’ve been onstage when I feel the audience is connected to the story being told. When the story gets them, they think “Oh, my marriage, my mother”. The story is the thing we’re all devoting ourselves to. About 10 years ago, I clicked into that. I’m an actor but I’m also a storyteller. Most of the creative decisions I make are “How is this informing the story?” I’m fascinated by the beginning, the middle and the end. It’s the same vocally. I like the expression in the vocals, the story, maybe because my experience as an actor has been based on the story. Shakespeare soliloquies help you to structure a song. Often a song just wants to be what a song wants to be.’

‘I would love to play Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire‘

Nonetheless, taking on a gruelling Shakespearian role has its challenges: ‘I’ve played Macbeth, it destroyed me,’ he said ruefully. ‘I would really love to know what it would feel like to return to that role having lived a little more. I would love to play Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (a play by Tennessee Williams), even though it’s rarely done anymore  but I also love film and taking on something that hasn’t been done before. I would love to take on Hamlet, it’s the pinnacle for most actors but I’m against type for a Hamlet (laughs). Playing Richard III would be delicious! Or King Leontes. I think The Winter’s Tale is some of Shakespeare’s best writing.’

I tell him that I have problems learning song lyrics and I would never manage to memorise a Shakespearean play and he laughs: ‘Memory, for me, is actually the easiest part,’ he said. ‘The hardest part is figuring out why you say it. If I was needed to memorise a Shakespearean role before rehearsals started, I would probably need two weeks but I’d much rather learn the lines in rehearsals with the other actors when you can see them onstage and what they’re doing.’

It turns out that he has also been known to forget his own lyrics onstage: ‘I forget my lyrics all the time when I play live,’ he said laughing. ‘I was at a Wilco concert one time – they’re my favourite band – and Jeff Tweedy starts to play ‘Radio Cure’ and the audience goes crazy. He gets up to the mic and hesitates and someone in the crowd shouts the opening line “Cheer up, honey, I hope you can”. I love that he was so unashamed that he couldn’t remember the line and that people in the crowd knew the lyrics better than him. I’m not at that level yet!’

‘His songs tell very strong stories of tragedy, love and loss’

Lake has also appeared in the musical ‘Once’, which is based on the 2007 film of the same name. The music and lyrics for stage and screen were written by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, who both star in the film. Lake played Hansard’s character onstage. We get chatting about what a brilliant songwriter Hansard is: ‘His songs tell very strong stories of tragedy, love and loss,’ he said. ‘A lot of his songs start from a soft timbre place and by the end he’s belting. I had the good fortune of having dinner with him in Dublin. He read me Leonard Cohen’s essay ‘How To Speak Poetry’. The essay says that the power of the story is in the words that your audience will intrinsically know, so you have to get out of the way for the story. It’s really helped me as an actor. It must have taken him about 10 minutes to read it, it’s loud in the pub, so he’s up close to me, saying it into my ear (laughs)!’

He is a huge fan of American rock band The National: ‘Matt Berninger (the lead singer), I think he’s been through so many breakups, he finds so many ways to tell a story,’ he said. ‘Adele is an incredible storyteller, the journey of energy that her songs go on. Not that I’m comparing myself to Adele (laughs). I love Tom Waits as well. My next album will have even more stories. I have one song with the line “I was standing in the place where I met you the other night, I still remember your face”. I think that will always be the way for me, to have these different stories. Why stop being eclectic? (laughs) Each song is a postcard to myself from another time. My goal is to record that song as best as I can.’

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(Photo credit: Colour photo: Nicolette Pearse. Black and white photo: Ted Belton)