Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Interview with Author & Arkells Frontman Max Kerman

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Arkells frontman Max Kerman has written his first book, “Try Hard: Creative Work in Progress.” Max talks about what a lead singer for a band does all day, the nuts and bolts of song writing, how he prepares for a show - but more importantly - Max talks about how the creative process is not all about talent, it’s about curiosity, enthusiasm, and learning how to work hard and enjoy ever minute of it. And in this interview, Max gives you a framework for how to bring more creativity into your life and where to begin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Recently Max has written his first book titled Try Hard, Creative Work in Progress. If you've ever wondered what the lead singer of a globe-trotting band does all day, what that job really entails and how he goes about it, you just might be surprised at Max's answers. In this book, he talks about the nuts and bolts of songwriting, the joy of collaboration, the day-to-day business of running a band, and how Arkells go about marketing their music. The book is funny, conversational, and incredibly insightful. And he offers you a framework to bring more creativity into your work. I began by asking Max what sparked the idea to turn his thoughts on the subject of creativity into a book.

Well, over the years, people have said you should write a book because people like rock and roll autobiographies. People like the stories of being on tour, sex, drugs, rock and roll, all that stuff. I don't particularly like those kinds of books. You know, I know we share a love of the Beatles. I'm into Beatles history. Yes. But beyond Beatles history,

I don't know if I care that much about rock and roll lore. I just don't. Oh, interesting. Yeah, but I do love talking about the nuts and bolts of the job. So whenever the conversation turns to, like, oh, how did the band get together? Or how do you guys think about money?

Or how did you guys start playing shows? How did you get better at playing shows? Like, those are questions that I love to talk about. And people's eyes always light up more than I expect when I really get into the day to day of what my life looks like. And so that's where I started. I said, oh, you know, if I could just like have

a bunch of essays about the nature of my day-to-day life and things I've learned along the way, then that might be a place to start the book. Were you ever wary of analyzing your creative process that by dissecting it, you might alter the magic? You know, no, because I'm always analyzing it happily. And I don't really believe in magic. See, I even talked about that in the book where people, when they think about like,

oh, how were those great songs written? Or how did you pull this thing off? And they think about Paul McCartney, you know, how did he write yesterday? He said, well, it came to me in a dream. Well, that's not particularly helpful. You know, if you were to ask Paul McCartney, how did you actually think of that chord change

or what inspired that song? If you actually asked him, he'd go, well, you know, I was listening to Brian Wilson and Brian Wilson wrote God Only Knows and, you know, he did this really clever thing and I tried to rip that off. You know what I mean? Like that's what the answer actually would be. So I'm constantly analyzing what is working and what is feeling good and what's not feeling good anymore. And maybe what's something that was working in the past has gone stale. And I get into that in the songwriting chapter. The first three records with the band was written like an indie rock band where it's just the five of us in a room figuring out the songs together. But we'd done that for

eight years. And after eight years of doing the same thing, you kind of got to figure out, okay, are we going to do this for the rest of our lives or can we reinvent ourselves in some way? And I realized like, oh, maybe if we had do this for the rest of our lives or can we reinvent ourselves in some way? And I realized like, oh, maybe if we had a voice outside the band that helped reimagine what songwriting could look like, that might be a good skill to learn and to acquire and then to bring back to the fold, to bring back to the band. And I get into that in one of the chapters, how I made this trip to LA and in one day with one producer, I've only met that one day, his name's John Fields, we wrote a song, My Heart's Always Yours,

or we started it, and I learned it like, oh, you know what, I don't have to sing in a vocal booth. Terry, I don't know if you know this, but you don't always have to do the vocals in a vocal booth. Bono, when he sings, he sings right there in the control room with his bandmates hanging around, with the monitors blasting back out at him. And I wouldn't have known that if not for John Fields.

I suppose if I had read a YouTube biography, I would have known that. Maybe I should read more rock and roll biographies. So a big part of the book is it's like, how do you evolve? How do you kind of analyze where you're at and get better? You know, it's interesting that you bring up the fact that you've had these blind date writing sessions or working with a brand new producer. In my field of work, so I spent my career in advertising agencies,

and you were always paired with somebody, so a writer with an art director. So I was a writer paired with an art director, and you develop a relationship. And from that relationship, you would create stuff. The sparks would fly. If you shared the same sense of humor, even though you were different in other aspects, you would create stuff. The sparks would fly. If you shared the same sense of humor, even though you were different in other aspects,

it would work. But whenever I was paired with somebody new, let's say my art director was ill or on holiday, and then I get paired with somebody, it was really hard, I found, to get the sparks of creativity happening, because there was no relationship there. So you say that you can walk into a room

and work with somebody new and really have a great experience. So explain that to me how you get over the non-relationship aspect of that. Oh, good question. Well, I mean, it doesn't always go as smoothly. And of course, there's like a comfort to working with people that you're very familiar with. And I do think it requires in a songwriting session, you to really let your guard down and be vulnerable and think about, am I really going to say the thing that's bothering me today?

