June 6, 2025 • 60 mins
In this episode, ArtsAbly is in conversation with Kaleb Hikele, a Canadian singer-songwriter and healthcare worker living in Toronto, Canada, with his home recording studio in the Riverdale neighbourhood.
During the interview, Kaleb Hikele mentions a certain number of resources that are listed on ArtsAbly’s website, in the Blog section.Access Kaleb Hikele’s resources
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
♪ Opening theme music ♪
[Diane:] Hello, and welcome to this episodeof ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists,academics, and project leaders
(00:23):
who dedicate their time and energy
to a better accessibility for peoplewith disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of theseconversations on our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
(00:53):
[Diane:] Today, ArtsAbly is in conversationwith Kaleb Hikele,
a Canadian singer-songwriterliving in Toronto, in Canada.
You can find the resources mentionedby Kaleb Hikele during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
♪ Kaleb Hikele playing "Mind Like a Radio" - Soft guitar intro ♪
(01:33):
♪ Kaleb whistles ♪
My mind is like a radio.
Turn the dial, change the channel.
(01:56):
When I want to turn it off, babe,
what do I do?
What do I do?
My mind is like a radio.
Choose a style, hit the cruise control.
(02:19):
When I want to turn it off, babe,
What do I do?
What do I do?
Better think of you, babe, you
better think of you, babe, you
(02:39):
better think of you, babe,
better think of
you.
♪ Kaleb whistles ♪
(03:00):
♪ Soft guitar bridge, end of the excerpt ♪
[Diane:] Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today, I am with Kaleb Hikele,who is a Canadian singer and songwriter
living in Toronto in Canada.Welcome, Kaleb.
[Kaleb:] Hello. Thank you so much for having me, Diane.
(03:21):
[Diane:] Thank you.
Okay, so you have an impressive career
of guitar player and also piano player,
which I discovered in one of yourvideos of the tours you've made.
I would like to firststart with the beginning.
(03:42):
Can you tell us who you are and
where this music started, this music career of yours started,
[Kaleb:] Yes, of course.My name is Kaleb Hikele,
I'm in Riverdale,Toronto, on the East End.
I was born and raised in St. Thomas, Ontario,
which is outside of London.
(04:04):
It's a small town, but it's not a village.
When I was there, it was about 30,000 people maybe,
and now it's 40 or more, I think.
I lived there from when I was born until Iwas 18 years old, and I moved to Toronto.
In that time,when I was about five or six,
(04:28):
I was put into classical piano lessons.
The piano was actuallymy first instrument.
I played classical piano for about almost 10 years before I
even picked up a guitar ever.
I really just spent a lot of time
(04:48):
learning how to play and how to perform
classical piano.
I dabbled a little bit in composition.
By the time I was even seven or eightyears old, I think I tried to write down
my very first thing thatyou would consider an original piece.
But mostly performed piano recitals,and I sang in a show choir
(05:11):
called Cleavage, who was run by a woman that Ihave to name, named Sarah Asselstine,
who changed my lifeand so many others in St. Thomas.
She ran a show choir that was,I don't even know how many people,
30 to 40 people maybeon stage all at once,
singing Broadway tunes and classicalpieces and putting on concerts
(05:32):
all throughout the year,Christmas concerts and variety shows.
I was doing that from the time that I was,again, about six years old up until I was
a teenager, and I started playingguitar instead and writing
punk songs and playing in punk bands.
That was where my whole life just
switched over to this new musical being.
(05:59):
But really, that's where I come from,and it's influenced a lot
of my music later in my life.
I let go of the classical thing for a little while,
especially when I was in punk bands and everything, because when you're 13, 14 years old,
it felt really cool to be in a punk band.
I was bullied when I was a kid for playingclassical piano and
(06:22):
for singing in a show choir.
I was bullied quite a bit,and I didn't have a lot of friends.
I'm glad I stuck with it becauseby the time that I picked up a guitar
and had more confidence and startedplaying cool shows,
and I was a little more popular in smalltown and everything,
it gave me the confidence to go outinto the world and to move
into the biggest city in all of Canadaand become a songwriter
(06:46):
and to start playing piano again.
By the time I was in my early 20s,I really came back to the piano
and started to play it again and writeagain and turned that into a full
album full of piano songs.
Now I'm very proud to sit at the pianoand play and perform.
I'm gladly found that because thething is, most of my music nowadays is
(07:07):
performed on the guitar because it'sa lot more portable than a grand piano.
The piano, a lot of people,I have to explain to them,
Oh, I do play the piano, too.
It's my first instrument, and I'm muchbetter as a pianist than
I am as a guitarist.
But I love all sides of it,and I still love classical music.
(07:31):
I listen to it on a regular basis.
I still love punk music.
I listen to it on an almost daily basis.
And all of those influences reallyare just a big part of who I am.
So is the small town that I came from,and so is the big city that I live in now.
(07:53):
I shouldn't go without saying that Iactually am even wearing
a Beethoven T-shirt.
I didn't realize that until Ijust saw the top of his hair.
Yeah, that really is the bestsummary that I can give of just where I've
come from and that it's still allsuch a big part of me in my life.
[Diane:] When you moved to Toronto,did you move to study music and did you
(08:17):
go to music school or what did you do?
[Kaleb:] Yeah, I did.
Like I asked you before,if you were up at York University.
Actually, I went to Seneca at York.
I went to the Seneca Collegecampus on York.
That was when I was 18 years old,so I moved to the city with a fake ID.
I was living all on my own at 18 years old,
(08:41):
going to Seneca College for theindependent music production program.
I was class number nine,so the course had just started,
run by a brilliant, brilliant musicindustry mogul named John Switzer.
I met some of my best friends that I'mstill best friends with now and people
who really changed my lifein that first year of music college.
(09:03):
It was only one year of a program.
When I graduated I graduated from Seneca.
I then moved downtownto the place that actually I'm living in
now with this home studio I built in 2009.
I moved here and went to one more yearof music college at Harris Institute.
It's a private music college downtown thata lot of the Canadian music industry
(09:25):
folks have graduated from.
By the time I was 20 years old,I was working at a major record label
full-time and was out of school,and I haven't been back to school I've
just been living the school and education
of being a songwriter in Canada
and everything that comes along with that.
(09:48):
[Diane:] As both a guitar player and a piano player,
you compose on both?
I think you havetwo different aspects in your music,
your solo career and anothercareer that you have also.
Can you talk a bit aboutboth aspects of this career?
[Kaleb:] Yeah, of course. So,
(10:10):
the separation of the two sides of me and my
solo music career and my rock and roll band that I'm in,
and the two different names that I'm presenting is all quite recent.
When I was in high school,I was recording and releasing my first
solo albums under my name, Kaleb Hikele.
(10:31):
That was in 2007 and 2008.
Then I moved to Toronto and almostimmediately within that first couple
of weeks, I had the idea of not using my real name
and coming up with a stage name,a pseudonym,
mostly because it's hard to pronounceand to write and to remember my name.
(10:53):
And most people ask, How do you pronounce it? And all these things.
And that, to me, was enough to consider,
Oh, maybe I should comeup with something else.
I came up with the Sun Harmonic and playedmy first show as the Sun Harmonic
as a solo artist in January of 2009.
And then in June of 2009,I released my first Sun Harmonic solo
album and ended up releasingsolo albums as the Sun Harmonic
(11:16):
all the way up until the pandemic.
Until 2021, I released Coast to Coast,which was my last
solo album as the Sun Harmonic.
And all along, I started putting togethera band behind the Sun Harmonic,
which are my two bandmates now.
They're best friends of mineDave Skrtich on drums,
(11:38):
and Ian McLennan, who's actually from St. Thomas as well.
We both sang in the showchoir that I talked about.
They became my bandmatesfor the Sun Harmonic.
In and around 2018, 2019,we were going out and playing shows
and being a rock band, but I wasalso being a solo folk artist.
(11:59):
It got very confusing,and then the pandemic hit,
and I had a lot of time to figure outwhat am I doing really with my music.
And there was even a point after I released Coast to Coast,
there was a point in the end of 2021 where I recorded a solo album
and a band album within one month of each other.
(12:19):
One of them was rock and rolland the other was folk.
It was just so obvious that I was doingboth of those things at the same
time under the same name.
I wanted them to be different.
I wanted to present them differently,and they sounded different.
So in 2024, the beginning of 2024, I really
took a dive into what has become, I think,
(12:44):
one of the best decisions I ever made,which was to go back out as Kaleb Hikele,
and I have this album here ready toshow off, which is my album that I
released in 2024 as Kaleb Hikele.
That was the first time I releaseda record under my real name since 2008.
I had been The Sun Harmonic for 15 yearsand felt like it was time
to turn it into something new
(13:06):
and I gave the stage name to my rock band and turned it
into a rock band from here on outfor this foreseeable future,
and then started going on touras Kaleb Hikele as a solo artist.
It really is the separation of classical
(13:26):
folk side of solo Kaleb
and the rock and roll.
We're writing almost punk songs nowfor a new album as the Sun Harmonic
and letting it go and turning itinto something new
for the first time in a while.
I'm excited about it.
There's a lot more to come, andI just feel good about the decision.
(13:49):
It was scary at first because I hadto change all of my social I have my media
names and tags and handles and everythingand my biographies and everything.
I spent almost two months just working on
the transition to the whole new thing,
which was scary because I was so manyyears into my music career, but it
felt like I was starting from scratch.
(14:10):
But I knew that I shouldn't be worried.
I shouldn't be scared of it.
I should embrace somethingthat's scary to me.
Yeah, that's where I'm at now.
[Diane:] Why The Sun Harmonic?Why this name?
[Kaleb:] Why the name?
