Local singer-songwriter John Hewitt turns the page with new book

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Surely one of the most prolific musicians in Edmonton, John Hewitt is following up the impressive half-dozen indie folk/rock albums he’s created in the last four years with an innovative new endeavour.

“Well, midlife crisis came in and I wrote a book,” the 34-year-old talented singer-songwriter laughs. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years — the first bit not so seriously, but still performing a lot and paying my dues — so I thought it would be kind of cool to put it all together and see what it looks like.”

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The result is the very readable and happily relatable Aphrodite & Me: Songs for the Muse and Stories from the Road.

Its official launch is Saturday at The Yardbird Suite.

Hewitt’s inspiration to leap to the page was sparked by various titans of creative history.

“When I tour, I always bring a few books with me and they’re either Jack Kerouac or lyric books,” Hewitt says, citing collections of song by Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and Jim Morrison. “I don’t read much poetry, but I love reading lyrics, and so that was my first idea.

“It then just sort of graduated into this thing where I started putting myself through my own musical therapy and working on some opinion pieces.”

This did entail a certain perspective shift for Hewitt.

“When I’m writing songs,” he explains, “I’m more like Paul McCartney, who wrote about characters and places and stuff, whereas John (Lennon) always wrote about himself, feelings and introspective things.

“I’m not like that at all, I don’t want to look at it and think it has anything to do with me,” Hewitt adds, saying he’d rather tell stories through often invented characters. “I think I’ve opened up the door, and the book was the most personal thing I’ve ever worked on.”

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As a sample, Hewitt writes, “There might not be anything more poetic than the scene of snow falling down upon everything around you as you sip a morning coffee and stare into your future.”

This is nestled among lyrics like, “I’m lying in bed listening to an old dog that barks twenty-six hours a day. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine hours — if he keeps it on up he’ll be pushing up flowers.”

Full of essays, good-natured touring stories and lyrics from dozens of Hewitt’s hundreds of songs, the 192-page artistic self-portrait dives deep into his obsessions and experiences across eight states and three provinces.

“It ended up being a combination of things that had happened to me, songs I’ve written and how I feel,” he says.

This includes a long-form take on 20th century Americana where Hewitt convincingly connects the dots between John Steinbeck, James Dean and Elvis.

The book — spoilers! — actually ends on two legendary final utterances: “That guy’s gotta stop. He’ll see us,” and “Timshel!”

These are Dean’s rumoured last words before dying on the highway, and the final declaration from Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

“I thought it might be effective,” says Hewitt, “to encourage the reader to do a bit of research.”

Reading Hewitt’s lyrics, one repeatedly encounters a poetic storyteller.

“Steinbeck was probably a greater influence on anything I’ve done, and my biggest influences probably aren’t even in music at all,” he notes. “Even in my personal life, I try and imitate Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H more than Bob Dylan.”

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Going along with the scrappy tone of his recently-released acoustic album Wonderlust, Aphrodite & Me is full of the struggles of a 2024 working musician.

“I hope I don’t come off too curmudgeon-y,” he laughs.

Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Hewitt tried to make a go of it in Toronto for five years, but the city didn’t sit well with him.

“When I was leaving Toronto an old venue was closing every week,” he notes. “My wife and I decided we wanted to start new.”

They landed in Calgary in 2018, but the particular bustle of that city didn’t quite fit, either, so they headed north.

“Everyone told us not to move to Edmonton,” he laughs, “so we moved to Edmonton.

“It was pretty blind, like, hey, the roads are nice here, let’s move.”

Once settled in, Hewitt scrapped five albums he’d made out east, playing in cover bands and touring with singer-songwriter Tim Isberg before booking the album release show his American Hotel — precisely in time for the pandemic to shut down all the venues.

Things got better down the road when a cold call from a festival in Whitefish, Montana sparked off a heavy touring schedule through Alberta, B.C., Colorado and California where some of the best stories in the book are set, including the tale of strangers giving him enough gas money to keep rolling.

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“On the alternate you could say that the people of California wanted me out so badly they paid to have me leave,” Hewitt jokes in the book, but his actual appreciation of Americans goes back to seeing the Maple Leaf and Old Glory waving side by side back in Sault Ste. Marie — a city half in Ontario, half in Michigan.

“When I was young,” he says, part explaining his frictionless love of Americana, “it felt like a brother and sister kind of thing. It’s the largest land border in the world, and pretty much one of the most peaceful as well.

“When I tour there’s a great love of Canadians,” he says, noting every time he hits the road he makes new friends, in either country.

Indeed, Saturday’s Yardbird gig includes one such person on the roster, Montana fiddler Hannah King.

As well as doing some readings from the book, Hewitt plans to debut a number of new songs, record the show and hopefully get a live album out of it.

“Because I never sleep,” he laughs. “Why not make more work for myself?”

fgriwkowsky@postmedia.com

@fisheyefoto

PREVIEW

John Hewitt

Where The Yardbird Suite, 11 Tommy Banks Way

When 7 p.m. Saturday

Tickets $34 at yardbirdsuite.com

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