In a few moments the seven-year-old boy in the crowd will know what to do with the rest of his life – but not yet.
At this moment in the mid-1970s, Ashwin Sood is expected to be a doctor like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. But in the next moment electricity courses through the hippest crowd in Calgary as Count Basie starts playing that: “You got 12-bar-blues in my jazz,” ‘No, you got jazz in my 12 bar blues,’ Kansas City swing. That’s when Sood saw the drummer.
Butch Miles was hitting. He was playful and dextrous, all big blonde hair and big teeth.
“He stood out like this absolute beacon,” Sood recalls.
That’s when Sood knew.
Looking over the uneven terrain of adulthood to that one day of his childhood, Sood reflects on coming from a “very, very traditional” Indian family and somehow establishing a career that has included stints playing for Stevie Nicks and Sheryl Crow as well as Sarah McLachlan, with whom he once shared a marriage.
On March 22, Sood will bring Reboot Lab back to the Sarah McLachlan School of Music. Now in its fourth year, the workshop is intended to help ambitious musicians hone their crafts and write better songs under the tutelage of Sood and Brian Farrell.
Farrell has a way of seeing the potential in musicians and bringing out their best qualities. Sood knows this, he explains, because Farrell saw the potential in him.
“Picture this: You’re in Grade 7. After school you go to your Grade 7 music teacher’s apartment, you sit underneath his piano and you talk records for five hours. That would never happen today. Ever!” he says with a laugh.
Thanks to Miles, Sood knew he wanted to be “in music,” but he didn’t know exactly what that meant. But Farrell talked to him about The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, about the lyrics Billy Joel was writing.
“He was the person in high school who understood me,” Sood says, noting Farrell “did wonders” for his self-esteem.
Farrell also encouraged Sood’s father to buy his teenaged son a drum set. His father, Sood notes, was happy to encourage his son’s “hobby.”
When Sood parlayed his career as a drummer into a job as a music producer he continued to look to Farrell for guidance.
Those conversations helped but Sood found himself “hitting the wall” with a female vocal group. They sounded good but they were missing that soulful sound that can turn a grunt into a pearl.
Farrell helped the group breakthrough but it didn’t have anything to do with vocal tools or techniques, Sood reports. The difference was the way they felt.
He describes the breakthrough as: “that whole other part of music.”
The other part of music is a big part of Reboot, Sood explains.
“How are you going to get inside this song and make it yours?”
That ability is often lacking in “this world of reality TV singers,” Sood says.
They haven’t broken hearts, he says. Sometimes they haven’t had their heart broken. And that lack of life experience can declaw a great song.
Asked about his favourite songwriters, Sood names Simon and Garfunkel, Willie Nelson, Sarah Mclachlan and Peter Gabriel. “The list is long and genres are wide,” he says.
Sood encourages musicians to pick their 10 favorite songs and figure out why they like those 10.
“Write down the lyrics. Get inside the lyrics. What is this story telling you?”
Besides learning about navigating a music studio, the lab also includes advice about navigating the music business.
“It’s the Wild West out there these days,” he says. “Anybody and everybody who’s decided that they can make a record, they make them on their laptops in their apartments.”
Sood also wants to be the type of mentor that Farrell was to him.
“It’s just about guiding this next generation along and helping them navigate the craziness of this music business,” he says.
The lab is only one day. But as Sood knows, a life can change in a moment.