Yeah. To be honest, it did.
(14:31):
I remember I came up with it in my tinylittle college dorm room that was on
Boake Street outside of York University.
I remember coming up with itin that room late one night.
I really was just throwing a lotof names and a lot of words around.
I think at first I thought ofthe Harmonic Sun or something like that,
(14:53):
and then I moved Sun Harmonic around.
But what I liked abouthaving the Sun, S-U-N, Sun,
having that be a part of the name was that it...
To me at that point when I was 19 especially,
it said that music in my life was
(15:16):
what I was revolving around.
I still feel that way very much,except now I do have a whole other career,
and I have a partner, and I have a dog, and everything
that I didn't have when I was 19.
But having the sun in there, really,to me, that is what it meant,
(15:36):
was that I was revolving myself around.
The sun was almost the music to me.
Then harmonics, of course, are those extra
notes and harmonies on top of the melody,
which is the centerfuse of the sun,and that the harmonics then were
all of the extras, the accoutumons of whatcomes with being a musician and
(16:01):
the beautiful sounds that comefrom harmonics and everything.
It really just was trying to have somereference to the importance
of music to me.
[Diane:] How many albums do you have on both sides of your musical career?
(16:23):
[Kaleb:] This album, from my bio,I think this latest album is,
I think it's my 12th or 13th studio album.
I've released a coupleof EPs on the side of that.
The Sun Harmonic, I think,is officially about maybe
(16:43):
we're putting out the sixth, if notseventh studio album of the Sun Harmonic.
And Kaleb Hikele, I released three solo albumsbefore I moved to Toronto, and now
this is my first coming back again.
Then I've got other side projects.
I've got a solo album I made asThe Broadview Band
and a rock and roll album I made under King Snake Crawl.
(17:05):
I've got all of these other funny little records
that are here and there that I love.
So it's a lot. It's about a baker's dozen albums.
There's two more comingthat I'm working on right now.
There are a lot more songs that I haven'tbeen able to record because
I wrote a lot at once.
(17:26):
But yeah, they keep getting better and
more interesting, and that's all you can do as a songwriter is try and just
keep making better and better music.
By the time that the album is finished,most of the time, at least personally,
in my experience, I'm tired of it.
(17:47):
I'm sick of it.
The excitement isin the making of the album.
It's not in releasing the album.
By the time the album is being released,it's almost like going and doing your
groceries and then puttingthem away when you get home.
It's just work.
The creation of the musicis the most exciting part.
The second that it's done,and it's finished and it's mastered and I
(18:08):
can't touch it anymore,
I have to go back to another projectand start to work on it because I want
to get back to that fusion of creativity.
They're being somethingnew that's happening.
[Diane:] What are your upcoming projects then?
[Kaleb:] I am working on a solo
(18:34):
Kaleb Hikele album, and I'm working on a
rock and roll band Sun Harmonic album.
When I recorded both of those records,I thought that they were both
going to be the Sun Harmonic.
It's very cool that now the factthat they've taken me a few years during
the pandemic to even get aroundto finishing,
they now have a different pathand trajectory than they did when I
(18:54):
first started them, which is cool.
Sometimes you want to just let somethingbecome what it's going to become rather
than trying to force it tobe what you dreamed it was going to be,
especially during a pandemic.
Now that the Mind Like radio album is outand it's done and it's a year old as
(19:15):
of a couple of days ago,I'm really focusing on finishing the new
Sun Harmonic album, which we'vereleased one song as a single.
It's called Homesick, which is a very,very old song of mine
that finally has been released.
Then we've got the rest of the album, too.
I just have a lot of studio work to doto finish it,
but I'm going to do that this summer,and we'll be releasing that
sometime in 2025, I hope in the fall. Then I have a solo album
(19:40):
called Storytelling that isa collection of songs that are all stories
either that I wanted to tell from my ownexperience or stories about other people,
some stories about a family of mine,a story from the eyes of my grandfather
saying goodbye to my grandma when shepassed away, a song about my Oma
and my experience when I was young,painting her front porch.
(20:04):
I collected songs that would fit togetherand recorded them in this
beautiful church in Hamilton.
I did that a couple of years ago,and it's just sitting there.
I can't wait to finish it because I thinkit's one of the best very,
very personal and intimatecreative works that I've ever done.
(20:26):
But I've had to exercise my patience a lot
with getting around to it.
Aside from that, I just have a very random
brand new song that I wrote two weeks ago,
two weeks ago tomorrow.
I'm actually sending it off to masteringeither tonight or tomorrow, depending on
(20:48):
it's up on my computer screen right now.
I'm really just trying to finish the mixand send it off to mastering
and get it out of my hands.
But I only wrote it just sittingat the grand piano upstairs at where I
work, which I'd love to talk about next.
It's called Firefighter's Son,and it's It's a beautiful song
that was inspired by Loretta Lynn, of course,with her Coal Miner’s Daughter,
(21:12):
and it speaks to my dad and his career,
and it speaks to my mom and my sister
and growing up in a small town.
It's been very exciting because I wrote itand I recorded it in the studio three days
later and recorded a B-side version of itand Kuzik version of it,
and kept my dad's firefighter helmetthat he gave and sent the picture to him
(21:39):
being like, Hey,I found use for this finally.
After he retired, he gave me that.
I've really just been diving into that.
A brand new song that I did not expectto come around, and I'm going to release it,
by the time that this comes out, I'm hoping it's out a couple of weeks after that.
It's always exciting.
(22:01):
I work on a lot of stuff all at once,and it's exciting when something new comes
along that just breaks me outof the old tiresome stuff.
Just for a second before I get back to it.
That's what this album was, to be honest.
I wrote and recorded and releasedthis album within a few months.
It took an entire year away fromeverything I was doing
(22:24):
because it was just something newand exciting, and it was more relevant
to me than anything I was working on.
Sometimes you just want to sharethat from your heart rather than
a song that maybe is even betterthan anything that's on that album.
You're not always putting your bestfoot forward in a way.
(22:47):
Obviously, your best efforts,but it's not like I'm always releasing
my very best song over and over and over again
because I think it's up to interpretation.
A lot of people don't love the songs that I love the most,
and they love songs that Idon't love the most.
Sometimes you want to let people decide what they like and
give them what you can give them, right?
(23:10):
[Diane:] Yeah.
So, you mentioned anotherplace where you're working.
What is this place exactly?
[Kileb:] Yeah. So, I work just in my neighbourhood here.
I've been living in Riverdale now since2009, and I have seen
(23:30):
the Don Jail be demolished,and I've seen the new
Bridgepoint Active Health care,what wasn't previously known as
Bridgepoint Active Health care, bebuilt in 2013.
I lived by this health care rehabilitationclinic for so many years while I
juggled so many different jobs.
(23:52):
And during the pandemic, I lostthe job that I had at the moment
and ended up becoming a grocery delivery
driver as basically like a first -
kind of frontline worker duringthe height of the pandemic when
(24:13):
you weren't allowed to even taketransit unless you were going to work.
I had to carry a cardon my phone to show the police that I
was traveling to my frontline worker job.
That's when I was doing that work as agrocery delivery driver
for about two years.
Then by about 2022, I had such an urge and
(24:35):
such a growing heart to do
something and to find something that I really, really
believed in and I really, really cared for.
I couldn't believe that I didn't thinkof this earlier, but I walked my dog by
the hospital that is so close to mehere in Riverdale, about a 10-minute walk.
(24:57):
I walked my dog by therefor two years before I…
I had the idea in my head,I wonder if I could work there.
And I just started looking.
I did not go to school for nursing.
I don't have the prerequisites that arerequired for a lot
of the jobs in the hospital but
(25:18):
I found a job in the kitchen working in food service,
and I got in and started working in thereand working very, very long days,
13 and a half hour,double shift days in the kitchen,
serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I did that for about a year and a halfand had my eyes set
(25:41):
on moving upstairs somehow.
I had no idea how, whether it behousekeeping or what it would be.
But I kept looking at every job postthat came up,
just trying to find something thatI could do just by being a kind-hearted
person who wanted to work in health carebut really had no experience or no...
(26:04):
No training whatsoever.
Then a job came up and I put my namein to work as a therapy porter.
I had never even heard of the job before.
I knew what a porter was, but Ididn't know what a therapy porter was.
And I got the I got the job and took it
at the beginning of 2024.
(26:28):
It's truly been the best job.
But to me, it's more than a jobbecause I've I had so many jobs.
When I got the job at the hospital,I counted that I had 23 jobs
in my life at that point.
I had never settled into anything becauseI always had music, and I was always
(26:48):
juggling everything besides the music.
My job as a therapy porterreally is the best...
It's the best work that I've hadto do and to clock in and clock out,
but feel like I'm really doing somethingthat I've... It's just been ready
(27:08):
for and been ready to do, to take care ofpeople and to care for people
who really need it.
I porter patients at...
It's now calledHennick Bridgepoint Hospital.
It's the big glass building hanging overthe DVP if you're driving up
and down the highway there.
It has the most amazing views of the citybecause the whole building
(27:31):
is all glass on the outside.
It's just floor to ceilingwindows everywhere that you go.
And I porter patients to and from dialysis appointments,
and I take patients in and out of therapy
and recreation therapy sessions.
(27:51):
Anything from Bingo,I was just playing a game of Bingo
with patients about an hour ago,to music therapy, which, of course,
really just lights my heart on fire to see
it being used in that sense
in a clinical setting, to see musicbeing used as truly as medicine.
(28:15):
And art programs, visual art,activities like adapted sports.
So patients that stay in their wheelchairsand are playing
versions of Bocce ball or basketball or
any sport that you usually would think,
(28:35):
Oh, you're going to have to standup and use your legs to do that.