Hard to do with a new person though. It is hard to do with a new person. And I think maybe that's one of my skills is that I'm just able to let my guard down a little bit and be vulnerable. But that said, I think it's up to everybody who's working on a team to bring back new information to the group.

Because I do really love group work and I want all my partners to go out there having conversations and learning from other people. Otherwise we just all become predictable. Like, you know, I talk about our manager Ash in the book and she's a huge creative partner in my life. And I love when she says, oh, I was talking to so and so

and they told me this thing and it made me think about how we can market the band a little differently now. I want her to be consuming information that's not just my stupid voice all the time. And then same thing goes with the band. Like I want everybody that I'm working with to do continuing education. And it's so funny because my dad, you know, I talk about this in the book.

My dad is a social worker, but he puts on these continuing education conferences for social workers and mental health professionals. And it's a big part of his life is just continuing to learn. So I think it makes the group stronger if we're just collecting more information from outside of the group. George St. Pierre, my favorite UFC fighter has this great line that he calls it a white belt mentality. That even though he has a fourth degree black belt, he has a white belt mentality, meaning he's always willing to learn.

Oh, I love that. I'm going to steal that. That's a great line. Oh, I love that. I'm going to steal that. That's a great line. Every writer has a process. I was interested to know how Max tackled writing this book. Did he like to write alone in a quiet space? Does he like to write somewhere busy? Does he prefer mornings or evenings? I really like working in the morning at a coffee shop. I like the hustle and bustle. I like that it provides just a little bit of distraction. I think that stimuli does a lot for me. I know there's some writers that need to be in their own apartment or in their own writing space in the woods. I hate that. I've always kind of hated that stuff. And I like to be able to get up and when I'm ready to be done, be in the middle of a neighborhood and go for a walk.

So I'd say again, what business do I have writing a book? It's my first book. I feel very much like an amateur, but the way I did it, I can say is I would work on an essay. I get to 1500, 2000 words and now it would take me a few hours and it would be sloppy and it would be bad, but I'd enjoy it. The flow state and the excitement of getting new ideas down on paper was very fun for me. And then I'd call Ash, I'd say, Ash, let's go for a walk. And I just read her a bit of what I had.

And in reading out loud, I could pretty quickly identify what parts were meandering, what parts were funny, what parts seemed redundant. And I can also get real-time reaction from Ash. And also she's so creative, she would go, oh, you forgot to mention this other part of the thing that happened that day. So for me, and again, everybody is different,

and not everybody needs an audience immediately in the way that I need an audience or like an audience, but having feedback quickly gave me a lot of momentum. And I think momentum is so important in a creative project. And people can find momentum in different ways. You don't have to do it the way I did it. But for me, that ongoing conversation just burned more work. Let's talk about the flow state you mentioned, because I get into that as a writer too.

When I'm writing my show, I'll get into that slipstream, that flow state, and time will disappear. Like I'll look up at the clock and I'll have been at it for five hours and it feels like 90 minutes, but that flow state is so important to creativity, isn't it? Oh, it's, yeah, it's so good. It's much different than editing. Editing requires a different kind of patience. But yeah, I think if you've been ruminating on an idea for a long time, and in this case, like my entire life, just these ideas that consume me every day,

more comes out of you than you think. And also by writing you learn about yourself, right? There's nothing like it. The experience of educating yourself as you write down your own ideas. And you go, oh, that's actually kind of what I think. You know, it's like trying to articulate it just right. To see it articulated, yeah. Yeah, but I think for me, because the book is kind of a collection of essays, it's sort of in chronological order. I did sit down with a theme in mind. A lot of each chapter revolves around

just a story I want to tell. And if you're reading just for the story, hopefully it's just an entertaining story. But if you're reading closely, there's a lesson in there. And also, I hope you see yourself in the story in some way. For instance, like in a chapter about my dad, talking about his work as a social worker, and then he kind of started his own business

doing this continuing education conferences. And the lesson there is, it's like, what exists in your family that you might be able to take from? And it doesn't mean that your dad had to be an entrepreneur. Is there something about your dad's work ethic or his lack of work ethic that inspired you? It's like we're shaped by our families,

we're shaped by our friends, we're shaped by our communities. And that's what a lot of book is about. It's just like kind of taking from all those things around us. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] In his book, Max mentioned one of my favorite books, Stephen King's On Writing, a Memoir of the Craft. In King's book, he talks about his writing process, his experiences writing novels, and

his advice for other writers. It was, interestingly, the first book King wrote after he had that horrific car accident. I liked his book because, believe it or not, the way he approaches novel writing shares so much in common with the way I wrote advertisements. I wondered what Max took away from King's book. Well, I mentioned this in my book, is he's so matter of fact about it.

