Making ‘Something Easy’ was anything but for Justin Rutledge

“Something easy”? No. No, it wasn’t.

Call it a subtle “dad joke,” but the title of Justin Rutledge’s latest album couldn’t be further from the truth. Written and recorded entirely at home during stolen nights in the attic amid the paranoid calm of COVID lockdown with two young kids underfoot, “Something Easy” documents the Toronto singer/songwriter’s determined efforts to give herself the technical ins-and-outs. outs of making an entire record from scratch – all the while considering the future of his two-decade-long musical career.

You see, the whole time in the back of his mind was the question of whether he really wanted to do this for a living.

“Yes absolutely. Shifting priorities,” Rutledge confirmed over a few drinks in Sorauren Park earlier this week. “Music was my priority – and my relationship, of course – but music was always first for me and the songs I made were first and now something has replaced it. Two things have replaced it called Jack and Louie and also my marriage and, you know, I’m in my mid-40s and music has become something I go to to discern what’s going on in my day-to-day life. It’s part of the process.

“Finding the time is the most difficult thing these days. I’ve thought about this a lot. Making time to write a song or to spend some time with an idea I feel very guilty doing it now because I could be spending that time with my kids or maybe that means my wife for the children care. So that’s what I’m struggling with now as a brand new father: finding time for creativity.

“I’m in a relationship where that’s encouraged and it’s like ‘Go upstairs, take your time,’ but it’s something internal, something inside me. I’d rather spend time with my kids than my guitar, you know? So it’s tricky and I can understand why sometimes as artists get older, there’s suddenly six years between records, ‘What the hell happened?’ Well, they’re married and raised a few kids and they’re at soccer practice.

“something easy”, released on May 19, thus represents Rutledge’s efforts to “kindle that creative fire, keep those embers burning” during his “off hours” as a new parent of two boys, now two and four years old. And while he jokes that it’s a tough job these days to spark interest in a new record from a “white man in his 40s, 10 albums in,” the circumstances of “Something Easy”‘s creation have allowed him to a few surprises its devoted fan base, nearly 20 years after his internationally acclaimed 2004 debut, “No Never Alone.”

There are atmospheric synths and programmed drums in the mix, lending his literate, but never overwritten, songwriting a seductively low-key nocturnal atmosphere that often draws inspiration from ambient electronic music as much as folk.

Rutledge also took guitar lessons for the first time in his life in the general pursuit of self-improvement that was the recording process, also calling supportive friends in the wee hours for technical advice on how to navigate that process.

The result is a patient, layered headphone record that really only really reveals itself when you take the time to take in the space and the subtle details, not to mention the detailed economy of language on display in a collection of songs that In retrospect, Rutledge realized a tendency to dwell on specific moments from his childhood. Not surprising, considering he grew up a lot leading up to making the record, not only becoming a father, but getting an arts administration degree and taking a “real” job supporting Massey Hall through social media.

“I start writing with a feeling rather than a storyline, you know?” he said. “But then I slowly realized that most of these songs were about the period of my life, between about 15 and 21 years old. ‘Angry Young Man’ is about that angry young man, ‘Seventeen’ is about that age, ‘London’ is about the year I lived in London when I was 18. But there is no nostalgia. I don’t look back ‘bittersweet’. it’s all part of that process, trying to remember those moments and trying to discern who those people were. So unintentionally I wrote an album about my childhood.”

In any case, “Something Easy” deserves a look if you haven’t been paying much attention to Justin Rutledge lately. It’s not quite his ‘Kid A’, but it works well to refresh his sound for the future, whatever that future holds. All those sleepless nights and frustrating dead ends finally paid off.

“This allowed me to tinker a bit more and learn a lot. I think the album is in a way – in a big way – is that people who hear me learn everything, learn how to make an album, clinically and technically, and from a technical point of view. Because there were so many fk ups,” he laughed. “A song like ‘Cowards’, for example, is a song that was a series of fk-ups until I stopped doing it.

“But it was interesting and from a songwriting point of view, I didn’t sit down and write these songs on the guitar. I actually mapped them out on the computer and went with a vibe and ‘Oh, I love this keyboard part’ or ‘I love this synth line’ or ‘I love this melody’; instead of figuring out a structure on the guitar, I would work from a sequence I created on the computer or on the keyboard.

Rutledge will perform a handful of shows in support of the release of “Something Easy” — one at the new TD Music Hall above Massey Hall on Thursday and a pair of sold-out performances at Ottawa’s Red Bird on Friday and Saturday — as he devises his next sets. He’s already working on the next album, “one hour a night”, and it already sounds different from this one, so it seems music still has the same strong hold on him as it has since he first picked up a guitar at 15 years old age. and performed for his first high school variety show.

“I couldn’t shake that feeling of instant reciprocity and haste, and there was no way I wouldn’t be performing live for the rest of my life,” he admitted. “But it’s funny these days because I’ve got this show at TD Music Hall and two sold-out shows in Ottawa this coming weekend and that excitement has translated into something else. I don’t know if it’s a bit of stage fright or if I’m just being overly critical. So we’ll find out at rehearsal tomorrow.”

Ben Rayner is a Toronto-based journalist and regular contributor to the Star’s Culture section. Follow him on Twitter: @ihatebenrayner

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