The incredible therapeutic recreation team at Bridgepoint
really just will not give up in finding
ways to let people with
all levels of disabilityto let them participate in these
(28:59):
sports and activities.
They adapt the sports to being able
to just literally play a game of...
They did an Olympics last yearwhere you went around and did different
sports and everyone gotpoints and everything.
It's incredible to see what they can do.
(29:25):
But the most important part of it to me isthe music therapy,
seeing what they do with patients
who are, some of them are nonverbal.
Most of them are in some...
They either are using their walker or I bring them in their wheelchair
and porter them to the program.
(29:48):
And they either participate and playtambourine or play drums or
play the piano or they sing.
Or if, say, some of them are paralyzedand they're not able to move,
I know that even though I speak
(30:09):
to them, and they're nonverbal,
and they're not able to speak back to me,I know that they are listening
to the music and that it is just magic.
It truly is just magic to watch a room.
The first time that I watched a roomfull of patients from the ninth floor,
(30:30):
which is mostly a lotof palliative care patients,
and to watch a room of them just
sit in this wash of live music
being performed on a grand piano.
I'll speak about those people soon, butit really is just - It's given me a new
(30:52):
perspective on what musicis and what it can do
and how important it is to people,whether or not they are young and healthy
and vibrant and they're going down to punkshows downtown Toronto, or
they are towards the end of their life,or they're recovering from a stroke,
or they are justtrying to live their life
(31:19):
in a hospital where music therapydoesn't have to be provided.
I think a lot of hospitals likely don'thave it, especially emergency
types of hospitals, more trauma centers and stuff like that.
But Bridgepoint is a rehabilitation,a complex care hospital.
(31:41):
The fact that they have utilized music to
really change people's day and to save
their life in a way,to bring it back to life.
I've seen people just in tearsbefore I picked them up
or after I picked them up from music therapy.
(32:06):
It really is justthe most beautiful thing.
It really is.
That's my very long speech.
[Diane:] Are you performingsometimes with them or not?
[Kileb:] I have once.
I sang Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas
on the grand piano to everyone who wasin the room around Christmas time.
(32:26):
I sat down and I asked them if I could play.
I'd like to do a properconcert if I could.
We've talked about it with some of the rec therapists, and
it would be very nice because I've gotsome Beatles songs and some old
classics that they would love.
But no, for the most part, it'strained music therapist.
(32:52):
Or we're even watching concerts.
I bring them in to watch documentaries or to watch,
for example, we just watched, by my recommendation,
we watched a Gordon Lightfootconcert from the 1970s.
We bring patients in and they all sitaround the TV, and we crank the music up,
(33:15):
and they'd sit and watcha 45 minutes concert.
They sway, and they sing along,and they clap at the end of songs.
It's the coolest thing.
When I first started in this job, I reallycouldn't believe how special it was.
I'm trying not to let it...
(33:36):
Trying not to lose that excitementor take it for granted or anything.
Now that I've been doing this jobfor about a year and a half now.
[Diane:] How is it from the stage where you'reperforming, which are sometimes bars,
sometimes stages that are not necessarilyaccessible, things like that,
how did it transform your vision ofaccessibility and disability in the arts?
(34:03):
[Kaleb:] I would say...
I mean, first, I do want to say
I just feel like I have so much more to learn and
to open myself up to in all of this world.
I...
My experience...
(34:23):
In my experience of clinical settings or any kind of
trauma, when I was 25, I hadtendonitis that struck
both of my wrists and took me away from being able to perform for about three years.
So that was a repetitive strain injurythat took me off guard and took me
(34:46):
by surprise when I was very young.
And I still struggle with thaton a daily basis now,
but I have got on to the other side of it
and I've recovered and I'm able to playa three-hour concert, which at the height
of my injury, I was only able to play...
There was a show where I played threesongs in a row, and that was it.
(35:09):
I had to go home and ice my wrist.
It really was that bad.
I think about that all the time,and I struggled to brush my teeth
at that point in mylife without having a lot of pain.
It was very intense.
From that point on, I've tried to
take away from that the empathy that is needed
(35:31):
when you're, especially now that I'mworking with patients who
have either been in car crashes or they, again,stroke recovery or whatever trauma they
have had and whether or not theywill walk again or they won't.
I've seen every angle and every story.
(35:52):
I've had so many stories that I've beenable to learn and to see in people
and the resilience that they have.
But from my own experience of goinginto a hospital a couple of times a week
when my wrists were really at their worstand I had my braces on and
all of those things and was goingto physiotherapy and all of those things,
From that moment in my life,I have known that there's a part of me
(36:15):
that is and will always be
a patient in a way, and I think
everyone has that in their own way.
Of course, there'sdifferent severity of it.
But when I started working in healthcare,
then it opened my eyes to
(36:39):
what it is to go into a music venue and have it
be accessible, and that when I'm working
then with patients during the day,
and I'm portering themto and from in their wheelchairs,
then maybe that night or that weekend,I go and play a show at a venue,
(37:03):
and I see someone like our friend Julie (Sawchuk), who we were talking about,
when I see her at Farm League Brewing,when I was opening for Royalwood and I was
playing this show in Cambridge,and I see Julie in the front row,
and she is in her wheelchair.
Honestly, while I was on stage, becausethe way that I came in wasn't accessible.
That was through the one sideof the venue, and there were many stairs,
(37:28):
and there wasn't a ramp or an elevator.
But even when I saw her on the stage whileI was playing, and while I'm playing,
I can think about a lot I think about,What am I going to play next?
What's my band are going to be?
My fingers are moving and I'm singing,but I'm able to think about other things.
I don't necessarily have to concentratevery hard on my performance because I just
(37:49):
have sang so many of my songs 500 times.
So I really started thinking.
I was looking around and I was looking and thinking,
Where is the accessibleentrance at this venue?
I was blown away that she wasthere right at the front row.
It was so special to me to see her therethat when I finished the show, I
(38:11):
packed all of my stuff,moved everything off the stage,
and the first person that I went overto speak with was Julie
in her wheelchair, in her wheelchair.
I knelt down on the side and I said,I'm so happy to see you here.
I asked her right away,How did you get in?
(38:33):
And she said, Oh, I camethrough the brewery side of it.
There's an entrance where you can comein and you go through all the brewery,
all the brewer's set upthat remains accessible,
and then you come in down through this other side.
I just hadn't seen that.
And so she explaining that to me,and I just said,
(38:53):
I am so happy that that is an option,
and I'm so happy to haveyou here in the front row.
I know how much this means to be able to enjoy live music in this way,
and that a lotof venues aren't accessible.
(39:13):
A lot of the time, because I'm so busy loading my stuff in or
playing the show, a lot of the time,it's not like you notice that right away,
that the venue is or isn't accessible,especially when I'm someone who is
able to walk myself into the venue.
But when you start to notice that,how many venues are up a flight of stairs,
(39:36):
and that's the only way to get there,or how many venues
could or should be accessible,but they don't have it in place.
And it opens my eyes to the shows
where there are people in the front row or
in the accessible locations of the venue.
(39:57):
I notice them right away.
I see it so quickly and very, very, very happy
and excited about that.
It makes me...
I'm not at a point where I can really choose where
and... where I perform all the time.
(40:20):
A lot of the time,I'm just playing wherever I can.
But it really makes me think of if I weresuccessful and popular enough to have
a choice of, I want to play here,I only want to play here,
it really opens my eyes to the powerthat you would have to be able make,
say, an entire tour accessible.
(40:41):
That that would be a very specialand important part of my mission as
a singer-songwriter,especially with that genre.
Folk music should be for everybody.
And not every venue...
If it is not accessible, it's not for everybody.
(41:02):
It is something that should be
talked about more, should be addressed.
Of course, that's the work that you aredoing and that I was speaking
with Julie about when I met her.
She was so proud to tell methat ever since
(41:24):
she started on this mission of reallygoing out into the world and
showing people what is accessible and what isn't.
Since that mission started for herthat just being able
to have people see that.
(41:46):
That's what I was so excited about,was that I felt that I saw her there.
Before talking to the 75 other peoplewho were in the room,
it was so important to me to go overand to tell her who I am and where I work,
and that I work with patients withaccessibility and
disabilities that have opened my eyesto this world and how much it means.
(42:11):
Like that music is medicine and it is therapy,
and that a folk concert and a punk showis music therapy
in ways that I never thought of itlike that before, but now I do.
And I give that speech at a lotof my shows, that this is
(42:33):
medicine for everybody,whether or not you have a visible
disability, an invisible disability.
It is so important.
[Diane:] Yes, but let's now reverse the situation.
Now, next time you go to a venue,Of course, you don't have a choice,
(42:54):
but let's imagine that youare the one with a disability.
[Kaleb:]Yes. To be able to be onto the stage.
[Diane:] You're the one performing, right?
Most of the venues thatsay they are accessible,
yes, they are accessible to the audience.
What about the performers?
There are many performerswith disabilities.
(43:17):
We don't have - I say we because I'm one of them.
We don't have the choice of the venue.
We have to choose the venuesthat are stage accessible.
Of course, the first thing they're goingto accessibilize these
venues are the audience.
But then for them, it's enough.
Then it stops here. Right?
(43:38):
So, the idea that music is therapy for everybody,
it's still discussable because no,not everybody has access to the venue.
Not everybody has access to the stage.
And us, as performers, our "therapy"
is to go on stage and to perform.
(44:01):
Many, many musicians arecut from this privilege.
So maybe next time you go to a venue,
it's great to look at how accessible it is for the audience.
But we are advocating for an accessibilityof the performing venues,
like the performance spaces.
(44:23):
It's always a struggle.
Plus, sometimes,accessibility means that...
Look at Julie.
