Listener - Photo by Riley Taylor
Those who are familiar with Listener will likely confirm Dan Smith’s ability to captivate an audience based on the raw and honest emotion that plays off of his words. Yet it is the incredible passion he conveys on stage that emits an overwhelming power that ties it all together. This power was felt at Listener’s performance on Friday March 11 in The Shop under Parts and Labour. While currently promoting their forth album Wooden Heart, vocalist Dan Smith of Listener came to take part in Toronto’s CMW line-up, continuing his quest to inspire and grow from the lessons life continues to teach him.
Most commonly described as ‘talk music’ or spoken word, Listener’s unique style of music consists of a poetic interpretation of Smith’s thoughts and experiences accompanied by a varied mixture of instruments.
“When I write I try to be faithful to the moments that I have and experience that are inspirational. When things come to my heart that I need to learn from in life, I try to just write those things down,” says Smith.
Once he finishes a poem there is another process of piecing his heartfelt words to music. That’s where Christin Nelson comes in.
“Chris makes all the music for Listener. So him and I just sit and hash it out by asking each other ‘Okay, what is this song about, what are these words, what are these movements in the music and how are we going to make them?’” he explains.
But this was not always the case. For years Smith had pursued his passion of hip-hop, which continued on the first couple Listener albums, but eventually his creative ideas and personal changes led him in another direction.
“I was writing all kinds of things from my heart. Writing things about this world, my thoughts and feelings and life lessons but I think it was being lost in that genre. I sometimes felt at shows that some people just didn’t really want to hear it,” he explains.
After awhile the decision to take on a different style was something that he needed to do in order to stay true to himself.
“I would rather say the things that come to my heart and are in my mind and try say the things I’m suppose to say to just people in general,” says Smith. “I don’t just want to focus on being as hip-hop or as punk as possible and attach our ideas to that pipeline.”
But his last hip-hop tour did help inspire Listener’s sort of ‘grassroots’ touring style. Travelling with various bands playing mostly “potluck dinner house shows,” people started to catch word and invited Smith to play house shows all over the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
“It was a beautiful time. It really changed me musically as far as just being in a room of people that I didn’t know for the most part,” he says. “Some people were stoked on what I was doing and they were telling their friends, ‘Hey you have to check this guy out, oh, and bring a casserole.’”
While house shows are still a large part of their touring routine, April 1 will mark the start of their upcoming European tour. Coincidentally, their tour will overlap with that of good friends The Chariot where Smith will be opening for a few of their shows.
Despite touring and performing on a regular basis, it is still hard to imagine how he deals with the vulnerability of his thoughts and emotions as he opens himself up to an audience.
“It’s very worshipful for me, kind of like an out of mind and out of body experience. I just go to that place and I don’t think about the words or about the heart or emotion,” he admits.
And while the spiritual journey is satisfying to Smith, the desire to share his words really comes down to the hope of a positive impact on others.
“I hope that every now and then there’s a line or a truth or something that someone can latch onto,” says Smith. “I know we are all trying to figure out our own lives but if we can parallel each other as I say these words, then maybe light bulbs can go off in the same way that light bulbs went off when I learned some things about my life.”