You know, I think a goal for my book is to demystify creativity and the arts and just understand that it's just, it starts with a curiosity to do it and to learn more. And then it's just the act of doing it. And Stephen King says, you know, if you just try to get down, you know, 1500, 2000 words a day and you do that for four months,

you got a book. You got a book. How complicated is it? And it's true. Cause people are, months, you got a book. How complicated is it? And it's true, because people are, how did you write a book? How did you possibly do it? You know what's way harder than writing a book to me? Assembling IKEA furniture.

I couldn't, like that seems so much harder. I'm not kidding. I couldn't do one piece of IKEA furniture, but I couldn't, but writing a book, that's actually kind of a nice time. I agree with you on that. I have a book coming out in the fall and my book contract said I had to deliver 80,000 words.

So literally what I did was figured out how many words per week I had to generate to meet that deadline. And it was really the discipline of creative, right? It takes a lot of discipline. Tell me about the need to find creative co-conspirators. And you touched on that already today, but why is that so important? Because a lot of creativity is a solo act. Yeah, but I do think of creativity like a team sport.

My first love is sports. I played on team sports and no interest in solo sports, like swimming or running. Those things would have stressed me out. But being part of a team always made me feel so alive, right, like basketball, baseball, volleyball, those were the sports I played the most, but I played ball hockey, I played flake football. And what I love about sports is that there's a different role

for each player on the team. On a basketball court, there's the guy who brings up the ball, there's the guy responsible for rebounding, there's the guy who brings up the ball, there's the guy responsible for rebounding, there's the guy responsible for setting a pick, there's the guy responsible for like, defending the other team's best player. And I love that because that's sort of like what being in a band is, you know,

it's like not everybody could be the high score, not everybody can be the singer, but not everybody wants to be that. That's not everybody's talent. Some people's talent is drumming, some people's talent is rebounding. I think creativity can be a team sport, and that's why I really like it, and that's why finding co-conspirators is so satisfying to me.

Here's the other thing is I know what I'm bad at, which is most things. I can't edit anything in Pro Tools. I'm a terrible guitar player. I can't drum. But I have ideas. I have ideas. And there's some people who just really want to be great at executing their part and wanna talk about ideas. But some of them may not know where to begin.

And then that's where my job is to come in and go, what if we did this? I think there's so much pleasure to be found in working with people who have skills that you don't. And the only way you build an enterprise that is a band, which has turned into a big apparatus, right? Like, it's not just us in our studio recording songs, it's us making merch, it's us going on tour, selling tickets,

it's us designing what the production is gonna look like. You need to be able to communicate with people and value what they do. ["The Greatest Showman"] Because everybody has a superpower, right, Max? I'm a big believer in that. And you say in the book, and you're touching on this now, and this is important, I think,

you have to learn to delight in other people's skills. Like, you have to welcome that. You can't be offended by it or made insecure by it. You have to actually welcome that. I think I take extra delight in other people's skills because they often feel so foreign to me that someone would have the patience to figure something out

or someone has the ability. When I see Anthony play at the piano in our band, I go, Oh my God, the way his fingers move is breathtaking. It's really breathtaking. And I just think, Oh God, he's been practicing since he was five years old. And if he can't figure out a lick, he takes the time to figure out the lick. And he can also do things with both of his hands. Like on stage, he's playing one keyboard with his left hand, another keyboard with his other hand. He's triggering sounds. And I go, oh my God, how does he possibly do that? And it's funny because people might compliment me on something I do on stage.

And I go, oh, that's just whatever I happen to be able to know how to do. I'm not impressed with that at all. It's just what I happen to be able to know and care about. But that's not interesting to me. What's interesting to me is like what other people have figured out how to me. What's interesting to me is like what other people have figured out how to do. Let's talk about being an entrepreneur, because being in a band is a business. You're running a business. When you are the boss and you touch on this in your book, you do not have a boss telling you how hard to work

or when to work, so you have to be disciplined and you have to provide that drive yourself. Talk to me about that. Well, there's a few parts to it. One, I really enjoy the job. It gives me purpose, right? Every day I wake up and I have a to-do list and things I need to figure out.

And right now I'm in the middle of a bunch of items on my to-do list. It's Monday morning, it's sunny outside. I went for a walk with Ash. There's stuff to do today, which is great. And I did some writing in the morning and doing another podcast later. I'm gonna be calling the band.

We gotta work over some mixes, so it all provides purpose. I think the other thing is, is that I recognize how precious the job is and how unique it is and how lucky we are that we get to only work this job. Because most creatives, talented creatives, awesomely talented creatives,

often have to work their own nine to five job just to make rent. They have a side hustle. And that's 99% of people in the creative fields. And that is just like a reality of the world that we live in. So understanding that, I also operate slightly in a place of fear

where I go, I can never go back. I don't wanna go back because I just appreciate what I have so deeply that it takes real work to hold onto it. Because if you don't, if you're not precious about it, if you don't recognize how special it is that you have this job that pays the bills, it could go away.

