On Sept. 16, local musician and poet Scott Nolan and pianist Cory Wolchuk will perform in Winnipeg, kicking off a series of concerts across southern Manitoba.

Nolan, who was born in Toronto but grew up in Winnipeg, has been a musician and songwriter for 30 years. It all started when he visited the Blue Note Café, a live music venue that operated in downtown Winnipeg until the early 2000s. 

“I was kind of a hard rock, heavy metal kid [who] had seen big concerts in the arenas and stuff, and around 14 or something I discovered the Blue Note, and I saw people playing music from a few feet away that was more in the folk ideology,” Nolan recounted.

“It impressed me because, unlike the really big rock shows, there were no tricks or production to it, and it really changed me as a kid […] It sounded like an old record playing when they performed.”

Nolan’s music is personal and introspective — it is rooted in Canadiana with a deep commitment to exploring the human condition. 

His latest album, Before Tonight, features songs such as “Cabbagetown,” a tribute to the changing face of the Toronto neighbourhood where his family is from. My favourite is “Old Friends (Eight-ball Over Old Vienna),” a soulful meditation on the comings and goings of old friends in Manitoba. 

Appropriate to his musical style, Nolan’s tour is organized by Home Routes, a Winnipeg non-profit that specializes in hosting intimate house and small venue concerts across the country. 

“My goal is to transform people’s living rooms [or] community halls, whatever the environment is, for the concert. I try to bring in some element of what that felt like for me as a 14-year-old, and I travel with my childhood friend who I started my first bands with when we were 14,” he said.

“I’d like to think [that by the time my friend and I] leave, you got a pretty good sense of us, the who and why and what we are.”

Lastly, the stage is a place where Nolan can express his true self and tell his story unapologetically, from the very highs to the very lows.

“Music and art is not a shallow, small or frivolous thing to me. It saved my life as an adolescent, and it continues to save my life virtually every day. So, what I would hope an audience would take away is [that] I mean everything I say — the funny parts, the sad parts,” said Nolan.

“I want something real in front of me. I want to feel something, and that’s what I try to hold myself up to when I sit in front of other people […] I’m my most authentic self when I’m sitting in front of an audience, and I just try to maintain that, no matter what the cost.”

Visit homeroutes.ca for tour dates, locations and tickets.