What she did is that shewent through the brewery.
It's not the same entrance as everybody else. We're not treated as equal.
Now, it's coming more and more.
We have laws,we have some organizations that are
(44:45):
helping those who want to makeaccessibility better in their environment.
But sometimes it's frequently forgotten that
accessibility doesn't mean just the entrance.
It means wheelchair accessible bathroom,which is Julie's forte.
It means stage accessible.
(45:09):
It means some spots where we are nothidden behind the pylon or whatever
in the accessible spots, right?
Or sometimes in big theaters,the accessible spot is on the back.
There is no way for us to go on the front.
It's coming, but there isimprovement to go, right?
(45:31):
[Kileb:] For sure.
I've also worked at a lot of music venues,too, or performance spaces,
theater spaces,St Lawrence Center for the Arts,
which I do believethe one theater for sure.
I do believe that that back entrance,
(45:51):
I'm not sure if that goes throughto the stage, but I know at least that I
was a part of takingpatients in wheelchairs.
As well as Massey Hall,there were accessibility issues
for a very long time, and now a lot of that has been addressed in
wheelchair accessible spotson the balcony level, which wasn't
(46:15):
available before becausethe venue was built in 1894.
I've seen a lot of it.
Budweiser Stage, too.
[Diane:] Roy Thompson Hall and
Koerner Hall is entirely accessible.
There is a way of goingas a performer behind.
(46:36):
These big venues where they have moneyand they have laws,
even if their building is protected
by historical laws,
the accessibleization law is also here.
There is a way of compromisingand finding a way.
(46:58):
But sometimes, I'm thinking of a venuewhere there is accessibility to the stage,
but then if you are a choir member ora chorister and you need to go
to the balcony where the choir is,it's not accessible.
I'm thinking of Roy Thompson Hall.
I'm thinking of other venuesin the city that are...
These are all Torontonian venues that we are mentioning here.
(47:21):
But of course, this is everywhere.
It's a global issue,and we really try to advocate for that.
We will get there, but it's slow.
[Kileb:] For sure.
Well, It's such importantwork that you are doing.
(47:42):
I do think that it is sostrong to be coming
from someone like you who is saying,I am in a wheelchair and I am a performer.
See me as both of those things.
Don't just see me as one or the other.
But I think it should also be coming from,and this is why I'm saying,
(48:05):
I feel like I have so much more to learnand to see and to go out into the world
and see these venues that I'm performingat and to look at the accessibility
and to pay attention
to that when I'm booking tours.
That it would be very powerful tohave artists
(48:28):
who either do need accessibility or don't need it themselves,
but want to advocate for it and want it to be seen in the venue to be there in the venue
that they're playing at.
I think it really...
Yeah, the power and the pressureshould be coming from all sides.
(48:51):
Like I said, it just really
goes to show that it's just so...
It is importantto have it be for everyone.
It really is.
And I don't know that I noticed that when I was
(49:13):
in my early 20s and I was playingpunk gigs downtown
all over Toronto and most venues that are not accessible
and where the bathrooms are in the basement.
So even if you can get into the venue,you probably can't get to the bathroom,
stuff like that.
And, I don't know.
I'm just very happy and proud to
(49:37):
have found my way into not only
into health care, but intoopening my eyes and my heart to this world
and seeing there's multiple venues whereI've been able to notice,
especially outdoor shows.
I should mention that I have a new friendnamed Gord in London, Ontario,
who came out to one of my showsat the Western Fair.
It was an outdoor show, an outdoor fair,where the whole fair was accessible,
(50:03):
except for, I'm sure,almost all of the rides,
I'm sure, probably would not be, but that the grounds to the fair were accessible,
and especiallythe live music was accessible.
Gord came to...
I played four shows at the Western Fair,and he came to one of the first ones
and ended up coming back with hiscaregiver. He was nonverbal,
(50:24):
and I was so happy to get off the stageand run over and to speak with him.
I gave him a sticker that he put on his wheelchair,
on his communication board on the front of his wheelchair,
and I was able to see hima couple of times after that.
(50:44):
I took a couple of pictures with themthat the caregiver was wanting to take and
to take back to the home that he was at.
It was so special to me to just
really feel like my eyes were open to it.
(51:05):
Yeah, I'm very happy and proud to
have this be just a new angle of
what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.
[Diane:] Thanks for this perspective.
It's really important.It's pretty.
[Kaleb:] Yeah, and like I said, it really is still in its early stages.
(51:27):
I feel like there's so much that I canlearn and that there is some perspective
that I can give, but I know that there'sso much more to know about it
and to share with others.
It's a part of me now.
(51:50):
I don't think it ever won't be.
I do feel forever changed in a way by it.
[Diane:] Well, I have a last question for you to wrap up this interview,
and it's about people who might havecounted in your career, who might have
changed your perspective like we weretalking, or who might have shown you
(52:13):
a path that you were not expecting.
If you had people to think of,who would it be and why?
[Kaleb:] I read that question, and right away,
I knew my answer would be...
You asked for one person, and I'm goingto make it two because they're a team.
Obviously, there's so many other peoplein my music
(52:36):
career and in my life that I could speakabout, but particularly to the point
and the intersection ofart and disability,
my experience at Bridgepoint,and especially in music therapy,
has absolutely been enriched and changedby watching these two
incredibly talented and powerful and
(53:00):
innovative women who I'll only name them by their first name just because the hospital,
of course, there's a lot of privacy and confidentiality and patient's names and everything.
But there's two music therapists,one named Melanie and one named Jackie.
They work together as a team,and they work on the...
(53:21):
Well, They work on all floors,but my introduction to them was walking
a patient, portering a patient in their wheelchair
into the 10th floor auditorium of Bridgepoint,and hearing a grand piano,
but I hadn't seen it yet, and hearing a fiddle.
Jackie plays the fiddleand she plays the piano.
Melanie plays the piano and she sings.
(53:43):
They both just have beautiful voices,and they harmonize,
and they sing to the patients.
They sing with the patients.
The way that they interactwith the patients is one of the most
beautiful things I've ever seen.
My job is really just to bring the patientin and interact with them while we're in
(54:07):
the elevator,whether or not we can have a conversation
back and forth or if they're nonverbal,I am telling them, Oh,
we're going to music therapy.
That's where the grand piano is, and we'regoing to be singing these songs today.
But then when I bring them in and thendrop them off in this music therapy session,
the second that I walk a patient in,
(54:31):
they'll start to play a song for that patient,
knowing their background, knowingwhere they've come from in the world,
where they're from,sometimes their religion,
sometimes just their name is in a song.
They'll start singing a songto that patient with their name in the song.
(54:52):
The way that I've seen it justlight up a patient who is in so much pain.
The second that Ibring them into that room and drop
them off, and I see just this…
It is magic.
I just have to giveall the credit to them.
(55:15):
Truly, it's been a very,very eye-opening experience to seeing just
not only what music can do as medicine,but who you can be as a musician.
They're both just incredible musicians.
I'm a musician, too.
I could sit at the piano and playfor them, but I let them do their thing,
(55:37):
and I sit back and I watch in amazementand awe of how incredible they are at
reaching people and tapping into people,regardless of what kind of disability they have
or what kind of experiencethey are having in their life,
(55:59):
whether or not they'rerecovering from a traumatic
event or they're in palliative careand they're in their final
stages of their life.
It's incredible.
They were the first people that I thought of, and I haven't changed my answer.
I thought that they really deserve to...They're heroes.
(56:22):
They really are.
They deserve so much credit.
But surely don't...
They have their ownlittle magical thing that's happening,
and I'm so lucky to be able to see it
because there's no cameras on, there's no pictures.
(56:42):
It just is what it is, and it happens,and it is so special and so
important for these patients.
[Diane:] Thank you so muchfor your stories and everything.
Good luck with everything in your career.
Maybe you will be able to workwith them at a certain point, right?
(57:02):
[Kaleb:] I would like to. I would like to.
I should say, actually,that that grand piano that they played
in music therapy, that's where I
ran off on a 15-minute break during my shift.
I had just ported patients awayfrom a Loretta Lynn concert,
(57:24):
and this was just two weeks ago.
I portered patients away from a Loretta Lynnconcert and had this Coal Miner's Daughter idea,
and I thought, Oh, I shouldwrite a song called Firefighter's Son.
I ran upstairs and the music therapy room was empty, and there's a grand piano,
and there's a guitar.
And I went upstairs with that little tiny idea,
and I was on the palliative care floor, so I was playing very, very, very quiet, as quiet as I could.
(57:49):
I wrote the Firefighter's Sonsong in about 15 minutes.
I sat down and I wrote the lyrics.I figured out the chords.
I came up with a few other little ideasthat eventually turned into the bridge.
That little place where magic is happening
every single day for patients,I was able to tap into that somehow,
(58:13):
and I'm just so grateful for it.
I can't wait to release that songand to be able to tell that story of
where the song was born out of.
I'm inspired by it,and I just think it's such reciprocal
inspiration and magic happening
(58:33):
within that building, and especiallywithin music therapy.
[Diane:] Well, thank you so much and all the best for everything.
I know I might see you in oneof your tours or something like that.
[Kaleb:] That would be wonderful.That would be very nice.
Yeah, thank you.Thank you for the work that you do.
(58:55):
I mean, even being able to speak about
this for me is a first in this kind of setting.
I talk about a lot of this at my showsand to audience members,
especially if they'rein a wheelchair or they are coming
in with a walker or a cane,and I'm seeing all of these different
(59:16):
stories and all these differentlives that are being lived.
But it's, yeah, I would absolutelylove to see you at one of the shows.
I think that the work that you'redoing is very, very important.
I wish you the best of luck with it, too.