So I think we work in service of making sure that we can make the next record, that we can go on the next tour, that we can continue the fun that we have. That's one of the reasons why we work so hard. ["The Last Post"] One of the main themes of Max's book is that success is really built brick by brick, as his title, Try Hard, suggests. And that you really have to learn to enjoy that process

because it really is a ton of hard work. It really is. Our first record came out in 2008. And I think about our peer group from that time who are some of the most amazing songwriters that I know, some of the most amazing performers that I know, some of the most amazing musicians that I know. But many aren't doing that job anymore. They've had to transition into something else.

And it's not because they're not amazing, they are. But I think the longevity comes with keeping that spark alive. And you have to figure out how to regenerate that spark every day. Because the second you start resenting the job or resenting your colleagues, that's when the work slows down. Because you have more creative conversations

when you're getting along with the people that you're working alongside. The second you look at your phone and go, oh, I wanna call that person, whether that's a bandmate or whether that's your label, the second that starts to happen, the work slows down. You lose that momentum. And I mentioned this earlier, you can't lose the momentum.

You have to keep that energy alive within your projects. And you said also on that subject that hard work equals luck. I think it was that famous golfer, Gary player, maybe that said, the harder I practice, the luckier I get because hard work does then also beget luck. Right? Yeah. But I do think that when people ask us about what are the lucky moments that you

had, and I can talk about it, you know, there's a chapter in the book where in 2007 we played North by Northeast, the music festival in Toronto. And we played at Yonge and Dundas Square, a town square that has seen crowds of 15,000 people. We played for 25 people. Right. My grandmother was there, the first and last show she ever saw.

She sat on her walker. And someone happened to walk by that day. His name is Sean Creamer. He was a little bit hung over. He liked what he heard from the back of the square. He purchased six EPs that we had just made. And making that EP was hard. You know, it's like we were in the middle of classes,

we were driving to Scarborough every night, and then getting home and writing an essay to hand in the next day at McMaster University. And we paid with it with our own money. We sold six copies. And I remember at the end of the afternoon, I was like, oh my God, we sold some EPs, that's fantastic. Turns out Sean Creamer was the owner and operator

of this bar, the Dakota Tavern, which is in Toronto's West End, which is a real music hangout. It just actually closed down, RIP. But he took it upon himself just to give our EP to different managers, and it ended up in the hands of Joel at Dino Loan Records, and Joel liked what he heard, and then Joel signed us.

So it's like, for us getting to that point at Young and Unesquare, took three years of working as a band, meeting at McMaster, practicing, rehearsing. What are we gonna wear that show? How are we gonna get to the show? Sometimes we'd take the Go Bus or the Greyhound to get to other cities to make the gig.

So it took a lot of work, but then we got very lucky that Sean was walking by that day. That's right, and that luck wouldn't have happened without all that hard work. You say you learned several important lessons watching Bruce Springsteen, which I thought was very interesting. Give me a sense of what a couple of those lessons were. So yeah, I went to the show at the Sky Dome in 2012, Roger Center, in downtown Toronto. I mean, I could go on.

This could be a three hour conversation, but I'll try to keep it short. He walked on stage to take me out to the ball game. The organ player was playing. And I go, oh, that's such a funny, thoughtful, little detail. He's in a baseball stadium. He's walking onto like a kind of a song

that has a bit of a chuckle and a wink to the crowd. So he gets on stage and immediately the bank kicks off. You know, there's no tuning your instruments and letting the buzz die off. And it's funny, because I've been to so many club shows over the years with some of my favorite bands and you know, they walk on the stage. And one of my favorite moments of any concert is when the band walks on the stage.

I always never want to miss the first song because I just love that feeling. There's no feeling like it when a band walks on the stage. And then I've seen so many shows though where the band walks on the stage and then proceeds to tune their instruments for the first 45 seconds. So true.

And it's brutal. And it's such a small detail that really means a lot to me. So anyways, seeing Springsteen walk onto a thoughtful song and then launching right into him, okay, I took that note. Then he looked up at the crowd. He said, how's it going up there?

I remember thinking, because I've seen Springsteen up in the, because I was close to that show, but I've seen him when I've been up in the cheap seats and I always go, oh, he's looking at us. He's thinking about us. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna clock that. Then he was actually looking in the crowd

and looking for signs and because people bring these homemade signs. He goes, oh, maybe we should play that one. And the band is such a well-oiled machine that he pulls the sign up from the crowd towards the end of one song. And then on a dime, they just launch into the next one. And that comes with the band being really prepared.

