KiSS Radio’s Wham Bam one-day pop extravaganza at the PNE Amphitheatre, Saturday, Aug. 20. For full schedule of Summer Night Concerts visit pne.ca/thefair/live-shows/summer-night-concerts.html.
Do you remember when Justin Timberlake went solo?
You might have thought it was just another case of a singer walking away from his group, but for North Vancouver’s Trevor Guthrie, former lead singer of soulDecision, it was akin to watching the spiraling rates of nonsensical mortgages that preceded the subprime mortgage crisis.
It was the sign the bubble was about to burst.
“That kind of killed all the boy bands,” the Argyle grad says of Timberlake’s departure from ‘N Sync.
The vaguely algebraic-sounding boy and girl bands - B4-4, 98 Degrees, S Club 7 - that were dominating the charts suddenly vanished from an industry scrambling to redefine itself.
Guthrie’s band – and he is adamant soulDecision was an instrument-playing, song-writing band – were “let go” from their record company.
“When the dust settled I still was a songwriter, I still played instruments, but I don’t think the industry really saw me like that,” Guthrie recalls.
For about a decade Guthrie was stuck in pop music purgatory. But he kept playing.
After all, this was someone who’d learned to the play piano at age three.
“I don’t even remember learning to play,” Guthrie says with a laugh, recalling a photo of a pint-sized kid who needed to sit on a suitcase to reach the keys.
He’d get booked at festivals here and there and on some nights – like when Stewart Copeland of The Police joined him on stage – it felt like there was a reason to keep going.
“It took about 10 years trying to get out there,” he recalls.
He dealt with depression. But he kept coming back to the piano, looking for melodies and the words that belonged with them.
Finally, he connected with DJ and producer Armin van Buuren.
“He didn’t really have a concern about my past. He just liked the song,” Guthrie recalls.
The song was “This is What it Feels Like.”
Guthrie wrote the lyrics about a friend who’d been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour.
“It was a little more of a dark song and a depressing message, but when it got sent to Armin he heard it as a pop song. … At the time I’d been struggling trying to have my own career. I was like, ‘Well, I don’t really have anything else going for me, so let Armin do something with it.’”
It was “probably one of the best decisions” he’d ever made, he says.
About two weeks after “This is What it Feels Like” was released as a single, Guthrie stepped onstage at Madison Square Garden and sang for a crowd that sang back to him.
“If they already know the song and they’re singing along … we’ve got some magic here,” he recalls thinking.
A few months ago, Guthrie nearly lost a finger during a home renovation project when his grinder slipped while taking mortar off a brick.
The finger won’t work like it’s supposed to and another surgery may be needed, but in typical Guthrie fashion he still shows up at his piano, searching for melodies with nine fingers.
