Victoria News: Through Winter Into Spring
Apr2208:25 AM
Filed in: Music News
By Patrick Blennerhassett - Victoria News
Articled appears as originally published in the April 22, 2009 Victoria News.
For 33-year-old singer-songwriter Scott Valentine, life definitely has been a circuitous journey.
The West Shore resident and Belmont secondary grad has lost three close friends in his life – one of them his brother, Paul Valentine, killed in 1998, struck from behind with a piece of lumber during a late-night altercation outside a fast-food restaurant.
Christmas 2008 also proved to be quite the experience for Valentine. After being denied entry to England while travelling from Australia with Amy, his English girlfriend, he decided to head back and give it another try. His girlfriend’s father had bought him a ticket, and Valentine was expected to show up as a bit of a Christmas gift to his significant other.
However once again he was denied entry. Valentine has no criminal record and had no past conflict with international customs prior to his first attempt in the fall of 2008, and when he tried to enter England the second time on Christmas Day, he was once again turned away – and this time things got complicated.
“Because it was Christmas and the next flight wasn’t for 36 hours, they put me in custody and escorted me to a detention facility,” said Valentine. “It was like something out of a movie. It was just this surreal experience.”
Valentine would return, not having seen his girlfriend except for a fleeting moment while he was being transported back to the airport via a security van. However, meeting with Valentine while he downs a pint or two at the Six Mile Pub in View Royal, he’s not what you’d expect from a guy who’s been through so much strife. He’s laid-back, easy-going, and quite frankly, just a cool guy to hang out with.
Valentine is also a very ambitious musician. His debut CD is actually four CD’s called Seasons, each disc named after one, and the package also includes a short movie. His husky voice and sound is accessible but not cheap – think Eddie Vedder meets Jack Johnson – and when he talks of things like heartbreak and tragedy, sincerity is not an issue.
It was this sound too, that caught the ear of Brian Thompson, a managing partner at Vancouver’s Thorny Bleeder Records. Thompson said he was sold instantly and got on board to help Valentine get Seasons out - available online at scottvalentinepresents.com.
“Scott’s music is so incredibly passionate and full of soul,” said Thompson, “I was amazed I had stumbled upon such a gem that no one had discovered yet. It’s so rare to find such a truthful and honest artist in today’s cookie cutter world of music.”
Thus Valentine’s current campaign of releasing one song from Seasons, for 52 weeks, which coincided with the start of spring, has been launched. Valentine is also pulling a Radiohead, offering his four-CD, one DVD debut online as a ‘pay-what-you-want’.
“That’s the way things are going with technology these days,” he said, “we have to be open to the idea that the industry has changed. It’s not record labels controlling the way things go, it’s the consumer controlling how things go. They expect things to be free, so it’s too late to put that back into the hatch and lock that door.”
When Valentine returned from that detention facility in England in January of this year, he didn’t touch his guitar for two months. But he’s decided to keep plugging away despite all of life’s setbacks.
Having spent the past decade living, working and playing in a band in Vancouver, Valentine is home and ready to push full steam ahead with Seasons.
“I’d spent a lot of time trying to escape – not necessarily the people, but the memories and the hard times that I’ve kind of had back here. And I kind of realized that those people are like family. And I come back into the house that I grew up in and the community that I grew up in. My first show was on Saturday at Ma Miller’s Pub (in Langford) and it was full of people that I’d graduated with and people I’d hadn’t seen for 15 years. It was quite remarkable.”
And yes, his girlfriend Amy is still around, in fact she’s here with him despite the turmoil the couple has endured.
“England doesn’t want me, I don’t know if anyone else wants me, thankfully Victoria and Canada are glad to have me home,” Valentine said. “And so she’s able to be here too, and as far as I’m concerned that’s a great place to start.”
For more information about Valentine go online to http://www.myspace.com/scottvalentinepresents.
patrickb@vicnews.com
Original posting here:
http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/victorianews/entertainment/Through_winter_into_spring_.html
