Neil Speers on music and ADHD, part two

00:00

All right, welcome back to In Conversation With. This is Season 3, Episode 9, Part 2, with Neil Speers. How are you today, Neil?

Not bad, not bad. The electrical current going up my arm some days has backed off a bit today.

I hate to ask, what is that caused by?

Pinched nerves in my neck between C5 and C7, pinching the nerves, which causes referred pain to my arm. It’s not bad right now. The pain is returning a little bit because it hasn’t gone away. It’s osteoarthritis. The referred pain, at its most annoying, feels like about 40,000 volts going down my arm. At worst, my arm is on fire and spreading to the furniture. That’s basically the feeling of it. I’m on heavy drugs. Heavy, heavy drugs. Radiating heat and heavy drugs.

That must put a bit of a cramp in your guitar playing.

It did for a few months. I had to not practise for a while because it was just too much to press something.

01:20

You were inactive there.

Yeah. I couldn’t play guitar for a while. When it came on, I was in a recording session and my arm was really, really painful. I had to take over the bass part because the bass player had disappeared and hadn’t returned from the first day. Whatever happened there, it’s not my business. That wasn’t my recording session. I was just the engineer who wound up being the bass player. Luckily, I do play bass, amongst other things.

A bass learning-as-you-go kind of thing?

Well, I kind of knew the songs. I’ve played bass for quite a while. The first band I played in, I was the bass player. I’ve played in jazz bands and rock bands and all kinds of fun stuff like that. When I’m recording, I record a lot for myself. I always do my own bass playing, so it’s not unusual for me.

You do have a little bit of experience, then.

02:54

We’ve had a lot of good positive results and reactions to our last podcast last week. I’m not sure what you got on your end, but on our end, lots of good stuff. I’m glad to have you back so we can finish off, because I really thought we didn’t get enough time. And the guy who produces this show is just a pain in the butt. He likes a strict schedule. I don’t know, his name starts with a W or something like that.

Last time we got together, one of the things I found humorous, because I didn’t quite understand it, was you battling your squirrels. We could touch a little more on that, if you’d like.

Anybody who’s ever had a dog will understand that dogs seem to be distracted by squirrels. It’s shorthand for saying I get distracted by something random quite often. That’s a big distraction. I should put a picture of a squirrel on that. I actually have a squirrel as a mascot for my studio.

04:19

Excuse me for a second.

All right. I was going to say you could even have, like… Oh, there he is. That’s a squirrel.

I made a threat last week.

Yes. Oh, yes. There it is. 2008. That goes back some time, doesn’t it?

It does. I hate to ask, but can I show the back as well? I can’t remember if that one had names on it or not.

It did.

I thought it did. Oh my goodness. And there you are. Look at the names.

05:41

Those are some wonderful artists on there. That was absolutely amazing. One of my favourite things I’ve done in life was playing those concerts, because I got to meet quite a few amazing people. Becoming the sound guy for the last one I was at was also kind of fun.

You helped out with a couple of the last bands, if I remember correctly. I think Zoo Lion was one of them.

I wound up sitting at the desk all day except when I got up to play. That was pretty interesting. I had a lot of fun putting on those events, meeting all the artists, because I’d never met any of you before. That was the first time I’d ever put on anything that big.

Thank you for wearing that, because I don’t even have one of those anymore. I’m a little disappointed, because that is my colour. But we were going to talk about specific things today. Sorry to get you off on a tangent. There are no squirrels in here. Come on. Oh, look, squirrel! What are you doing in music nowadays?

06:28

I’m doing a few different things. Right now, the biggest project is helping a friend who’s a songwriter. He needs somebody to produce and do all the instrumental stuff. He can play guitar, but he likes my guitar playing better, so I put on guitar and bass. I record the drummers. I can play drums, but not very well, so we hire drummers. Last week I spent an evening recording a couple of tunes with a guy I know who’s a local jazz drummer. These tunes aren’t jazz, so it’s fun to get a jazz player and see what they do with kind of Americana, Canadiana-type songs.

Very folky, with a bit of a rocky edge.

