‘There were lots of good players there and I was trying not to get my hopes up.’
Did you expect to win the contest at the Ship & Anchor on May 9?
I was pretty surprised for sure. There were lots of good players there and I was trying not to get my hopes up.
What kind of music do you play?
I guess you’d call it roots music — country-folk stuff. Usually when I’m playing around town we go out as a three-piece called Tim Buckley and The tim.buck.two and I play acoustic guitar and harmonica.
Who is your favourite band?
I’ve got a lot of them. Neil Young really got me into writing songs and the acoustic guitar and harmonica. Hank Williams Sr. is another guy I really dig. Some local guys like Corb Lund are awesome too.
Where do you get the material for your songwriting?
From all sorts of different stuff. I like country music so I find a lot of it is personal from landscapes. I worked a few summers at Lake O’Hara Lodge and I wrote a lot of songs up there.
Do you make a living from this or do you have a secondary job?
I’ve got a part-time job. I work as a youth-care counsellor at Hull Homes. The goal is to make the music full time.
Where were you born and raised?
Calgary.
Do you play any electric?
Not right now so much. It’s mainly acoustic. I’ve got an electric and it’s being slowly integrated into the act.
What’s the name of the song that you won the award for?
It’s called “Walking Home.” It goes: “My feet will guide me straight; Shortcut through the gate of the old man’s yard; Just like when we were kids; All of the things that we did; I can’t believe who you now are.”
What’s the song about?
It just draws on a bunch of different stuff. I had a long walk home one evening one very late evening. I was in my own space. I wrote that song fairly quickly — 20 minutes or something. It draws from a few different experiences.
Do you write on paper or use a computer?
It’s on paper. I’ve got a few journals going.
Is that a lot of scribbling?
Yeah a fair bit of that. I try to write a bit every day whether it’s writing for a song or just the first thing that comes to mind. Out of that maybe I get one or two lines and I try to build a song around that.
Before you went onstage did you have a few beers for courage?
You know what? We went on pretty early at about 12:45 p.m. and I got down to the Ship at about 12:15 p.m. and didn’t get a pint into me by then.
So where do you go from here?
I’m really excited to play at the folk festival. That’s part of the competition. We’re in the middle of recording a full-length CD here and we got a bit of money $3000 to help us out with that which is really nice. It’s very timely because we’ve been mulling over how we are going to fund this thing.
Did you cash the cheque quite quickly?
Yeah I’ve already cashed it. I figured better go and put it in the bank.