[Diane:] Thank you.
Take good care and see you next time.
[Kaleb:] Yes, of course.Thanks for listening, everyone.
(59:38):
[Diane:] Thank you. Bye.
♪ Closing theme music ♪
♪ Opening theme music ♪
[Diane:] Hello, and welcome to this episodeof ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists,academics, and project leaders
(00:23):
who dedicate their time and energy
to a better accessibility for peoplewith disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of theseconversations on our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
(00:53):
[Diane:] Today, ArtsAbly is in conversationwith Kaleb Hikele,
a Canadian singer-songwriterliving in Toronto, in Canada.
You can find the resources mentionedby Kaleb Hikele during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
♪ Kaleb Hikele playing "Mind Like a Radio" - Soft guitar intro ♪
(01:33):
♪ Kaleb whistles ♪
My mind is like a radio.
Turn the dial, change the channel.
(01:56):
When I want to turn it off, babe,
what do I do?
What do I do?
My mind is like a radio.
Choose a style, hit the cruise control.
(02:19):
When I want to turn it off, babe,
What do I do?
What do I do?
Better think of you, babe, you
better think of you, babe, you
(02:39):
better think of you, babe,
better think of
you.
♪ Kaleb whistles ♪
(03:00):
♪ Soft guitar bridge, end of the excerpt ♪
[Diane:] Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today, I am with Kaleb Hikele,who is a Canadian singer and songwriter
living in Toronto in Canada.Welcome, Kaleb.
[Kaleb:] Hello. Thank you so much for having me, Diane.
(03:21):
[Diane:] Thank you.
Okay, so you have an impressive career
of guitar player and also piano player,
which I discovered in one of yourvideos of the tours you've made.
I would like to firststart with the beginning.
(03:42):
Can you tell us who you are and
where this music started, this music career of yours started,
[Kaleb:] Yes, of course.My name is Kaleb Hikele,
I'm in Riverdale,Toronto, on the East End.
I was born and raised in St. Thomas, Ontario,
which is outside of London.
(04:04):
It's a small town, but it's not a village.
When I was there, it was about 30,000 people maybe,
and now it's 40 or more, I think.
I lived there from when I was born until Iwas 18 years old, and I moved to Toronto.
In that time,when I was about five or six,
(04:28):
I was put into classical piano lessons.
The piano was actuallymy first instrument.
I played classical piano for about almost 10 years before I
even picked up a guitar ever.
I really just spent a lot of time
(04:48):
learning how to play and how to perform
classical piano.
I dabbled a little bit in composition.
By the time I was even seven or eightyears old, I think I tried to write down
my very first thing thatyou would consider an original piece.
But mostly performed piano recitals,and I sang in a show choir
(05:11):
called Cleavage, who was run by a woman that Ihave to name, named Sarah Asselstine,
who changed my lifeand so many others in St. Thomas.
She ran a show choir that was,I don't even know how many people,
30 to 40 people maybeon stage all at once,
singing Broadway tunes and classicalpieces and putting on concerts
(05:32):
all throughout the year,Christmas concerts and variety shows.
I was doing that from the time that I was,again, about six years old up until I was
a teenager, and I started playingguitar instead and writing
punk songs and playing in punk bands.
That was where my whole life just
switched over to this new musical being.
(05:59):
But really, that's where I come from,and it's influenced a lot
of my music later in my life.
I let go of the classical thing for a little while,
especially when I was in punk bands and everything, because when you're 13, 14 years old,
it felt really cool to be in a punk band.
I was bullied when I was a kid for playingclassical piano and
(06:22):
for singing in a show choir.
I was bullied quite a bit,and I didn't have a lot of friends.
I'm glad I stuck with it becauseby the time that I picked up a guitar
and had more confidence and startedplaying cool shows,
and I was a little more popular in smalltown and everything,
it gave me the confidence to go outinto the world and to move
into the biggest city in all of Canadaand become a songwriter
(06:46):
and to start playing piano again.
By the time I was in my early 20s,I really came back to the piano
and started to play it again and writeagain and turned that into a full
album full of piano songs.
Now I'm very proud to sit at the pianoand play and perform.
I'm gladly found that because thething is, most of my music nowadays is
(07:07):
performed on the guitar because it'sa lot more portable than a grand piano.
The piano, a lot of people,I have to explain to them,
Oh, I do play the piano, too.
It's my first instrument, and I'm muchbetter as a pianist than
I am as a guitarist.
But I love all sides of it,and I still love classical music.
(07:31):
I listen to it on a regular basis.
I still love punk music.
I listen to it on an almost daily basis.
And all of those influences reallyare just a big part of who I am.
So is the small town that I came from,and so is the big city that I live in now.
(07:53):
I shouldn't go without saying that Iactually am even wearing
a Beethoven T-shirt.
I didn't realize that until Ijust saw the top of his hair.
Yeah, that really is the bestsummary that I can give of just where I've
come from and that it's still allsuch a big part of me in my life.
[Diane:] When you moved to Toronto,did you move to study music and did you
(08:17):
go to music school or what did you do?
[Kaleb:] Yeah, I did.
Like I asked you before,if you were up at York University.
Actually, I went to Seneca at York.
I went to the Seneca Collegecampus on York.
That was when I was 18 years old,so I moved to the city with a fake ID.
I was living all on my own at 18 years old,
(08:41):
going to Seneca College for theindependent music production program.
I was class number nine,so the course had just started,
run by a brilliant, brilliant musicindustry mogul named John Switzer.
I met some of my best friends that I'mstill best friends with now and people
who really changed my lifein that first year of music college.
(09:03):
It was only one year of a program.
When I graduated I graduated from Seneca.
I then moved downtownto the place that actually I'm living in
now with this home studio I built in 2009.
I moved here and went to one more yearof music college at Harris Institute.
It's a private music college downtown thata lot of the Canadian music industry
(09:25):
folks have graduated from.
By the time I was 20 years old,I was working at a major record label
full-time and was out of school,and I haven't been back to school I've
just been living the school and education
of being a songwriter in Canada
and everything that comes along with that.
(09:48):
[Diane:] As both a guitar player and a piano player,
you compose on both?
I think you havetwo different aspects in your music,
your solo career and anothercareer that you have also.
Can you talk a bit aboutboth aspects of this career?
[Kaleb:] Yeah, of course. So,
(10:10):
the separation of the two sides of me and my
solo music career and my rock and roll band that I'm in,
and the two different names that I'm presenting is all quite recent.
When I was in high school,I was recording and releasing my first
solo albums under my name, Kaleb Hikele.
(10:31):
That was in 2007 and 2008.
Then I moved to Toronto and almostimmediately within that first couple
of weeks, I had the idea of not using my real name
and coming up with a stage name,a pseudonym,
mostly because it's hard to pronounceand to write and to remember my name.
(10:53):
And most people ask, How do you pronounce it? And all these things.
And that, to me, was enough to consider,
Oh, maybe I should comeup with something else.
I came up with the Sun Harmonic and playedmy first show as the Sun Harmonic
as a solo artist in January of 2009.
And then in June of 2009,I released my first Sun Harmonic solo
album and ended up releasingsolo albums as the Sun Harmonic
(11:16):
all the way up until the pandemic.
Until 2021, I released Coast to Coast,which was my last
solo album as the Sun Harmonic.
And all along, I started putting togethera band behind the Sun Harmonic,
which are my two bandmates now.
They're best friends of mineDave Skrtich on drums,
(11:38):
and Ian McLennan, who's actually from St. Thomas as well.
We both sang in the showchoir that I talked about.
They became my bandmatesfor the Sun Harmonic.
In and around 2018, 2019,we were going out and playing shows
and being a rock band, but I wasalso being a solo folk artist.
(11:59):
It got very confusing,and then the pandemic hit,
and I had a lot of time to figure outwhat am I doing really with my music.
And there was even a point after I released Coast to Coast,
there was a point in the end of 2021 where I recorded a solo album
and a band album within one month of each other.
(12:19):
One of them was rock and rolland the other was folk.
It was just so obvious that I was doingboth of those things at the same
time under the same name.
I wanted them to be different.
I wanted to present them differently,and they sounded different.
So in 2024, the beginning of 2024, I really
took a dive into what has become, I think,
(12:44):
one of the best decisions I ever made,which was to go back out as Kaleb Hikele,
and I have this album here ready toshow off, which is my album that I
released in 2024 as Kaleb Hikele.
That was the first time I releaseda record under my real name since 2008.
I had been The Sun Harmonic for 15 yearsand felt like it was time
to turn it into something new
(13:06):
and I gave the stage name to my rock band and turned it
into a rock band from here on outfor this foreseeable future,
and then started going on touras Kaleb Hikele as a solo artist.
It really is the separation of classical
(13:26):
folk side of solo Kaleb
and the rock and roll.
We're writing almost punk songs nowfor a new album as the Sun Harmonic
and letting it go and turning itinto something new
for the first time in a while.
I'm excited about it.
There's a lot more to come, andI just feel good about the decision.
(13:49):
It was scary at first because I hadto change all of my social I have my media
names and tags and handles and everythingand my biographies and everything.
I spent almost two months just working on
the transition to the whole new thing,
which was scary because I was so manyyears into my music career, but it
felt like I was starting from scratch.
(14:10):
But I knew that I shouldn't be worried.
I shouldn't be scared of it.
I should embrace somethingthat's scary to me.
Yeah, that's where I'm at now.
[Diane:] Why The Sun Harmonic?Why this name?
[Kaleb:] Why the name?
Yeah. To be honest, it did.
(14:31):
I remember I came up with it in my tinylittle college dorm room that was on
Boake Street outside of York University.
I remember coming up with itin that room late one night.
I really was just throwing a lotof names and a lot of words around.
