Artist of the Day | ERIKA LAMON
ARTIST OF THE DAY
22.01.2022
ERIKA LAMON
With the current pandemic, the state of the music and touring industry has dramatically changed. Where were you when everything was brought to a halt?
I was walking in downtown Kingston with my husband, Max, on our way to the bar where we were going to meet up with friends and the film crew that’d spent the better part of March filming our French band’s music video. The video was part of the Kingston Canadian Film Festival’s local music video showcase, and we were all really excited to see its debut on the big screen that night! I remember it so vividly. We were late, and as soon as we walked in, I could see people at our table looking up from their phones with strange expressions. The festival had been cancelled. People were getting on their phones, making calls to let everyone know, and it was just such a shock to be in this whirlwind of excitement while simultaneously feeling it come to a halt. I don’t think any of us realized that would be our last outing for a long time. The showcase ended up resuming digitally (we even won the People’s Choice Award!), but everything else had changed.
How has that affected your plans for the coming year? Did you have a tour planned, upcoming album release?
I had an unannounced summer tour that had to be cancelled. It was strange, grieving something that no one else knew about. Suddenly, it was like our internal compass had been smashed, and our “what’s next” arrow didn’t know which way to point. It was good though, because we’d been so caught up in just getting things done that we’d strayed from what we loved most: creating music. Now, fast-forward to almost two years later, and I’m in the studio finishing up the album that I wrote thanks to the standstill.
What have you been doing to fill/make the most of your new-found free time at home? How are you supporting your mental health through all of this?
I went through a lot of phases, as I imagine many people did. I went through the re-organizing phase, the clothing purge, the binge-the-entire-Game-of-Thrones-series phase. Max and I even moved to the suburbs! Our mental health had started to suffer, and we needed to get away. It wasn’t until we’d settled into the quiet suburbs that we seriously tackled those mental health hurdles. I say we, because Max and I work on almost everything together. We knew that if we wanted to create, we needed to be in a good place, and that it was on us and our daily practice to make sure we would get there. We started doing things like meditating, prioritizing healthy food, journaling, exercising, vocal exercises, etc. Developing that discipline has been both extremely difficult and satisfying, and it now goes hand-in-hand with the work that we do in music.
As things are reopening & restrictions are lifting have you booked any new gigs? Tours? Etc? If your region is still under restriction, how are dealing with the Covid third wave?
We had some gigs, but that hasn’t been our focus. Everything was, and is still, so unstable that we decided early on to focus our energy on things that we did have control over: creation, self-work and recording music. We’re open to and taking opportunities that come our way, and we have some cool gigs and showcases lining up for both projects in 2022, but it still feels too early to give that more attention. And with two projects, we’re certainly not running out of things to do as it is!
Do you have a message for everyone at home reading this?
I don’t know about you, but I spent way too much time online during the pandemic. Maybe as an effort to stay in touch with the world, maybe not, I don’t know. But if there’s one thing that I’ve noticed, it’s that the online world is harsh and leaves little room for nuances. As things have opened back up, I’ve found the world and people to be kinder and a lot more nuanced than what the web likes to show us. Time away from the online world, disconnecting to reconnect, can really help when it just gets to be too much.
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