To refer to Carl Dixon as a survivor is truly an understatement.
The epithet would be applicable for his remarkably durable career as a professional musician, which has now lasted 35 years. To have survived and even thrived in such a fickle, highly-competitive and cannibalistic industry is proof positive of his fortitude, adaptability and talent.
But Dixon is also a survivor in life, having clawed his way back to health after a devastating automobile crash in Australia in 2008. Lucky to be alive, the injuries were severe and widespread, necessitating him being put into a medically-induced coma. He’s endured numerous surgeries, including facial reconstruction, and sports a glass eye. At many point in the early parts of his healing journey, medical experts told Dixon his quality of life was to be permanently impaired and that he should abandon the notion of ever playing music for a living again.
Ignoring the naysayers, Dixon fought back and within three years, after countless hours or rehab, found himself back centre stage with his former band, 1980s rockers Coney Hatch, at a special reunion show in 2011. And Dixon has not looked back, adding the titles author and motivational speaker to his creative tool belt.
In the wake of the near tragedy, he has had to take a step back and approach music from a different angle, this time as a DIY solo artist, but he is still making his living from music. The accident meant he lost his gig as the lead singer for the current touring version of The Guess Who, but he is still in demand as a solo performer, playing a diverse variety of venues, including regular appearances in Belleville and Prince Edward County in Eastern Ontario.
Dixon is making his first-ever stop in Napanee, where he is playing a show at Crabby Joe’s on Oct. 3. This follows his panel appearance at the first-ever Kingston Ontario Music Conference at the Ambassador Conference Centre earlier in the day.
His performance repertoire is impressive in its variety. Depending on the mood and makeup of the crowd on a given night, Dixon will play a selection of Coney Hatch tunes, as well as songs from his 2011 solo album Lucky Dog. He will also trot out songs from the two legendary bands of which he has been a touring member – the aforementioned Guess Who (for whom he was with from 2000 to 2008), and April Wine, where he was a guitarist/keyboardist/background vocalist throughout much of the 1990s.
“All the years of playing direct me towards being able to feel out the crowd as to what is working based on what people are reacting too. So I can’t really say 100 per cent what I will be playing in Napanee. Some venues I shy away from doing most of my own stuff and other places I feel empowered run with it as much as I can,” Dixon said.
“I have been playing some of my newest material and a few off of Lucky Dog and some from my history with Coney Hatch, April Wine and the Guess Who and even a number of my own favourite rock and pop songs from over the years. I play a lot of music on a given night just because I enjoy it. And I am rather enjoying picking through my repertoire. It makes for all kinds of possibilities as to where I can head with each show.”
The new material that Dixon referenced is more in the roots/country vein. The songs Part of a Set and Rock You in My Arms have been completed in anticipation of releasing the full album Whole ‘Nother Thing in the near future.
“I haven’t really done any shows in the country direction but I am preparing an album. It’s evolving as I go along. What I was prepared to do as country music was not quite what the market of 2015 wants from country music artists – that Nashville Bro Country thing. I was not quite there yet, but I am starting to catch on,” he explained.
“What I am doing is kind of pop country and I have been writing my own stuff and also collaborating on some material. I recently did a Skype session with a songwriter in Nashville and we came up with quite a good song and we’re going to do some more. A lot of my new writing is going in that direction and I think it’s part of my maturing as an artist and the fact that the rock music of these days has nothing to do with what I liked about rock.
“And I also like the aspect of telling stories in the songs. There’s more of that in country and that’s really what I like to do. So I am chipping away at this material when I get the time and when I can afford it.”
Dixon started playing in bands as a teenager while growing up near Toronto. He formed the band Firefly which had some success in the Montreal area, but came back to Toronto in 1981 to help build what would become Coney Hatch. That band released three successful albums in the early 1980s and became a staple on rock radio with hits such as Hey Operator, Devil’s Deck and Monkey Bars.
He became an in demand songwriter, with many of his compositions being selected for various television and film projects. In the early 1990s he joined a reformed April Wine, and in 2000 joined the Guess Who after Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman departed after a short-lived full-band reunion.