I think at first I thought ofthe Harmonic Sun or something like that,
(14:53):
and then I moved Sun Harmonic around.
But what I liked abouthaving the Sun, S-U-N, Sun,
having that be a part of the name was that it...
To me at that point when I was 19 especially,
it said that music in my life was
(15:16):
what I was revolving around.
I still feel that way very much,except now I do have a whole other career,
and I have a partner, and I have a dog, and everything
that I didn't have when I was 19.
But having the sun in there, really,to me, that is what it meant,
(15:36):
was that I was revolving myself around.
The sun was almost the music to me.
Then harmonics, of course, are those extra
notes and harmonies on top of the melody,
which is the centerfuse of the sun,and that the harmonics then were
all of the extras, the accoutumons of whatcomes with being a musician and
(16:01):
the beautiful sounds that comefrom harmonics and everything.
It really just was trying to have somereference to the importance
of music to me.
[Diane:] How many albums do you have on both sides of your musical career?
(16:23):
[Kaleb:] This album, from my bio,I think this latest album is,
I think it's my 12th or 13th studio album.
I've released a coupleof EPs on the side of that.
The Sun Harmonic, I think,is officially about maybe
(16:43):
we're putting out the sixth, if notseventh studio album of the Sun Harmonic.
And Kaleb Hikele, I released three solo albumsbefore I moved to Toronto, and now
this is my first coming back again.
Then I've got other side projects.
I've got a solo album I made asThe Broadview Band
and a rock and roll album I made under King Snake Crawl.
(17:05):
I've got all of these other funny little records
that are here and there that I love.
So it's a lot. It's about a baker's dozen albums.
There's two more comingthat I'm working on right now.
There are a lot more songs that I haven'tbeen able to record because
I wrote a lot at once.
(17:26):
But yeah, they keep getting better and
more interesting, and that's all you can do as a songwriter is try and just
keep making better and better music.
By the time that the album is finished,most of the time, at least personally,
in my experience, I'm tired of it.
(17:47):
I'm sick of it.
The excitement isin the making of the album.
It's not in releasing the album.
By the time the album is being released,it's almost like going and doing your
groceries and then puttingthem away when you get home.
It's just work.
The creation of the musicis the most exciting part.
The second that it's done,and it's finished and it's mastered and I
(18:08):
can't touch it anymore,
I have to go back to another projectand start to work on it because I want
to get back to that fusion of creativity.
They're being somethingnew that's happening.
[Diane:] What are your upcoming projects then?
[Kaleb:] I am working on a solo
(18:34):
Kaleb Hikele album, and I'm working on a
rock and roll band Sun Harmonic album.
When I recorded both of those records,I thought that they were both
going to be the Sun Harmonic.
It's very cool that now the factthat they've taken me a few years during
the pandemic to even get aroundto finishing,
they now have a different pathand trajectory than they did when I
(18:54):
first started them, which is cool.
Sometimes you want to just let somethingbecome what it's going to become rather
than trying to force it tobe what you dreamed it was going to be,
especially during a pandemic.
Now that the Mind Like radio album is outand it's done and it's a year old as
(19:15):
of a couple of days ago,I'm really focusing on finishing the new
Sun Harmonic album, which we'vereleased one song as a single.
It's called Homesick, which is a very,very old song of mine
that finally has been released.
Then we've got the rest of the album, too.
I just have a lot of studio work to doto finish it,
but I'm going to do that this summer,and we'll be releasing that
sometime in 2025, I hope in the fall. Then I have a solo album
(19:40):
called Storytelling that isa collection of songs that are all stories
either that I wanted to tell from my ownexperience or stories about other people,
some stories about a family of mine,a story from the eyes of my grandfather
saying goodbye to my grandma when shepassed away, a song about my Oma
and my experience when I was young,painting her front porch.
(20:04):
I collected songs that would fit togetherand recorded them in this
beautiful church in Hamilton.
I did that a couple of years ago,and it's just sitting there.
I can't wait to finish it because I thinkit's one of the best very,
very personal and intimatecreative works that I've ever done.
(20:26):
But I've had to exercise my patience a lot
with getting around to it.
Aside from that, I just have a very random
brand new song that I wrote two weeks ago,
two weeks ago tomorrow.
I'm actually sending it off to masteringeither tonight or tomorrow, depending on
(20:48):
it's up on my computer screen right now.
I'm really just trying to finish the mixand send it off to mastering
and get it out of my hands.
But I only wrote it just sittingat the grand piano upstairs at where I
work, which I'd love to talk about next.
It's called Firefighter's Son,and it's It's a beautiful song
that was inspired by Loretta Lynn, of course,with her Coal Miner’s Daughter,
(21:12):
and it speaks to my dad and his career,
and it speaks to my mom and my sister
and growing up in a small town.
It's been very exciting because I wrote itand I recorded it in the studio three days
later and recorded a B-side version of itand Kuzik version of it,
and kept my dad's firefighter helmetthat he gave and sent the picture to him
(21:39):
being like, Hey,I found use for this finally.
After he retired, he gave me that.
I've really just been diving into that.
A brand new song that I did not expectto come around, and I'm going to release it,
by the time that this comes out, I'm hoping it's out a couple of weeks after that.
It's always exciting.
(22:01):
I work on a lot of stuff all at once,and it's exciting when something new comes
along that just breaks me outof the old tiresome stuff.
Just for a second before I get back to it.
That's what this album was, to be honest.
I wrote and recorded and releasedthis album within a few months.
It took an entire year away fromeverything I was doing
(22:24):
because it was just something newand exciting, and it was more relevant
to me than anything I was working on.
Sometimes you just want to sharethat from your heart rather than
a song that maybe is even betterthan anything that's on that album.
You're not always putting your bestfoot forward in a way.
(22:47):
Obviously, your best efforts,but it's not like I'm always releasing
my very best song over and over and over again
because I think it's up to interpretation.
A lot of people don't love the songs that I love the most,
and they love songs that Idon't love the most.
Sometimes you want to let people decide what they like and
give them what you can give them, right?
(23:10):
[Diane:] Yeah.
So, you mentioned anotherplace where you're working.
What is this place exactly?
[Kileb:] Yeah. So, I work just in my neighbourhood here.
I've been living in Riverdale now since2009, and I have seen
(23:30):
the Don Jail be demolished,and I've seen the new
Bridgepoint Active Health care,what wasn't previously known as
Bridgepoint Active Health care, bebuilt in 2013.
I lived by this health care rehabilitationclinic for so many years while I
juggled so many different jobs.
(23:52):
And during the pandemic, I lostthe job that I had at the moment
and ended up becoming a grocery delivery
driver as basically like a first -
kind of frontline worker duringthe height of the pandemic when
(24:13):
you weren't allowed to even taketransit unless you were going to work.
I had to carry a cardon my phone to show the police that I
was traveling to my frontline worker job.
That's when I was doing that work as agrocery delivery driver
for about two years.
Then by about 2022, I had such an urge and
(24:35):
such a growing heart to do
something and to find something that I really, really
believed in and I really, really cared for.
I couldn't believe that I didn't thinkof this earlier, but I walked my dog by
the hospital that is so close to mehere in Riverdale, about a 10-minute walk.
(24:57):
I walked my dog by therefor two years before I…
I had the idea in my head,I wonder if I could work there.
And I just started looking.
I did not go to school for nursing.
I don't have the prerequisites that arerequired for a lot
of the jobs in the hospital but
(25:18):
I found a job in the kitchen working in food service,
and I got in and started working in thereand working very, very long days,
13 and a half hour,double shift days in the kitchen,
serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I did that for about a year and a halfand had my eyes set
(25:41):
on moving upstairs somehow.
I had no idea how, whether it behousekeeping or what it would be.
But I kept looking at every job postthat came up,
just trying to find something thatI could do just by being a kind-hearted
person who wanted to work in health carebut really had no experience or no...
(26:04):
No training whatsoever.
Then a job came up and I put my namein to work as a therapy porter.
I had never even heard of the job before.
I knew what a porter was, but Ididn't know what a therapy porter was.
And I got the I got the job and took it
at the beginning of 2024.
(26:28):
It's truly been the best job.
But to me, it's more than a jobbecause I've I had so many jobs.
When I got the job at the hospital,I counted that I had 23 jobs
in my life at that point.
I had never settled into anything becauseI always had music, and I was always
(26:48):
juggling everything besides the music.
My job as a therapy porterreally is the best...
It's the best work that I've hadto do and to clock in and clock out,
but feel like I'm really doing somethingthat I've... It's just been ready
(27:08):
for and been ready to do, to take care ofpeople and to care for people
who really need it.
I porter patients at...
It's now calledHennick Bridgepoint Hospital.
It's the big glass building hanging overthe DVP if you're driving up
and down the highway there.
It has the most amazing views of the citybecause the whole building
(27:31):
is all glass on the outside.
It's just floor to ceilingwindows everywhere that you go.
And I porter patients to and from dialysis appointments,
and I take patients in and out of therapy
and recreation therapy sessions.
(27:51):
Anything from Bingo,I was just playing a game of Bingo
with patients about an hour ago,to music therapy, which, of course,
really just lights my heart on fire to see
it being used in that sense
in a clinical setting, to see musicbeing used as truly as medicine.
(28:15):
And art programs, visual art,activities like adapted sports.
So patients that stay in their wheelchairsand are playing
versions of Bocce ball or basketball or
any sport that you usually would think,
(28:35):
Oh, you're going to have to standup and use your legs to do that.
The incredible therapeutic recreation team at Bridgepoint
really just will not give up in finding
ways to let people with
all levels of disabilityto let them participate in these
(28:59):
sports and activities.
They adapt the sports to being able
to just literally play a game of...
