After a hiatus of more than 15 years, Sunshine Coast politician and publisher Silas White is marking a return to his musical career with the release of an album originally recorded in 2003.
White will launch the vinyl album, Retroact 2001-2004, at a release party at the Gumboot Café in Roberts Creek on Saturday, Aug. 31. That will be nearly one year after he suddenly quit his uncontested run for mayor of Gibsons due to a concussion he sustained in a fall off a bike.
“Life happened the way it did,” White told Coast Reporter, when asked about his tumultuous past year, which included a car accident weeks after his head injury. He still faces charges in connection with the accident. “I’ve had to make the best of it and fill my time with other passions of mine. It has been a great opportunity to come back to something I really love, and it’s really helped me to recover.”
White, who grew up in Pender Harbour and has served as a school board trustee and Gibsons town councillor, recently played a few acoustic gigs on the Coast in a lead-up to the record release. He initially laid down the album’s ten tracks as a member of the four-piece Electric Fences – long since disbanded – which he put together while living in Toronto in the early 2000s. “We played what I think is best described as post-punk, indie rock,” White said. “I ended up back in B.C. to get married and settle down. In some ways, politics drew me out of music. Politics were my community involvement here. In Toronto, it was more on the cultural scene.”
White said he’s putting out the original recording, “which I have kept all these years and fiddled around with,” after getting some expert help from a few local musicians, including Steve Wright and David Taylor. Digital versions of the tracks have been available online since May, 2018.
For the Gumboot event, he’ll be joined by Calen Degnan on bass, who will also open the show with some tunes from a new album of his own. Andrew Bate will be on drums.
“I know a lot of people on the Coast who like bands like the Weaker-thans, Wilco, the Shins and Modest Mouse, but there haven’t been many similar local bands. These people should come check us out,” White added in a news release. Doors are at 7:30 p.m. and admission is $10.
White, who said he feels “mostly recovered” from his concussion, has slowly been taking on more work, consulting for the Town of Gibsons and overseeing the Nightwood Editions publishing company. “I find that I can feel quite exhausted in the evenings, especially if I’m putting in busy days,” he said. “Balancing
playing music and working and looking after kids has been a challenge but something I’m actually able to do now, which was very hard for me a year ago or even six months ago. I’m getting better.”