For Dixon, being in both bands was a chance to experience a different level of success, and to also be able to perform some of the songs that inspired him to want to be a rock musician in the first place.
“When I was with April Wine it was a pretty classic lineup with Myles Goodwyn, Brian Greenway, Jim Clench and Jerry Mercer, so it was the real band and it sure felt like it had legitimacy. I felt I learned a lot from that experience and it was cool to see how the guys who created that music continued to carry themselves in the performance of it and what it clearly meant to the audience to still see those guys doing their thing,” he said.
“With the Guess Who, it was actually a different buzz because I was the Burton replacement. So I had that platform that the Guess Who’s music had created through such huge popularity in their heyday. Many people loved the songs either didn’t know or didn’t care who was singing them onstage that night; they just loved the songs and they knew the band name as a brand name. They didn’t really care who the people standing on stage were.
“Most people, especially in the United States, are like that, especially for a band that isn’t American. They don’t really mind as long as they have a good time and those happy memories are evoked.”
Dixon said too much time had elapsed between the crash and his full recovery for him to be able to return to the Guess Who, and they moved on with current singer Derek Sharp. So as he recovered, he began writing his autobiography.
Strange Way to Live was released in January 2015 and was both a cathartic experience for Dixon, but also a way to establish his credentials as a motivational speaker.
“The feedback from the book has been incredibly nice and very positive. I am still thrilled every day when I hear from people who say they got the book and that it made some sort of impact on them. People tell me they got such good things out of it and learned so much about what really goes on during a recovery and within the music industry,” he said adding that he still does as many speaking engagements as his schedule allows.
“The process of creating the book began after my accident when it was uncertain how much I would ever be able to return to my old performing career. So I had to think of what else I could to do keep progressing in life and this became a project that was meant to support my ambitions to become a speaker, because people within that industry said it was helpful for your presentation to have a book under your belt to prove to people that you could string a few thoughts together.”
And while it’s almost a cliché question to ask how the car crash changed his life, Dixon’s answer is that it helped clarify and simplify things in life – it separated what was real and significant from that which was more illusory and transient.
“It’s very easy to say you appreciate the simple things and what’s important and what’s not. That does get pushed into the background sometimes as the pressures of life and making a living return, just the way they did before I was hurt. But it’s a different perspective because I feel I have something different to say as a performer and a communicator,” he said adding that his marriage and family life fell apart too in the aftermath of the crash, but that he has become engaged to an Australian woman and that part of his life is getting better and better.
“My perspective has chance in terms of recognizing more how easy it is for me to get swept away with the illusions of life, of what I projected onto the world around me, how I imagined it was and how I liked it to be and how it should be. And I set out my belief systems based on all of that. It turns out that illusions that are unsupported by evidence get you into trouble. It can lead you down some very unhelpful pathways. So I have got quite a different perspective now about the necessity of shedding illusions and not permitting yourself to be led by illusions.
“I look for the reality of everything and that isn’t about negativity. It means embracing the truth and not wishing I was someone else, or something else and living my life as if I was something else. The more you dispel these illusions in your life the easier it is to prevent yourself from falling into their trap again.”
As for Coney Hatch, the band that brought Dixon his first taste of mass success, the band has been dormant over the last few months, after releasing their fourth album in 2013, and doesn’t have anything in the works for the foreseeable future. That being said, he said he is still pleased that the music he and his bandmates made more than 30 years ago is still getting radio airplay, and is still near and dear to the hearts of many music fans.
“That feels great. We summoned up the best of ourselves as a collective and as individuals and brought the very best we had in us at the time to create the musical things that we did. And it worked on a certain level and we got some attention and people enjoyed it. If you look at it strictly on the level of providing people some enjoyment in their lives, it was a success,” he said.
Dixon is appearing on a songwriting panel at the Kingston Ontario Music Conference, Saturday, Oct. 3, at 4 p.m. The event itself starts at 11 a.m. with exhibitors, performances and panels all day. For more information, visit www.komc.ca.
Dixon will then travel the 25 minutes to Napanee to perform at Crabby Joe’s. For info, visit the Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1526527744305083/
For more information on Dixon’s current endeavours, visit his website, www.carldixon.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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