This year, Canadian Country Music Association Award winner Tim Hicks has been all over Canada, played in Germany and the UK and was most recently Australia before returning home for a string of shows across northwestern Ontario. When he takes the stage at the Townshend Theatre, he’ll be on show four of six in the region.
“If my mother was on the line she’d say I came out singing,” Hicks said in a recent phone interview with the Times. “I’ve been playing in bands for a very, very long time. I started taking lessons when I was about six or seven years old and the place I took lessons from they put little bands together. So from the time I was seven or eight years old I was playing in a band and I got the bug really young. I started playing in bars when I was 15, so this will be my thirtieth year playing music professionally.”
Hicks says he’s done everything from tribute and cover bands and cruise ships all over the world and worked himself into a recording contract in 2013.
“It’s kind of a strange thing,” Hicks said. “Because I’m considered an artist now, but I still identify as a working musician, and I really live for the gig. I live for that 75, 90 minutes or whatever it is and everything I do in and around that is just to get me to the next gig.”
For a long time Hicks was known for writing party songs, he says. That’s easy to see as his most played song on Spotify is ‘Stronger Beer’ in which he sings about how Canadian beer has a higher alcohol content than American beer and other ways Canada is ‘better’ than the US. Hicks says his audience is what led him to write upbeat funny songs.
“I became the party country guy in Canada for a minute,” Hicks said. “I was the only guy doing it, but really that happened by accident, because we were playing in bars every night, and it was our job to bring the party. So we clued in that, you know, if I was singing about what was happening in front of me, people really had a good time, and if I got them clapping along and singing and stomping their feet, then it was even more of a good time. So, you know, early on, I was drawing inspiration from that, just writing sort of party music. Arguably my biggest song called ‘Stronger beer,’ was kind of a little bit jokey, right? Just sort of meant to be a fun thing. It was never meant to be a song. I wrote it with my buddy as a as a joke for my day-to-day manager, who is from West Virginia and had a lot of questions about Canada and it, you know, by happenstance, my record label loved it, and they, they released it, not as a single, but just put it on my EP, and we had this viral explosion.”
Hicks says a lot of his funny songs were inspired by the late country music great John Prine.
“When I was growing up, my uncle played guitar and sang,” Hicks said. He lived in Vancouver, but we’d go and see him, and he’d come out and see us, and we’d sing these silly songs. I thought he wrote them, but as it turns out, he was just singing John Prine songs all those years. So, you know, if you, if you listen to a song like ‘Please Don’t Bury Me,’ that’s kind of what I was looking to do on ‘Stronger Beer,’ just in a different way.”
Hicks says sometimes country music can be too serious.
“I think especially in country, we tend to take ourselves too seriously, in my humble opinion,” Hicks said. What I mean by that is, we’re always looking for the tear jerker ‘Song of the Year,’ and I like getting a chuckle out of people when I play, you know, I love that if I can play a song and put smiles on faces and and cause someone to laugh out loud a little bit, then, to me, that’s a win and sort that’s why I’m not afraid to do those kinds of songs where, you know, some of my colleagues might, in fact, they do, in a loving way, sort of scoff like, ‘oh yeah, the Stronger Beer guy,’ but I love it. I think it’s something, it’s a little bit of an untapped thing, you know, looking for songs that make people laugh.”
Hicks’ most recent single is a more nostalgic than funny. Available on streaming platforms, “I Miss Tom Petty” is a song about the late great singer-songwriter and the 80s and 90s when Hicks was growing up.
“I have a mug that says ‘I miss Tom Petty’ on it, and I was writing with two of my buddies, Dan Davidson and Clayton Bellamy of the Road Hammers, and we were searching for an idea, and I held up this mug, and I was like, ‘Is this a song?’ Because I knew we all love Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,” Hicks said. “They were like, ‘oh my god, that is such a song.’ So we kind of crafted this nostalgic song based around that feeling, because we really do miss guys like Tom Petty, like, it’s just, it’s a different world out there. You know, I grew up in the 90s, a little bit in the 80s, and it’s a different world out there. That’s really what that song is talking about. So you get a little bit of both. It’s, you know, it’s 50 per cent nostalgia and 50 per cent really missing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, you know. Although I have Sirius XM in my truck, so I listen to the Tom Petty channel all the time.”
Hicks says these days he also takes songwriting inspiration from being a family man.
“I’ve got two kids and so i”m kind of in this phase right now where I’m looking for songs that say things, which is why I wrote a song like ‘Talk to Time’ and why I wrote ‘One More,’” Hicks said. “These are songs that have a little bit more substance to them than loud, hell raising good times. I’m just drawing inspiration from my life, from watching my kids grow up and the way I relate to my wife and the way I relate to my audience.”
While he once considered settling in Tennessee like many country music artists do, Hicks and his wife decided to stay in St. Catharines in southern Ontario after a spell in Nashville while Hicks worked on his third album.
“For us, my career happened a little bit later, we already had a baby at that point,” Hicks said. “You know, we tried, we did it. We moved to Nashville for about six months while I was making my third record. At the end of the record, my wife and I were just like, ‘let’s just go home.’”
When he does go away there are lots of things he misses about Canada, aside from his family.
“If you’re talking about material things, you know, I’m a Timmy’s guy. I love working man coffee and so if we’re anywhere, I’m forced to drink Starbucks. I’m not really that into it, but they’ve got a Tim Hortons now in Nashville, from what I understand. So I’ll be hitting that up next time I’m down,” Hicks said. “But mostly it’s just the vibe of Canada, Canada, has a very distinct feel about it when you tour. You know, the people have a certain energy, and it’s not like that everywhere else in the world. So anytime I’m home, I’m always thankful to be home. You know, even though I love what I do, and I love to travel and see places, I love coming home too, which is why we didn’t make the move.”
When Hicks comes through northwestern Ontario next week, he’ll be playing songs from his series of EPs called Campfire Troubadour released in 2021 and 2023.
“I’ve released a couple of EPs over the last few years called Campfire Troubadour (volumes one and two) and they’re basically just like if I were to come to your house and you lit a fire and we sat in the backyard and I told you stories about my songs and we had a few laughs and I sang,” Hicks said. “I’m going to have my colleague with me, Chris Altman, who’s the most musical person I’ve ever met. He plays banjo and steel guitar and sings like a bird. So the two of us are going to come and just entertain everybody with some songs and stories.”
Tim Hicks Acoustic Duo plays the Townshend Theatre with Tour De Fort on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Tickets are still available at Tourdefort.com, Ski’s Variety, or the Fort Frances Public Library Technology Centre and will be available at the door for $40. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.
