Making art takes time. Unlike nine-to-fivers — whose work is often measured in hours and products produced — an artist’s work is never-ending. The final product is a culmination of a life lived. Time, for creatives, is not linear.
This apocryphal Pablo Picasso story illustrates the difference. Picasso was sitting at a Paris cafe one morning when a woman approached and asked him to sketch something on a napkin. The famed painter obliged, but before returning the napkin, asked for a large sum of money. Aghast, the woman replied, “How can you ask for so much for something that took you five minutes?” to which Picasso replied, “You are wrong. It took me 40 years to draw this in five minutes!”
JUNO-nominated Sebastian Gaskin relates to this anecdote. The Tataskweyak Cree Nation artist’s major-label debut LOVECHILD, released February 21 via Ishkōdé Records and Universal Music Canada, took six years to make. Despite the 11 songs clocking in at just 34 minutes, these compositions document Gaskin’s journey.
From a young boy raised on a Northern Manitoba reservation by a single mother to an adult finding his way in the big city, these songs represent thousands of days and nights in the singer-songwriter’s life. Through profound lyrics and evocative melodies, the listener accompanies Gaskin on this journey; they feel his joy and his grief and come away feeling better for the experience during these dark times.
“I’ve always been a perfectionist, almost to a fault,” Gaskin explains. “This record went through many iterations and took time to get just right.”
Meeting on one of the coldest days of the year, a few weeks before the release of LOVECHILD, Gaskin, dressed head to toe in black, is in good spirits and filled with gratitude. Sitting together on a leather couch on the second floor of Universal Music Canada’s headquarters in Toronto’s Liberty Village — despite being at the tail end of a full day of back-to-back press interviews — the artist was talkative.
On the wall behind Gaskin, gold and platinum records by Universal artists — past and present — hang framed. The artist is aware of the legendary company he now keeps. In a wide-ranging conversation, Gaskin shares how he arrived here: from the undying love and support from his mother, to fronting a cover band in his remote Cree community in Northern Manitoba, to moving to Toronto and signing a major label record deal just two weeks after settling in Parkdale.
Fiddling About and Discovering a Talent
Gaskin grew up more than 3,100 kilometres away from Toronto in Tataskweyak (Split Lake) Cree Nation in northern Manitoba. His father — a touring musician long gone before Gaskin learned to talk — left his single mother, who shared with her son a love of music, to raise him.
“My mom played me old country songs on her guitar, so I was exposed to music early,” Gaskin says. “I like to think that I can remember hearing her sing to me in the womb.”
The award-winning artist’s musical journey started in the third grade when his mother enrolled him in an after-school fiddle club. From the moment he rosined up his bow, there was no turning back.
“I was placed in the beginner course and by the December break they moved me into the advanced level,” Gaskin says.
Seeing his natural talent, Gaskin’s mom supported her son’s newfound passion and bought him a fiddle to practice at home. After fiddling about for a couple of years, Gaskin discovered the guitar.
“My cousin Tyler was into ’80s and ’90s metal bands like Metallica and Pantera and he taught me how to play some songs on the acoustic like ‘Fade to Black’ and ‘Nothing Else Matters,’ which was the first guitar solo I learned,” he recalls.
In middle school, Gaskin’s mom started to enter her son into the annual Treaty Days celebrations. One of the first songs he learned to sing and perform in public was Robbie Robertson’s “Evangeline.” He admits that the grade-school experience of putting himself out there — and performing in front of his peers — was terrifying, but it also lit a fire. Amidst the terror was a feeling of exhilaration that further fueled his passion.
Gaskin wrote his first original song (about a break-up) when he was 13, and in high school, he fronted a cover band. A love for drawing and building houses out of cardboard — sparked by a drafting class he took during his senior year of secondary school — led to Gaskin enrolling in a university architecture/environmental design program after graduating in 2017. After just three months in the classroom, he dropped out. “I realized there was way too much math involved!”
Homecoming and Sharpening His Blade
After dropping out of university, Gaskin moved in with his mother who lived in Winnipeg. In between working various jobs, he wrote songs. Secluded in his mom’s basement, Gaskin focused all his energy on honing his craft. One of the songs he wrote during this period, called “6 a.m.,” he figured was good enough to enter a radio contest, The Indigenous Music Countdown, on Manitoba Indigenous station NCI FM. Gaskin emailed the song to the station, and within two weeks was notified that “6 a.m.” had made the countdown. “I was like, ‘cool,’ but what are the odds that it goes number one?,” he recalls.
Three months later, it did.
“That opened a lot of doors,” Gaskin recalls. “I was still living in my mom’s basement and after that song went to number one I started booking more shows and writing like crazy … just trying to build up that muscle. I wrote a song every day that year and that discipline really sharpened my blade.”
While Gaskin lost the laptop that housed most of those songs, he says it did not matter since these compositions were not his greatest creations. What mattered was the discipline and dedication to his vocation that set him up for future success. Another milestone in this journey was participating in the Artist Entrepreneur West program presented by Canada’s Music Incubator and the National Music Centre.
“I learned so much about songwriting during that program,” Gaskin recalls of this month-long residency at Studio Bell in Calgary. “They also talked a lot about stage psychology and performance … Luther Mallory really helped a lot with that … teaching us to get out of your head so you can perform to the fullest extent for a crowd.”