But all of these things are very simple. None of it's rocket science, but it made the show feel amazing. Anybody can make that show if you're prepared. So again, not rocket science, but it's just about being prepared and these little gestures that show to the audience that you care.

And then it feels like magic. Then the whole thing feels like magic. So that was a masterclass for me, and what any band can do. And that's what I tell young bands. I'm like, when you walk on stage, just have your instruments tuned up and go. You know, that's a small thing that separates

good bands from great bands. When we come back, Max talks about the need to be brave for just five minutes. You might already know this. Aura frames are a big hit with our extended family. Besides a call on Mother's Day, the best thing we did was gift an aura digital picture frame to our parents.

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and unwind in one of Canada's most beautiful provinces. Experience it all this summer in New Brunswick. Visit censusnb.ca to learn more or to start planning your trip. I saw a film a number of years ago and the basic premise was that, sometimes in life, you just need to be brave for five minutes. In his book, Max talks about the importance of being brave. Well, I'll add to that. It's also the importance of having the memory of a goldfish because I happen to have a bad

memory and people remind me of things all the time that didn't necessarily work out as I planned. I'm like, oh yeah, that didn't work out. And I think if I had a better memory, I'd probably harbor those bad feelings more deeply. So I just happen to be born that way and I'm grateful for it. But you know, I think we spend a lot of time in our heads

thinking about how other people might react to an idea. And I think so often we stop ourselves from even asking a question because we worry about how somebody might receive it. If someone might think we're lame, if someone might think it's a stupid question, if somebody thinks we're being a pest or a try-hard. But what I've learned over the years is that,

you know, this is obvious, but it's like, it doesn't hurt to ask. You know, people aren't thinking about you in the way that you think they're thinking about you. And I talked about working with this producer on our third record, Tony Hoffer. Tony Hoffer is this like LA producer. He worked on all these great indie rock records. He worked with like Beck and M83 and The Thrills, this Irish band that I love. He's worked with so many great artists and we emailed him

and we never heard back from him. And we said, okay, I guess Tony Hoffer thinks we suck. I guess we're below his level of musician that he wants to work with. And then a year later, we got a DM from Tony on MySpace saying, hey, I really like what you guys are doing. I saw this live session you did, what are you guys working on?

And we're like, what the hell is going on? We tried to reach out to you. Turns out the email address on his website was just a dated email address. It wasn't in commission. Anyway, it just goes to show that we had built up this idea of Tony Hoffer and who he was and what he thought of us because he never got back to us. And it turns out none of it was true. And that happens to be the case so often I found.

So I think, yeah, summoning the courage to be brave for five minutes is always a good idea. Because it leads to opportunities, right? Briefly, tell me about the story about knocking at the door and how that evolved into this amazing opportunity for you. So the song started from a very heartfelt place. We were touring in America January 2017. We started the tour in DC.

So it was around Trump 1's inauguration and we were in Philadelphia the next day when the Women's March happened. The previous few months had been very depressing. Oh my god like Donald Trump's gonna be the president of America. Like what world are we living in? But then we were in America and there's all these great protests happening like peaceful protests and I was reminded, I was like you know when people come together, you realize you have a few more friends than you might realize, or a few more like-minded people than you realize.

We finished the tour. We were promoting Morning Report that had just come out a few months before. And Tim, our drummer, sent a bunch of beats for me to just listen to. And one of them was really interesting. One was a little different. It was a sort of militaristic, it's kind of snare beat. And I started the beginnings of knocking at the door. I'm getting ready now Got the North Star guiding me Is the fire burning inside of me?

No, I don't need a miracle I got something far more powerful And in this collective I've got a brand new perspective Some moves that might break the tension Can't walk on water, and I played Tim's drum beat coming out of my laptop. Then I just like made a little voice note. It's very simple. A few weeks after that, we had heard through the grapevine that the Blue Jays and Budweiser

were looking for a new song to kick off their season. Starting in early April, we got the email in March and we pitched a bunch of songs that had come out on Morning Report that said nothing was a fit. And then I said, just for fun, let's send them this demo of knocking at the door. It was like a 90 second demo. And they loved it.

And they said, let's go for lunch. And then they showed us at the lunch, Andrew Oosterhaus, who's the head of marketing at Budweiser, he showed us the spot set to the demo of the song. And I said, Andrew, this is not even a real song yet. This is just a 90 second. He was like, no, this is great. We were like, well, when do you need the finished song by?