Yeah. My friend Ross writes some wonderful material. His lyrics are typically very good. It’s a fun time to get together with him and record these things. Then I get to sit in my studio and add the extra guitars and little keyboard parts. I borrowed a banjo for one of his tunes because the song needed a banjo. Nobody believed me until they heard it, and then they said, “Oh, that sounds great.”

08:07

Any chance we’re going to get some cowbell?

You’re inviting a certain actor into the studio by doing that. I think it summons him.

Oh, yeah, it most definitely does. That’s one of the funniest skits I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

It’s a classic.

I know it’s one of those things that small minds find very funny, but I find it hilarious. I use “It needs more cowbell” all the time, as much as I can.

When you’re talking to your banker and he says something…

I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the cowbell on that. I don’t believe you. I should have money in my account. I’ve got a cheque still, so I didn’t hear the cowbell. The song’s not over yet.

09:06

As far as you specifically, as a solo artist…?

As a solo artist, I’m progressing forward. My main preoccupation right now is learning jazz tunes. As I get more comfortable being a performer again, because having this arm thing has really put a damper on that, I’m not sure when I’ll be in a position to say, yes, I can take gigs. If it erupts again, the pinching of the nerves hasn’t stopped. In fact, it’s probably getting worse again, or at least more noticeable, even though I’m on a huge regimen of drugs for that. I have to say, they probably aren’t very good for me mentally, but it’s one of those things you have to do on occasion.

I don’t want to take on gigs if I can’t fulfil them. I’m learning the tunes, going through the standards in the jazz repertoire and learning everything from “Fly Me to the Moon” to some bebop stuff by Coltrane, to everything in between. There’s a video of me doing “The Pink Panther Theme,” one of my all-time favourite themes.

I think I’ve seen that. Yes, I have.

Yeah.

10:53

Is this going to be a solo jazz thing, or maybe in a group, to give you less of a problem or make it a little easier on you?

I’m hesitating here because I love the musicians I’ve played with and meeting the great musicians we have around here. There are absolutely phenomenal players. But running a band is one of the worst things unless you’re playing at a super high level or have a group of people absolutely dedicated to the cause.

A lot of people over 18 and under 65, before they’ve retired, have lives, families and jobs. Organizing rehearsals and gigs is such a pain in the butt.

The idea of performing in this band I absolutely love, because there’s something about performing in a band, especially doing jazz. A big part of jazz is improvisation and being able to build really nice parts while playing off the other people, unscripted. It is an amazing experience.

12:39

The idea of putting together a band, as much as I love the idea, is not going to happen until I’m in a position to play gigs where the money is there to hire pros. It’s such a pain in the butt to try and form a band. It doesn’t matter which kind of music. You either have to find a group of people absolutely dedicated to being musicians and willing to work jobs that allow them to do music.

People who work in music stores are surprisingly good at getting out of work to do gigs, because everybody there is a musician. So solo gigs will be it for the time being, with backing tracks, which isn’t the most fun, but it’s more fun than not playing music at all.

14:33

Any recordings of your own private stuff coming up?

I’m seriously considering recording some covers of classic jazz tunes I’m learning, just for fun, as well as writing some of my own material to get that out there again.

When I write my own, it’ll be singer-songwriter: lots of acoustic and electric guitars, bits of organ and that kind of stuff. I’ve done all kinds of crazy stuff. During COVID, the dark times, I recorded probably 60 songs because I had time. I released about 30 of them, ranging from covers of classic R&B to lo-fi jazz and everything else in between. It was a lot of fun and really taught me a lot about recording. That’s why I’m having fun recording other people’s material now, because I can expand what I’m doing with that.

15:50

Are you still there? I think we’ve had a failure of recording, folks.

16:06

Well, if it’s still just me and it’s still recording, I guess I could talk a little bit about being ADHD and a musician. One thing I’ve learned, not just for ADHD but for anybody learning new material or facts, is an interesting technique that deals with learning dynamics on a psychological level. One of the best ways to do that is to learn something.

Oh, there’s Ward. Howdy, howdy.