By 2020, Gaskin was fully invested in his musical education, moving out of his mom’s basement and into a new era of his career.
The Birth of LOVECHILD
Following the new music model, Gaskin released single after single to great acclaim, building anticipation before dropping his full-length debut album. The first single, “Medicine,” released in 2023, peaked at number 1 on the Indigenous Music Countdown and garnered Gaskin the Vince Fontaine Indigenous Song Award at the 2024 SOCAN Awards. The accolades continued throughout 2024 with a trio of successful singles: “Ghost,” which reached number 1 on CBC Music’s Top 20, “Cherie Amour,” and “Brown Man.”
For Gaskin, songwriting has always been therapeutic. This cathartic nature that inspired his collection of 11 songs about love — in all of its forms — is ever-present in the profound lyrics and sonic melodies. Prior to the release of LOVECHILD, Gaskin issued this artistic statement:
“LOVECHILD is a documentation of the last six years of my life. All the happiness, the heartache, the sadness, and the lost and found. Throughout the album, you’ll find celebrations of love, self-exploration, and the five stages of grief.”
In a personal gift card sent to media members just prior to LOVECHILD entering the world, Gaskin added these additional words about an album that is “a view of the world through the eyes of a lil guy from the rez, who wanted to see the world through a rose coloured lens. I hope this collection of lyrics and melody can help you, the way it has helped me.”
This long-awaited debut showcases Gaskin’s diverse musical influences — from pop to rock and R&B to country — and the musician’s knack for writing cinematic songs. Gaskin confirmed the influence of film on the making of LOVECHILD during this TikTok interview with fellow Ishkōdé Records artist Aysanabee, revealing that he played movies in the background while working on polishing these compositions.
Gaskin chose LOVECHILD as the title for his debut because it captures the circumstances surrounding his arrival into this world.
“My birth not being the product of a classic marriage, but by two people brought together through music,” he explains. “My father, a touring musician in the ’90s, met my mom after a show in Northern Manitoba, and my conception was complete.”
To get out of his head — and stop tinkering — Gaskin collaborated with a pair of studio wizards: JUNO-award winning producer Hill Kourkoutis and engineer/mixer Justin Meli to help arrange and take this batch of songs — all of which he had previously written and made demos of except “I Don’t Want to Feel Anymore” — to the next level and transform them from bare bones compositions to a bigger more sonic sound.
“We had all the pieces, we just needed some different colors of paint,” Gaskin explains.
Personal and Political Stories
The 11 tracks on LOVECHILD range from the personal, like “Song For Granny,” to the political, like “Brown Man.”
Released in January, “Song for Granny” was a cathartic exercise for Gaskin; it offered a way for the artist to heal and channel the ongoing grief of losing his mother’s mother more than seven years ago.
“My grandma was such a pillar in our family and her death was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life because I had to carry her downstairs while we waited for the ambulance,” Gaskin says. “That really affected me; it took me a long time to get over her passing and process it. With this song, I finally reached a point where I could speak with her and sing to her. The lyrics are very direct and specific about our family and things that have gone on since she’s left this earth. This song really helped me process a lot of leftover grief.”
Released as a single on September 27, 2024, Gaskin wrote “Brown Man” — now his most-streamed song, which garnered him a JUNO nomination — in the weeks following the murder of George Floyd and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry. For his first attempt at writing something topical, and not shying away from his cultural identity, Gaskin introduced the song with this statement:
“How do you navigate a world that’s been built to work against you? The people who are put in power are the same ones that will put you in the ground with a slip of the tongue. Why do I feel the need to mask my emotions in every room I walk into? I am involuntarily reminded to check my facial expressions in public every few minutes to avoid frightening people I pass by. I reduce myself to become more palatable within modern society. I Am A Brown Man. My Skin Ain’t White.”
“It speaks to my existence in the world as a large, masculine-presenting person of color,” Gaskin comments. “When I first started writing for this solo project, I did not want to be pigeon-holed as just an Indigenous artist, so I was not all-inclusive of my culture in my music. But, when I wrote ‘Brown Man’ it was a bit of a revelation for me and made me ask myself what my goal was in killing this part of myself. Looking back, I guess I didn’t want any advantages. I just wanted to be an artist.”
Last summer, Gaskin was rewarded for his work in promoting his heritage and speaking out on Indigenous issues when he was invited back to Tataskweyak Cree Nation to speak at a youth conference. During this return to his childhood home, Gaskin was honoured by his elders, and he also reunited and with his old high school cover band to play a few songs.
“The Chief and the Council awarded me the key to the rez,” Gaskin recalls. “Then, we had a blanket ceremony, which is the highest honor in Cree culture. It was so beautiful to just be embraced by the community that brought me up.”
What’s next for the award-winning artist, who admits he’s never had a “plan B?” Pushing this record everywhere and expanding into the United States and Europe. As our conversation closes, the songwriter says he’s “just trying to expand the brand of Sebastian Gaskin.” So what does that brand look like? Gaskin pauses, then replies: “Ripping solos, buttery runs, and some sick moves!”