Well, the commercial comes out in three weeks. We left the lunch, I called the band. I said, guys, we're going into the studio tomorrow. And then the next three days we recorded Knock at the Door, which is sort of a complex song. There's all sorts of interesting, unusual sections. ["Knock at the Door"] From the ground up, from the people,

turn the sound up like we mean it. And we made an official music video at the end of March, and then the song came out a few days ahead of the commercial. And that song ended up, you know, being number one for 14 weeks in Canada. We went to the Olympics on the back of that song. We went to the NHL awards on the back of that song. It's been used in countless places over the years. And it happened kind of because there was a deadline,

you know, right? You know, that song wouldn't have seen the light of day for another year and a half if it weren't for us sort of keeping our ears to the ground and our eyes peeled on like what opportunities were out there. So it was an interesting combination of like a creative spark, a deadline conversation and there you have it. Leonard Bernstein had that great line I always remembered

when he's talking about creativity, he goes, what you need are two things, a really great idea and not enough time. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I always look at that, Max, like playoff hockey. There's an intensity to playoff hockey that you don't see generally during this season. And it's because there's this looming deadline, right?

There's this looming sudden death aspect to it that fuels the creativity. Yeah. [♪ MUSIC PLAYING FADES UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING UP AND OUT, POPPING that fuels the creativity. Yeah. ["Piano Sonata No. 1 in C major, Op. 16, No. 2 in C major"] Talk to me about the concept of gradual improvement, which you talk about in your book, and that creativity is really about iteration. Mm-hmm, yeah, I mean, I think gradual improvement comes with being engaged every day

and reflecting on what's working, what's not working, what feels right for the moment. And I think specifically when we go on tour, we're rehearsed for the show and we have a sense of what the show ought to feel like when we go to each town. But the work doesn't stop after the first show. After the first show, we're taking notes. Okay, did that part of the set list work?

What song should we swap out? Was that transition okay? Should we add another cover because we're playing in Kingston tonight? Oh, maybe we should do a hip song in Kingston. It's an ongoing conversation. Do I like the way I look that night? Maybe I'll buy another t-shirt for the next show.

It's an ongoing reflection of what feels right, what feels exciting, and what is asking for more. And those conversations make touring fun. Because if it was just the same thing every day, it would be boring. You know, I talked about meeting Shania Twain. She works on her outfits with her seamstress for every night of the tour. She wants to have a different outfit for every night of the tour. She keeps it spontaneous.

She did 80 dates and every show she wanted a different outfit for each audience. And that was her gesture to the audience that, you're special to me. This date will be different than the rest. And I tell another story about being on tour with the Tragically Hip and Gordon Downey telling me a story about driving around Prince Edward County with his son

and showing him the Who and the power of the Who and how you have to listen to the Who at an 11, you know, to really feel it. And I was so charmed by the story. And then later that night on stage, he starts telling that story again as the band is playing underneath him. And I was like, oh, he was just sort of workshopping

a bit on me. Right. So I think gradual improvement comes with, again, being immersed in it. Really living and breathing the work and figuring out, okay, how do I make today feel good? [♪ MUSIC PLAYING FADES IN AND OUTan's voice in the good? When you put yourself out there like you do, like I do even as a CBC host,

it inevitably means you're going to get comments from the public and with social media, there's a lot of trolling that happens. Sure. And I know that aspect keeps a lot of creative people away or stops them from putting themselves out there because they're afraid of dealing with that. How do you deal with the negative internet feedback

that is inevitable to anybody who puts themselves out there? Well, I mean, one strategy is just not be online as much. Not to get too involved in the online comment section to begin with. I have a lot of friends that aren't in my line of work. So being around them always grounds things in a really healthy way, because they could kind of care less

about whatever minor spat might be happening in your own industry. So I think there's the healthy balance to be had there. And I think when it comes to the art itself, our book agent Jack Ross told me something one time where he said, you know, some bands play for the band standing side stage and some bands play for the crowd in front of them. And he said, I've seen so many

bands over the year just really care about the other bands that were standing side stage and they didn't really care that much about the audience. They were worried about what their peers thought of them. And he's like, Max, your band's always played for the crowd. Your band has cared about what the crowd feels and what the crowd wants and what the crowd needs and you're not so concerned about like whoever might be standing side stage. So I think that's such a good lesson is to play for the crowd and not for anybody else. You know one lesson that we've learned on our radio show which was an epiphany to

me was we would occasionally get a really terrible email from somebody. She just hates my voice, they hate what I talk about, they hate everything about the show. My first instinct, of course, was to fire off an angry email right back at them. And my wife said to me one day, you know what, don't do that, do the opposite. Try to engage that person in a conversation and see what happens. So he sent me an email that began with, dear idiot, comma. That's how his email started. So I just emailed him back and said

something like, you know what, I got your email. You're clearly very passionate about this subject. Let's talk a little bit more. Here's a little bit more about what I was feeling. Let me hear what your thoughts are now. The next email I got was, I can't believe you responded. I love your show. So it was a big lesson to me that sometimes the biggest critics are your biggest fans. That's an interesting thing to keep in mind, I think, for creative people. Yeah, totally.