Lost all connection. Was that on your end, or was that on…?

You disappeared from my screen.

I got a black screen on both, so…

Ah, okay. Well, I’m still, hypothetically, recording.

17:26

Okay, we’re back. I have no idea what happened there, Neil. I can’t honestly tell you what happened. It just died.

Things happen. One of those great mysteries in life.

For whoever’s watching this, I have no idea what happened there. You got a black screen.

The black screen of death.

It used to be the blue screen of death.

17:54

Let’s remind people about some of your stuff. We’ve got NeilSpears.com for websites and online marketing, NeilDSpeers.com for your music. How much do you have on there?

There are a lot of pages on there. There are links to music and videos. There might be a link to my recording label.

You’ve got a recording label too. Okay, there it is. PurebredMutt.ca.

Yeah. The name comes from the fact that we adopted a rescue dog from Mexico, a little Chihuahua. Well, he looks more like an Aussie Shepherd.

He’s about 40 pounds and really sweet, but people ask what he is and we have absolutely no idea. He’s a street dog. We call him a purebred mutt.

There you go. We also have some of your stuff on Bandcamp.com.

Yes.

19:26

Excellent. Would there be anything else we need to know about Neil Speers?

I think we’re going to have to do some editing on this video so it appears in sequence. One thing I wanted to touch on was something I’ve learned about learning as a musician, learning new stuff. I’ve come across some information about how to effectively learn things that’s very different from what I’ve heard before. I thought it would be worth sharing with people.

20:00

When you’re studying something, retention is by far the hardest part. We can read all day long, but if we can’t remember it, it’s not really learned. The advice is to study. For me, that’s learning a song, a lick or a chord structure. If you’re learning anything else, it might be reading a paragraph. Then put it down and go do something else for about a minute. Come back and recite what you were learning without looking at it, to see how much you recall.

Don’t be freaked out if you can’t recall it. Your brain is firing all the synapses and will actually start to remember it better than if you can recall it right away. It’s kind of a weird thing. Do that a couple of times. Set a timer, go do something for a minute, and when the minute comes up, come back and recite it again. Do that a few times, then make it five minutes, then ten minutes, then a day. It’s the fastest way to learn anything. That’s what I’ve been working on with learning these tunes, using that method.

21:39

That’s a good idea and good advice. I hope it works, because I’m thinking my brain is fully packed and starting to leak out.

I think that’s just a Calvin and Hobbes joke. You know, he blows his nose. “Oh my God, brain juice.” Anyway, this is scientifically backed as a way to learn, so I thought I’d share that with people and hopefully it helps somebody.

22:22

Me too. That’s kind of why we do these. We hope that somewhere along the way somebody may be helped by what we say, whether it’s yourself, Brendan or whoever’s on the show. That’s why we’re bringing you there, because we’re advocates for talking about mental health and how people handle it. This is wonderful advice. I want to thank you once again for coming on. You’re right, we’re going to have to do a little editing and try to get rid of some of that black space. Now I have to learn something new again, or you can send me the file and I’ll video-edit it for you, because that’s one of the things I do.

That’s one of the things you do.

I might do that, because I’m not sure I know how to do that. I have something to talk to you about, obviously off camera. I asked you some advice last time we talked, but I have another question for you. We’re going to leave you with that. I want to thank you once again. Hopefully next time we don’t have all the problems we had this time. But, as always, it was a fun night.

It’s one of those things. It can never go perfectly, and why should it?

23:51

I have a theory that problems with electronics are caused by the sun. It emits particles that come screaming down, have travelled hundreds of thousands of miles, and hit that one bit in the computer that throws everything out. There you go.

I like to blame the lightning we had earlier. I’m just throwing that out there as well. That’s an option.

All right, sir. I’ll end this recording and chat with you after this. Thank you very much. I know we’ve had some positive feedback on this, so maybe we can convince you in a month or so, after you’re not so busy recording, to come back and talk about some mental health.

That sounds great. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you very much.

This has been In Conversation With Neil Speers, Season 3, Episode 9. I want to thank you all for tuning in, and happy mental health to you.