Two years after captivating 55,000 onlookers at the Winter Olympics' Opening Ceremony with his exhilarating performance of We Are More, prolific spoken word artist shows no signs of losing creative momentum.
Having just released Remembrance Year, an album with his talk rock band The Short Story Long, Koyczan will also have a new book, Our Death Beds Will Be Thirsty, available when his national tour concludes at The on April 21. Emailing from a stop in Edmonton, he reveals, It's a new collection of poetry showcasing everything from the personal to the absurd.
Furthermore, Koyczan recently unveiled Instructions for a Bad Day an arresting piece composed at the behest of Comox Valley secondary students after enduring a rash of peer suicides.
I think it was an opportunity to help and I'm so grateful to have been part of the project, he says. And while the students' undertaking is billed as an anti-bullying campaign, Koyczan views his six-minute composition as something more universal. It was written to bolster the spirits of those who can't see past their depression.... It's for anyone feeling that the weight of their lives is too much.
It also serves to illustrate the added dimension that musical accompaniment lends Koyczan's verse. Having witnessed this firsthand every night on tour, he enthuses, The band is simply fantastic at embellishing the feeling. The double bass and cello are like long lost friends hugging each other inside the gentle tangle of the girls' harmonies. It's like having a film score for a poem.
For the Vogue show, The Short Story Long will be bolstered by Hannah Epperson, who creates gorgeous atmospherics with her fiddle and loop pedal, and a horn section. Koyczan promises, It's going to be a special night and a great way to celebrate (National) Poetry Month.
Shane Koyczan and The Short Story Long play the Vogue Theatre on April 21.
