Canadian singer-songwriter, Jay Aymar has teamed up with us at Canadian Beats to unveil the brand new video for his single, “The Greatest Story Never Told”. Check out the video below and find out more about this talented artist in our Five Questions With segment.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
I’m a Gen-X singer-songwriter living somewhere out there on the road. Always writing. Always touring. Living an artist’s life. I’ve been doing this for most of my adult life. I find the best stories in the people I meet and the novels I read. I often turn these stories into songs. Best description ever came from a fan who wrote to me and said ‘Jay, to me you’re a singin’ strummin’ folk poet.’ I like that. I’ll take it.
Tell us a bit about your music and writing style.
I’ve always gravitated to great Canadian writers like K’naan and Joni, Amelia Curran, Cohen, Sarah Harmer, Buffy Sainte Marie and 10,000 friends you’ve likely never heard of. I work from the folk idiom but my sound and style vary for each project. My last four releases ranged from a simple folk record to a blues-country-folk hybrid record to a folkgrass record to a swampy electric Canadiana record. I enjoy lyrical density. I love gravitas. I’m writing for those with healthy attention spans. Wish me luck. What was I saying?
Do you have any upcoming shows? For someone who has yet to see you live, how would you explain your live performance?
After performing four nights a week every week for the past ten years, we’ve decided it’s time to take a break from the road for the winter. We had a string of successful release shows for Your Perfect Matador in the Fall of 2018 and since then we’ve been playing checkers. I’ll be posting tour dates in the spring of 2019.
I describe my live shows as ceremonies. They are lyrically driven musical experiences where audiences arrive prepared to listen. I sing the songs and hopefully create the alchemy that only live music can offer. My band creates the wave and I just try to surf it.
If you were asked to suggest only one of your songs for someone to hear, which would it be?
As of 10 am this morning I’ve been really high on The Greatest Story Never Told. This could change by 10 pm tonight. I wrote it for a woman I loved who was a pure artistic soul. She taught me a lot about nature, art, organic gardening and children. She had a very shy nature which I found irresistible. This is her song. I’m asking her to step into the light (come out of your shell). It’s a pure love song with a simple message. Lovers dig it.
Canadian Beats is all about Canadian music, so who are your current favourite Canadian bands/ artists?
I covered most of that in question #2 but I’ll repeat it in a different way. I’ve been to every square inch of this great nation playing in theatres, cafes, yurts, senators houses, campfires, cathedrals and houses of ill repute. I’ve spoken to 50,000 people about the meaning of life. I’ve sung my songs inspired by this great nation and the songs of those who’ve come before me. It’s all one big collective consciousness of art to me. But if I had to pick a Canadian all-time favourite? I’d say it’s a long forgotten folk- country-blues artist by the name of Jake Rivers. No one really knew him but he may have been the very best.