May. 27, 2009 - Issue #710: Messages Matter

Cam Penner

Eyes on the road: Songwriter follows the white line

It was somewhere around three-and-a-half, four years ago when singer-songwriter Cam Penner left his job and hit the road, and he rarely stopped for long in one place. Sure there were stints living in England and Texas, but he never lingered long before moving on again.

"I like the change, I like the daily change," Penner explains. "You can go to a town and the next day you're in another town, you're meeting new people—it's almost like there's forgiveness in every town you go to, because it starts over again."

Another advantage of the road for Penner is that it frees him up to concentrate on songs both old and new. While the road can be a busy endeavour, it also provides plenty of solitude while covering lengthy distances.

"That's when I get to write," Penner admits. "That's when I'm inspired—as I'm travelling the scenery changes, the landscape changes, the people change, and I've got things running through my head so I'm writing on the road. Maybe I don't get to write the music on the road as much, but I get to write [lyrics] on the road and start getting ideas, and then I come home and the bank is full and I can kind of sit down with all these things that I've seen and start writing when I get home.

"At home it's business," he continues. "The last few months of promoting this album you do 80 – 100 hours a week trying to promote it and promote it and promote it. I've learned that the business side of this really does suck sometimes. You have to take time sometimes for the creativity."

Often, taking time for the creative part of being a musician isn't about setting aside a particular block during a day so much as it involves an awareness of what's going on in the surrounding world. It's important to realize when something comes along that is worth further investigation.

"I think I'm always kind of searching for something—I'm a bit of a wanderer, so you do see something shiny in the ditch, you do find something along the way that interests you," Penner says. "But you're also affected by things and sometimes I will purposefully write a song because ... I see something that happens in society.

"But I don't know, I think a good songwriter or artist has their ears to the ground and has their eyes open and is looking," he adds. "And it's not necessarily that they're looking, their eyes are just open. They're accepting of what's happening around them and you become affected by that.
"Something's always going on around you, whether it's larger things on a grander scale or if it's things that happen in your neighbourhod. I kind of feel like I go to a well, and sometimes there's lots in there, sometimes there's not, but I continually need to go to that well to see what's in there." V

Fri, May 29 (8 pm)
Cam Penner
With F&M
Haven Social Club, $10 

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