I mean, yeah, people have many different reasons for firing off something on Twitter or personal email. And often it reflects some issue that's happening in their own life that has little to do with you. But I do find that strategy of just being curious about when somebody else is upset about something beyond my work as a public person is interesting. It's like, what is the root cause of this thing that is making somebody feel so angry or so bothered?

You're just being curious about it. That's always way more interesting than going, F you, you know. In the writer's room at the production company I co-founded, we would start almost every creative idea session by asking one great question, what if? And I noticed that Max also subscribes to that same notion, the power of what if. Mm-hmm.

I love, what if we did, what if, you know, what if we, what if we did the, what if. And I also usually preface my what if with, okay, here's a bad idea, but what if, I always go, here's a bad idea. Because the thing is, it's like bad ideas can generate really good ideas quickly too. Totally. But you need to be able to start somewhere, you know, it's like bad ideas can generate really good ideas quickly too. Totally.

But you need to be able to start somewhere, you know, it's like you need to be able to have something for the next person to bounce off. It's sort of like improv, you know, I say this in the book and you want your partners to be your improv partners and the golden rule in improv is yes and. Right. If you're working with somebody who doesn't yes and you, then that person isn't a creative partner that you should be working with. You know, it needs to go, okay, well, what about yes and you need that back and forth. And I think the volume is important. The volume of ideas is important because it does allow you to get to a few that are good.

If you get dead set on two ideas, you're selling yourself short. Your mind isn't opening up as much as it should. And that gets back to what you were saying earlier, I think too, Max. It has to feel like a safe space. You have to be able to be vulnerable with the other people to play what if, because as you said, here's a bad idea,

and you don't want to be judged by it, you just want to throw it out into the ether, right? Because I'll tell you, in my experience, some of the biggest ideas I've ever been a part of came as a direct result of the worst idea of the day. Totally. And so as a result, that bad idea deserves a lot of love and credit. Yeah, you wouldn't have got there. It's a stepping stone, right? Yeah.

You write in your book also, Max, that you have to be protective of your brand. Explain what you mean by that. that you have to be protective of your brand. Explain what you mean by that. So in this particular instance, I'm talking about our collaborations with other brands. Right. You know, I talk about this amazing experience of getting to go to the Olympics,

but on the back of knocking at the door and how Air Canada asked if we'd like to head on over there and the Canadian Olympic Committee, and it felt so good. And we've done stuff over the years with different brands. And when we do it, it has to be on our own terms because the second you get sucked into some deck from an advertising agency where it has little to do with you, they just said, we need a band or we need a musician to do this activation. And if it's not your band, it'll be another band.

And I feel like it takes away the authenticity and the trust you've built with your own audience. Because people come to musicians because it's sort of the opposite of a commercial branding exercise. We're a collective of people that are writing heartfelt songs and putting on original performances. And it is different than if you're a toilet paper company or something, you know?

And there is crossover, don't get me wrong. So when I say we have to be protective, it's just like if we're going to do something, we have to respect the goodwill that we've built up over the years, and we have to be able to do it on our own terms. I can give you a specific example, there's something that happened recently to us, is Mazda reached out and they said, well, we want to work with you because, you know, you're a quintessential Canadian band, we want to work with you because you're a quintessential Canadian band and we want to offer something interesting and

different to Canadians. And we want to throw a concert in a garage, the garage of someone who owns a Mazda. I said, okay, that's kind of interesting. Okay. We're in the middle of a tour, we're playing these all these major markets. What if we went somewhere off the beaten path and we played in some small community that doesn't always get a concert? Oh, okay, we kind of like that. Okay, cool.

But I want them to be Arkell's fans. I don't want them to just be like a random people in the neighborhood because I want this to be for Arkell's fans. Okay, we can do that. So we started to kind of build out this experience with Mazda and also we went as far as when we announce it, I don't even want to mention the name Mazda.

Can we just like mention that we're going to play in a garage for a hundred people? Okay, yeah, we can do that. And so then we ended up picking a bunch of contest winners. We did it outside of Orillia in this small suburban community and it was a riot. Come on in, come on in, come on in. We gotta warm me up, we gotta warm me up,

we gotta warm me up, come on. It's satisfying when I picture the words hit me hard singing. Like a one, two, five. All the Arkells fans who came said, oh my God, I can't believe I get to see this band in a garage. Massa got to document the entire thing and they turned it into a commercial.

And it's a legit experience. It's a real experience. But they didn't do the thing, and this is to their credit, and this is a thing where a lot of brands, I think, make a big mistake, where they didn't overdo it. They didn't say, well, can you say like on stage, Mazda and Arkells are happy to present, you know? Or can you say like, thanks to our friends in Mazda, but we're not gonna do that.

It's like, people are smart. People know that this will be a Mazda activation when they arrive and when they get the email that they've been chosen. We don't have to be so heavy handed about it. Can we sing this last chorus together? From the Barber Hearts, thank you very much for being with us here on a beautiful November night.

