The team is in the studio right now, navigating the shifting moods and textures of Van Norden’s writing.

“I want my writing to be diverse. My favourite album, my desert island album, is the “white” album. I love the chaos, I love the jarring transitions, I love the variety and pastiche and I love the apparent inconsistency. Except that it feels like a unified body of work.”

Van Norden’s influences are subliminally diverse: “My father had a varied record collection; orchestral music, opera, Irish folk music and dixieland jazz. “Growing up we lived in norther Canada and had just one radio station that had to cover all genres”.

The albums Van Norden listened to the most were the aforementioned “white” album, Neil’s “Harvest”, CSNY’s “Deja Vu” and, unapologetically, the first Monkees album. Other artists that seemed to inspire were Cat Stevens, Paul Simon, Leo Kottke and Gordon Lightfoot. “For me everything begins with acoustic guitar, it all starts with “wooden” music.

Then there’s the question of authenticity. “It’s a journey, to use a hopelessly over-used term. I try and get closer and closer to truth, and the fact that I may never get there is of no consequence to me. I love the creative process, and I live for those incredibly rare moments of ecstatic realization of self - the process of writing a song about someone else and then realizing it’s about yourself, the process of writing something down with creative detachment and then having the emotion hit you like a bolt of lightning when you read it back later. I have so much to learn”.

Part of Van Norden’s process of approaching authenticity is surrounding himself with the best possible musicians and collaborators. “The team is extraordinarily talented, so I don’t have to suggest parts for them to play. I specify the emotions they need to hit, and they find those emotions”.

The process continues. A new album out soon.