If anything has been forgotten in the Western world it’s our ancestral heritage, but Mark Hamilton, frontman and songwriter of Calgary’s Woodpigeon, isn’t quite ready to let go of the past.
“You have to have a sense of coming from somewhere. Growing up, I knew that my grandmother and grandfather were from the United Kingdom and my oma and opa were from Germany and Austria,” said Hamilton in a soft voice from his home in Calgary. “I don’t think you really know what it means to be from those places until you really go.”
Hamilton is no stranger to the land that once was his grandparents’. He began Woodpigeon while living in Edinburgh, a place that is rooted in his family tree. Most recently, Hamilton was living and touring in Germany, spending most of his time in Berlin and some in Bremen, his grandmother’s village.
While in Germany, Hamilton began to write his third album, Die Stadt Muzikanten, which loosely translates from German to “the city musicians.” The title takes inspiration from a German folk tale about animal musicians trying to make it to Bremen. Hamilton remembers the tale fondly as a memory of his grandparents, but the theme of the album really comes from idea of immigration and leaving the old country behind.
“My grandparents inspired the cast of characters that are in this record. There are a couple of things that are really specifically about them,” explained Hamilton. “Other things are inspired by the idea of jumping on a boat and going across the world.”
On his tour of Germany, Hamilton witnessed the destruction still scarring some towns and villages following the end of the Second World War. The devastation was still jarring, even after 65 years of rebuilding. “So many people were obliterated, we would pass through some cities and think ‘oh my gosh people live here,'” said Hamilton.
The impact of the Second World War on Germany’s architecture also led Hamilton to make an odd comparison to his current hometown.
“Living in Calgary we end up complaining a lot because our city gets rid of old buildings just before they become historical sites. They tend to take them down when they turn 90 and put up ugly condos,” said Hamilton. “We had this realization that a lot of buildings in Berlin are younger than the ones in Calgary because Berlin had to be virtually rebuilt because it was nothing for awhile.”
Backing Hamilton on the album are a number of musicians. Woodpigeon isn’t exactly a band, it’s more of a collective with a rotating membership, that Hamilton figured is now somewhere near 60 contributors. It might seem that working with between four and eight different people on any one track would be frustrating, but for Hamilton it’s just part of being in Woodpigeon.
“I feel it’s really easy because it’s all I know. The record is a lot of me piecing it together. If there’s something I can’t play we bring in someone. A lot of the arranging is me, but the people who I work with I trust and I like their judgment. When they come in to do something we’ll talk about the idea in my head,” said Hamilton. “They also have ideas too and quite often those ideas are better than my original ideas,” he added with a laugh.
Catch Woodpigeon Feb. 18 at La Sala Rossa.