They did an Olympics last yearwhere you went around and did different
sports and everyone gotpoints and everything.
It's incredible to see what they can do.
(29:25):
But the most important part of it to me isthe music therapy,
seeing what they do with patients
who are, some of them are nonverbal.
Most of them are in some...
They either are using their walker or I bring them in their wheelchair
and porter them to the program.
(29:48):
And they either participate and playtambourine or play drums or
play the piano or they sing.
Or if, say, some of them are paralyzedand they're not able to move,
I know that even though I speak
(30:09):
to them, and they're nonverbal,
and they're not able to speak back to me,I know that they are listening
to the music and that it is just magic.
It truly is just magic to watch a room.
The first time that I watched a roomfull of patients from the ninth floor,
(30:30):
which is mostly a lotof palliative care patients,
and to watch a room of them just
sit in this wash of live music
being performed on a grand piano.
I'll speak about those people soon, butit really is just - It's given me a new
(30:52):
perspective on what musicis and what it can do
and how important it is to people,whether or not they are young and healthy
and vibrant and they're going down to punkshows downtown Toronto, or
they are towards the end of their life,or they're recovering from a stroke,
or they are justtrying to live their life
(31:19):
in a hospital where music therapydoesn't have to be provided.
I think a lot of hospitals likely don'thave it, especially emergency
types of hospitals, more trauma centers and stuff like that.
But Bridgepoint is a rehabilitation,a complex care hospital.
(31:41):
The fact that they have utilized music to
really change people's day and to save
their life in a way,to bring it back to life.
I've seen people just in tearsbefore I picked them up
or after I picked them up from music therapy.
(32:06):
It really is justthe most beautiful thing.
It really is.
That's my very long speech.
[Diane:] Are you performingsometimes with them or not?
[Kileb:] I have once.
I sang Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas
on the grand piano to everyone who wasin the room around Christmas time.
(32:26):
I sat down and I asked them if I could play.
I'd like to do a properconcert if I could.
We've talked about it with some of the rec therapists, and
it would be very nice because I've gotsome Beatles songs and some old
classics that they would love.
But no, for the most part, it'strained music therapist.
(32:52):
Or we're even watching concerts.
I bring them in to watch documentaries or to watch,
for example, we just watched, by my recommendation,
we watched a Gordon Lightfootconcert from the 1970s.
We bring patients in and they all sitaround the TV, and we crank the music up,
(33:15):
and they'd sit and watcha 45 minutes concert.
They sway, and they sing along,and they clap at the end of songs.
It's the coolest thing.
When I first started in this job, I reallycouldn't believe how special it was.
I'm trying not to let it...
(33:36):
Trying not to lose that excitementor take it for granted or anything.
Now that I've been doing this jobfor about a year and a half now.
[Diane:] How is it from the stage where you'reperforming, which are sometimes bars,
sometimes stages that are not necessarilyaccessible, things like that,
how did it transform your vision ofaccessibility and disability in the arts?
(34:03):
[Kaleb:] I would say...
I mean, first, I do want to say
I just feel like I have so much more to learn and
to open myself up to in all of this world.
I...
My experience...
(34:23):
In my experience of clinical settings or any kind of
trauma, when I was 25, I hadtendonitis that struck
both of my wrists and took me away from being able to perform for about three years.
So that was a repetitive strain injurythat took me off guard and took me
(34:46):
by surprise when I was very young.
And I still struggle with thaton a daily basis now,
but I have got on to the other side of it
and I've recovered and I'm able to playa three-hour concert, which at the height
of my injury, I was only able to play...
There was a show where I played threesongs in a row, and that was it.
(35:09):
I had to go home and ice my wrist.
It really was that bad.
I think about that all the time,and I struggled to brush my teeth
at that point in mylife without having a lot of pain.
It was very intense.
From that point on, I've tried to
take away from that the empathy that is needed
(35:31):
when you're, especially now that I'mworking with patients who
have either been in car crashes or they, again,stroke recovery or whatever trauma they
have had and whether or not theywill walk again or they won't.
I've seen every angle and every story.
(35:52):
I've had so many stories that I've beenable to learn and to see in people
and the resilience that they have.
But from my own experience of goinginto a hospital a couple of times a week
when my wrists were really at their worstand I had my braces on and
all of those things and was goingto physiotherapy and all of those things,
From that moment in my life,I have known that there's a part of me
(36:15):
that is and will always be
a patient in a way, and I think
everyone has that in their own way.
Of course, there'sdifferent severity of it.
But when I started working in healthcare,
then it opened my eyes to
(36:39):
what it is to go into a music venue and have it
be accessible, and that when I'm working
then with patients during the day,
and I'm portering themto and from in their wheelchairs,
then maybe that night or that weekend,I go and play a show at a venue,
(37:03):
and I see someone like our friend Julie (Sawchuk), who we were talking about,
when I see her at Farm League Brewing,when I was opening for Royalwood and I was
playing this show in Cambridge,and I see Julie in the front row,
and she is in her wheelchair.
Honestly, while I was on stage, becausethe way that I came in wasn't accessible.
That was through the one sideof the venue, and there were many stairs,
(37:28):
and there wasn't a ramp or an elevator.
But even when I saw her on the stage whileI was playing, and while I'm playing,
I can think about a lot I think about,What am I going to play next?
What's my band are going to be?
My fingers are moving and I'm singing,but I'm able to think about other things.
I don't necessarily have to concentratevery hard on my performance because I just
(37:49):
have sang so many of my songs 500 times.
So I really started thinking.
I was looking around and I was looking and thinking,
Where is the accessibleentrance at this venue?
I was blown away that she wasthere right at the front row.
It was so special to me to see her therethat when I finished the show, I
(38:11):
packed all of my stuff,moved everything off the stage,
and the first person that I went overto speak with was Julie
in her wheelchair, in her wheelchair.
I knelt down on the side and I said,I'm so happy to see you here.
I asked her right away,How did you get in?
(38:33):
And she said, Oh, I camethrough the brewery side of it.
There's an entrance where you can comein and you go through all the brewery,
all the brewer's set upthat remains accessible,
and then you come in down through this other side.
I just hadn't seen that.
And so she explaining that to me,and I just said,
(38:53):
I am so happy that that is an option,
and I'm so happy to haveyou here in the front row.
I know how much this means to be able to enjoy live music in this way,
and that a lotof venues aren't accessible.
(39:13):
A lot of the time, because I'm so busy loading my stuff in or
playing the show, a lot of the time,it's not like you notice that right away,
that the venue is or isn't accessible,especially when I'm someone who is
able to walk myself into the venue.
But when you start to notice that,how many venues are up a flight of stairs,
(39:36):
and that's the only way to get there,or how many venues
could or should be accessible,but they don't have it in place.
And it opens my eyes to the shows
where there are people in the front row or
in the accessible locations of the venue.
(39:57):
I notice them right away.
I see it so quickly and very, very, very happy
and excited about that.
It makes me...
I'm not at a point where I can really choose where
and... where I perform all the time.
(40:20):
A lot of the time,I'm just playing wherever I can.
But it really makes me think of if I weresuccessful and popular enough to have
a choice of, I want to play here,I only want to play here,
it really opens my eyes to the powerthat you would have to be able make,
say, an entire tour accessible.
(40:41):
That that would be a very specialand important part of my mission as
a singer-songwriter,especially with that genre.
Folk music should be for everybody.
And not every venue...
If it is not accessible, it's not for everybody.
(41:02):
It is something that should be
talked about more, should be addressed.
Of course, that's the work that you aredoing and that I was speaking
with Julie about when I met her.
She was so proud to tell methat ever since
(41:24):
she started on this mission of reallygoing out into the world and
showing people what is accessible and what isn't.
Since that mission started for herthat just being able
to have people see that.
(41:46):
That's what I was so excited about,was that I felt that I saw her there.
Before talking to the 75 other peoplewho were in the room,
it was so important to me to go overand to tell her who I am and where I work,
and that I work with patients withaccessibility and
disabilities that have opened my eyesto this world and how much it means.
(42:11):
Like that music is medicine and it is therapy,
and that a folk concert and a punk showis music therapy
in ways that I never thought of itlike that before, but now I do.
And I give that speech at a lotof my shows, that this is
(42:33):
medicine for everybody,whether or not you have a visible
disability, an invisible disability.
It is so important.
[Diane:] Yes, but let's now reverse the situation.
Now, next time you go to a venue,Of course, you don't have a choice,
(42:54):
but let's imagine that youare the one with a disability.
[Kaleb:]Yes. To be able to be onto the stage.
[Diane:] You're the one performing, right?
Most of the venues thatsay they are accessible,
yes, they are accessible to the audience.
What about the performers?
There are many performerswith disabilities.
(43:17):
We don't have - I say we because I'm one of them.
We don't have the choice of the venue.
We have to choose the venuesthat are stage accessible.
Of course, the first thing they're goingto accessibilize these
venues are the audience.
But then for them, it's enough.
Then it stops here. Right?
(43:38):
So, the idea that music is therapy for everybody,
it's still discussable because no,not everybody has access to the venue.
Not everybody has access to the stage.
And us, as performers, our "therapy"
is to go on stage and to perform.
(44:01):
Many, many musicians arecut from this privilege.
So maybe next time you go to a venue,
it's great to look at how accessible it is for the audience.
But we are advocating for an accessibilityof the performing venues,
like the performance spaces.
(44:23):
It's always a struggle.
Plus, sometimes,accessibility means that...
Look at Julie.
What she did is that shewent through the brewery.
It's not the same entrance as everybody else. We're not treated as equal.
Now, it's coming more and more.
We have laws,we have some organizations that are
(44:45):
helping those who want to makeaccessibility better in their environment.
