Jay Myers packs plenty of gear for a one-man band.
As The Alkemist, a solo ‘porchpunk’ act he started here on Haida Gwaii, Myers sings while playing guitar, banjo, or fiddle over a kick drum.
And jangling along when he returns to play Skidegate and Masset this weekend is one more instrument Myers made, thanks to the deer of Haida Gwaii: a bone-rattle boot.
“It’s a hiking boot with a whole bunch of hoofs and bones tied onto it,” he says, laughing.
“I just mic the boot, and it gets a pretty good sound.”
Myers recently moved from Queen Charlotte to a rickety old farmhouse in Fort Fraser, but still carries many songs from his time on island.
Myers likes to say he was drawn to Haida Gwaii by three things — a girl, a job, and a boat — and he has fond memories of living on a sailboat in the Charlotte harbour while running the local life skills program for Northern Health.
At the time, Myers was also learning to deal with a heavy burden, post-traumatic stress disorder, and found Haida Gwaii a good place to be.
Mainly it was the people, he said, Haidas and others, and the peace that comes from being in a quiet, beautiful land far from the city and rich in food-gathering.
“A lot of the songs are about dealing with darkness in life, and trying to come out of the other end with something positive,” he said.
For his six-track demo “Live from the farm house,” Myers recorded some of his more upbeat songs, like ‘Stomp Stomp,’ ‘Edge of the World,’ and ‘Splendid Isolation.’
This summer, he had a chance to tour with those numbers in places such as Wells, Ashcroft, Kamloops, even the Parkside Art Gallery in 100 Mile House.
“I was surprised at how many awesome venues are popping up in northern B.C.,” he said, adding that two of his favourite one-man bands, Scott Dunbar and Drum and Bell Tower, hail from Prince George and Williams Lake.
Even the Fort Fraser farmhouse Myers moved to is proving a musical place — his roommate is Blake Bamford, a.k.a. Big Fancy, a steel guitar and banjo player who performed on Haida Gwaii last winter. Every August, for the last 10 years or so, the co-owned farm has even hosted a small summer music festival.
“I hear about lots of musicians from big cities renting cabins, having to go out for retreats to the woods or whatever to be able to record an album,” said Myers.
“I was just feeling so blessed the whole time I was recovering because I get to live in that environment all the time.”
Islanders can catch The Alkemist in the Kay Centre Performing House this Friday, Jan. 13 at 7 p.m., with an opening set by Anna’s in the Churchyard (Molly Clarkson and Graham Richard), or on Saturday, Jan. 14 in Masset’s Dixon Entrance Maritime Museum with opening tunes by Dave Clair.
Tickets are $15 for Haida Gwaii Arts Council members, $20 for general admission, and $10 for students or seniors. To hear what The Alkemist sounds like, stream the Live from the Farm House demo below.