Kitsilano has seen its fair share of change over the years, but New Jersey-based musician Daniel J. Meyer remembers what it was like growing up there in the ’70s and ’80s.
He captures this nostalgia on his new album Summer in Canada.
Meyer says some of his oldest memories include busking in front of Zellers at the age of five, trying to sneak into the Folk Festival and constantly riding buses. He describes
Kitsilano at the time as being like Greenwich Village on the beach.
“We grew up in a very bohemian world in this beautiful beach area with all these countercultural types and artists and working class people and were on the West Coast where everything could happen,” he says. “It wasn’t perfect but it had so much to it that was so awesome for kids growing up and had so much dimensionality.”
In “Kitsilano,” the first song he recorded on the album, he sings, “I grew up in a ramshackle house on West Third Avenue and in the backyard was a cherry tree whose roots could strangle you.”
The title track, “Summer in Canada,” captures what it was like growing up poor and being surrounded by tourists.
“We weren’t peasant poor but we didn’t have a lot of money and most people we knew didn’t have a lot of money,” he says. “There were so many tourists and they were just loving the city and thinking how awesome it was and we were just poor.”
Other songs on the album include “Jericho,” “Tomorrow” and “I’ll Still Kiss You.”
Meyer and his brother lived in Vancouver until they moved to L.A. when he was 15 to live with his father. He describes himself and his brother at the time as “Leave it to Beaver delinquents” and says the move was to prevent them from getting into further trouble.
“All the things we were doing was to buy chilidogs at 7/Eleven,” he explains.
When he was in L.A., he played in a few bands that failed to make it big so he put down the guitar and moved to New York.
“It was probably the worst thing that could happen to me musically at the time because it made me want to walk away from the whole thing,” he says.
Now he lives in New Jersey with his wife and kids. After not picking up a guitar for almost 20 years he began recording Summer in Canada, which he released in July.
“I didn’t play for years and years and years and I thought I was never going to play again,” he says. “To my surprise all this music sort of just started pouring out.”
He says one benefit from his long break from music is that technology has advanced so he can record everything himself.
“Basically everything that might have been in my head in the years that I wasn’t playing I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish without going to a super expensive studio,” he says.
He hopes people will relate to the time and place he sings about in his music.
“People are pining for the old days and a lot of people will tell you those old days weren’t that great, but there was something about them,” he says. “It’s about this idyllic place that had a lot of stark elements to it and hoping that I can sort of convey through this story that the way you think about a place now isn’t the way it always was.”
You can listen to the album at danieljmeyermusic.com.
@BlakeEmily