But sometimes it's frequently forgotten that
accessibility doesn't mean just the entrance.
It means wheelchair accessible bathroom,which is Julie's forte.
It means stage accessible.
(45:09):
It means some spots where we are nothidden behind the pylon or whatever
in the accessible spots, right?
Or sometimes in big theaters,the accessible spot is on the back.
There is no way for us to go on the front.
It's coming, but there isimprovement to go, right?
(45:31):
[Kileb:] For sure.
I've also worked at a lot of music venues,too, or performance spaces,
theater spaces,St Lawrence Center for the Arts,
which I do believethe one theater for sure.
I do believe that that back entrance,
(45:51):
I'm not sure if that goes throughto the stage, but I know at least that I
was a part of takingpatients in wheelchairs.
As well as Massey Hall,there were accessibility issues
for a very long time, and now a lot of that has been addressed in
wheelchair accessible spotson the balcony level, which wasn't
(46:15):
available before becausethe venue was built in 1894.
I've seen a lot of it.
Budweiser Stage, too.
[Diane:] Roy Thompson Hall and
Koerner Hall is entirely accessible.
There is a way of goingas a performer behind.
(46:36):
These big venues where they have moneyand they have laws,
even if their building is protected
by historical laws,
the accessibleization law is also here.
There is a way of compromisingand finding a way.
(46:58):
But sometimes, I'm thinking of a venuewhere there is accessibility to the stage,
but then if you are a choir member ora chorister and you need to go
to the balcony where the choir is,it's not accessible.
I'm thinking of Roy Thompson Hall.
I'm thinking of other venuesin the city that are...
These are all Torontonian venues that we are mentioning here.
(47:21):
But of course, this is everywhere.
It's a global issue,and we really try to advocate for that.
We will get there, but it's slow.
[Kileb:] For sure.
Well, It's such importantwork that you are doing.
(47:42):
I do think that it is sostrong to be coming
from someone like you who is saying,I am in a wheelchair and I am a performer.
See me as both of those things.
Don't just see me as one or the other.
But I think it should also be coming from,and this is why I'm saying,
(48:05):
I feel like I have so much more to learnand to see and to go out into the world
and see these venues that I'm performingat and to look at the accessibility
and to pay attention
to that when I'm booking tours.
That it would be very powerful tohave artists
(48:28):
who either do need accessibility or don't need it themselves,
but want to advocate for it and want it to be seen in the venue to be there in the venue
that they're playing at.
I think it really...
Yeah, the power and the pressureshould be coming from all sides.
(48:51):
Like I said, it just really
goes to show that it's just so...
It is importantto have it be for everyone.
It really is.
And I don't know that I noticed that when I was
(49:13):
in my early 20s and I was playingpunk gigs downtown
all over Toronto and most venues that are not accessible
and where the bathrooms are in the basement.
So even if you can get into the venue,you probably can't get to the bathroom,
stuff like that.
And, I don't know.
I'm just very happy and proud to
(49:37):
have found my way into not only
into health care, but intoopening my eyes and my heart to this world
and seeing there's multiple venues whereI've been able to notice,
especially outdoor shows.
I should mention that I have a new friendnamed Gord in London, Ontario,
who came out to one of my showsat the Western Fair.
It was an outdoor show, an outdoor fair,where the whole fair was accessible,
(50:03):
except for, I'm sure,almost all of the rides,
I'm sure, probably would not be, but that the grounds to the fair were accessible,
and especiallythe live music was accessible.
Gord came to...
I played four shows at the Western Fair,and he came to one of the first ones
and ended up coming back with hiscaregiver. He was nonverbal,
(50:24):
and I was so happy to get off the stageand run over and to speak with him.
I gave him a sticker that he put on his wheelchair,
on his communication board on the front of his wheelchair,
and I was able to see hima couple of times after that.
(50:44):
I took a couple of pictures with themthat the caregiver was wanting to take and
to take back to the home that he was at.
It was so special to me to just
really feel like my eyes were open to it.
(51:05):
Yeah, I'm very happy and proud to
have this be just a new angle of
what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.
[Diane:] Thanks for this perspective.
It's really important.It's pretty.
[Kaleb:] Yeah, and like I said, it really is still in its early stages.
(51:27):
I feel like there's so much that I canlearn and that there is some perspective
that I can give, but I know that there'sso much more to know about it
and to share with others.
It's a part of me now.
(51:50):
I don't think it ever won't be.
I do feel forever changed in a way by it.
[Diane:] Well, I have a last question for you to wrap up this interview,
and it's about people who might havecounted in your career, who might have
changed your perspective like we weretalking, or who might have shown you
(52:13):
a path that you were not expecting.
If you had people to think of,who would it be and why?
[Kaleb:] I read that question, and right away,
I knew my answer would be...
You asked for one person, and I'm goingto make it two because they're a team.
Obviously, there's so many other peoplein my music
(52:36):
career and in my life that I could speakabout, but particularly to the point
and the intersection ofart and disability,
my experience at Bridgepoint,and especially in music therapy,
has absolutely been enriched and changedby watching these two
incredibly talented and powerful and
(53:00):
innovative women who I'll only name them by their first name just because the hospital,
of course, there's a lot of privacy and confidentiality and patient's names and everything.
But there's two music therapists,one named Melanie and one named Jackie.
They work together as a team,and they work on the...
(53:21):
Well, They work on all floors,but my introduction to them was walking
a patient, portering a patient in their wheelchair
into the 10th floor auditorium of Bridgepoint,and hearing a grand piano,
but I hadn't seen it yet, and hearing a fiddle.
Jackie plays the fiddleand she plays the piano.
Melanie plays the piano and she sings.
(53:43):
They both just have beautiful voices,and they harmonize,
and they sing to the patients.
They sing with the patients.
The way that they interactwith the patients is one of the most
beautiful things I've ever seen.
My job is really just to bring the patientin and interact with them while we're in
(54:07):
the elevator,whether or not we can have a conversation
back and forth or if they're nonverbal,I am telling them, Oh,
we're going to music therapy.
That's where the grand piano is, and we'regoing to be singing these songs today.
But then when I bring them in and thendrop them off in this music therapy session,
the second that I walk a patient in,
(54:31):
they'll start to play a song for that patient,
knowing their background, knowingwhere they've come from in the world,
where they're from,sometimes their religion,
sometimes just their name is in a song.
They'll start singing a songto that patient with their name in the song.
(54:52):
The way that I've seen it justlight up a patient who is in so much pain.
The second that Ibring them into that room and drop
them off, and I see just this…
It is magic.
I just have to giveall the credit to them.
(55:15):
Truly, it's been a very,very eye-opening experience to seeing just
not only what music can do as medicine,but who you can be as a musician.
They're both just incredible musicians.
I'm a musician, too.
I could sit at the piano and playfor them, but I let them do their thing,
(55:37):
and I sit back and I watch in amazementand awe of how incredible they are at
reaching people and tapping into people,regardless of what kind of disability they have
or what kind of experiencethey are having in their life,
(55:59):
whether or not they'rerecovering from a traumatic
event or they're in palliative careand they're in their final
stages of their life.
It's incredible.
They were the first people that I thought of, and I haven't changed my answer.
I thought that they really deserve to...They're heroes.
(56:22):
They really are.
They deserve so much credit.
But surely don't...
They have their ownlittle magical thing that's happening,
and I'm so lucky to be able to see it
because there's no cameras on, there's no pictures.
(56:42):
It just is what it is, and it happens,and it is so special and so
important for these patients.
[Diane:] Thank you so muchfor your stories and everything.
Good luck with everything in your career.
Maybe you will be able to workwith them at a certain point, right?
(57:02):
[Kaleb:] I would like to. I would like to.
I should say, actually,that that grand piano that they played
in music therapy, that's where I
ran off on a 15-minute break during my shift.
I had just ported patients awayfrom a Loretta Lynn concert,
(57:24):
and this was just two weeks ago.
I portered patients away from a Loretta Lynnconcert and had this Coal Miner's Daughter idea,
and I thought, Oh, I shouldwrite a song called Firefighter's Son.
I ran upstairs and the music therapy room was empty, and there's a grand piano,
and there's a guitar.
And I went upstairs with that little tiny idea,
and I was on the palliative care floor, so I was playing very, very, very quiet, as quiet as I could.
(57:49):
I wrote the Firefighter's Sonsong in about 15 minutes.
I sat down and I wrote the lyrics.I figured out the chords.
I came up with a few other little ideasthat eventually turned into the bridge.
That little place where magic is happening
every single day for patients,I was able to tap into that somehow,
(58:13):
and I'm just so grateful for it.
I can't wait to release that songand to be able to tell that story of
where the song was born out of.
I'm inspired by it,and I just think it's such reciprocal
inspiration and magic happening
(58:33):
within that building, and especiallywithin music therapy.
[Diane:] Well, thank you so much and all the best for everything.
I know I might see you in oneof your tours or something like that.
[Kaleb:] That would be wonderful.That would be very nice.
Yeah, thank you.Thank you for the work that you do.
(58:55):
I mean, even being able to speak about
this for me is a first in this kind of setting.
I talk about a lot of this at my showsand to audience members,
especially if they'rein a wheelchair or they are coming
in with a walker or a cane,and I'm seeing all of these different
(59:16):
stories and all these differentlives that are being lived.
But it's, yeah, I would absolutelylove to see you at one of the shows.
I think that the work that you'redoing is very, very important.
I wish you the best of luck with it, too.
[Diane:] Thank you.
Take good care and see you next time.
[Kaleb:] Yes, of course.Thanks for listening, everyone.
(59:38):
[Diane:] Thank you. Bye.
♪ Closing theme music ♪
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