All together. Here we go. So anyway, it was a win-win in that we got to provide an amazing experience for our fans. Mazda got to document it and collaborate with a great Canadian band, you know, as they hoped to. And we got to do something genuinely special, genuinely something that we could hang our hat on. And I feel like kudos to them. And I feel like we have been stuck

in the middle of many pitches over the years, where I go, well, what if we like change this to that? And they go, ooh, that's not in the deck. I'm like, who cares about the deck? Who cares about your stupid deck? Like, let's have a conversation. Like, you know, the reason why you're working with an artist is that you're leaning on some of the artist's instincts

and like what makes something special and what makes a good experience. So when I say we have to be protective of our brand, is that like, we say no to most things. Right. But that's not just because we're more righteous than anybody else, it's just because we want to be able to like maintain the thing that makes it special.

We want to do the things that make us feel special. When we come back, Max says you should use your creativity That makes it special. We want to do the things that make us feel special. When we come back, Max says you should use your creativity to be useful. You say, use your creativity to be useful. What do you mean by that? That chapter is about my mom. My mom is a retired high school teacher. She taught at an inner city downtown high school, Central Tech in Toronto. She taught special ed department and my dad's a social worker, as I mentioned.

I'm surrounded by many people in the helping professions and I have so much respect for people in that world. It really grounds everything I do because whatever I do is just seems like fun and games. And I think we have this amazing privilege of being a part of people's lives. Our songs have been first dances at people's weddings, the songs that people listen to when they're going to write their final exam, or when they're going to chemotherapy,

or when they're protesting budget cuts at the government in front of Queens Park. It's like, we play the soundtrack in such a surprising way. And it's funny though, cause I have a hard time accepting that our music could be that for anybody. I'm like, us really?

I still to this day, I'm always a little shocked when people reach out with a story about how our music has been helpful to them in their life. And I think it's our duty really to be useful because what else are we doing in this world here if we're not looking out for each other? And I really mean that. And I know that the real heavy lifting is done by teachers

and nurses and social workers and people that are civil servants. That is like where the real work is being done. And if we can lend a hand in some way, we should. You know, I talk about one particular story is this really thoughtful social worker who worked at McMaster Children's Hospital. She was working with some parents

who were going to lose their baby who had an inoperable brain tumor. And this social worker reached out and said, just on the side, saying, these parents are big fans of you. Is there any way they could come to a show and maybe bring the baby to soundcheck? Because they listen to Arkells,

and this might be a meaningful night for them before they have to say goodbye. And they came to the show down the road in Kitchener, and we got to meet the family, we got to meet the little baby. You know, every song we played that night meant something different. You know, all roads will lead me back to you, my heart's always yours, there's no quitting you.

Like, all these, like, love songs kind of just became about that family. Anyway, I just think about my mom, because it's always yours, there's no quitting you." Like all these love songs kind of just became about that family. Anyway, I just think about my mom, because she went to work every day just trying to make a difference in the lives of kids. And, yeah, so the least we can do is just try to be useful. Last question for you. If there was one thing you wanted people to take away from your book, what do you think that would be?

Hmm. Yeah, that's a great question. I think the thing I'd like people to take away from the book is a question they have to ask themselves, which is how do you, your personality and your skill set, how do you come to enjoy the work? How do you enjoy the work? Because my whole book is an exercise in finding ways to enjoy the work,

because none of it is inherently enjoyable. Do you know what I mean? It's like, you can be in a very combative band. It's like, you can hate social media. All the things I talk about, it is very easy and understandable if you have a real difficult relationship with. And I'm working it out myself every day.

And it's not like I've said it and forget it. It is like an exercise in trying to find out, can I enjoy this? Can I enjoy this work? How do I enjoy this work? How do I enjoy this work? Because if you enjoy it, you will do more of it and your life will be more fun. I agree 100%.

So that's what I hope people like are reading between the lines a little bit. They go, can I see myself in this? And what's my version of this? You may have noticed that this conversation wasn't about talent, but rather it was about the fact that being a creative person is not a mystery. It's about exploring ideas with enthusiasm and determined curiosity and it's about hard work and the importance of learning to relish and enjoy every minute of that hard work. Talking with Max is always enjoyable because he analyzes life and his vantage point is so interesting. His new book, Try Hard, Creative Work in Progress, is out now and it is a terrific read.

A big thank you to Max Kerman and a special thank you to Ashley Poitevin. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the TearStream mobile recording studio. Director Kali O'Reilly, producer Debbie O'Reilly, Chief Sound Engineer Jeff Devine. Under the influence theme by Casey Pick, Jeremiah Pick, and James Aitin. Tunes provided by APM Music, Follow me at TerryOInfluence. This podcast is powered by Acast. And did you know you can now listen to our podcasts on YouTube? Just search Apostrophe Podcast Network. See you next time.