CROOKED FOREST BRINGS AWARENESS
Crooked Forest wants to bring awareness and connect to people through her music.
What's your favorite song to play of yours?
That’s a tough call but right now it’s a song called “Driveway” because it’s a really personal story that has been really cathartic to share.
How did the lyrics come about?
The lyrics were written on the 10th anniversary of a friend of mine’s suicide and they’re a reflection of both the day itself, what he went through, and what I and our mutual friends later felt and said after we heard the news as we struggled ot make sense of it all.
Was it a difficult writing process?
I fully bawled writing just about every word of it, so yeah, on that level it was difficult, but it was also something I felt like I had been neglecting for some time and once I finally got the words down and considered it “finished” it was a bit of weight lifted off. It’s much more difficult to keep the types of thoughts and feelings I talk about in “Driveway” inside than it is to read them out after the fact.
What is your style when writing new music?
I consider myself more conversational than anything, as though I’m literally sitting down with a book in front of the listener and walking them through an experience. Many of my songs start out as poems without any real clear structure and then they’re molded into songs to suit the mood after I choose the right genre for it, which is to say it all feels like a bit of a chaotic mumbled mess until the last note is played on the record.
What was the foundation of this single?
Stylistically I kept it pretty bare-bones, just an acoustic rhythm guitar droning through the same chords throughout to reinforce the lyrics which are otherwise also repeating many of the same lines throughout, mimicking the way I’ve thought and re-thought about my friend since his passing as I do otherwise mundane daily tasks that many of us complain about or take for granted, “Replace the breaks, oil the chain”. They’re things that many of us, if or when we have the money, happily push onto someone else to get the job done for us; I repeat this line because I think about how some people would love these types of opportunities, either by pure circumstance or lack of knowledge that they can’t do them, or because they’re literally no longer here to.
How can fans get a look inside your world?
I’m very much an open book and spread myself frankly pretty thin in this way, but I do that on purpose. You can learn all about me by listening to the songs, reading my blogs on crookedforest.ca, or following my many social media channels. I’m on a little bit of everything and I really don’t hold back on anything these days.
Could you leave us with your favorite lyrics you've ever written?
These days I’m pretty partial to a song called Asleep/Dead. It’s a punk-rock track that lyrically takes some fun turns. You can hear a demo cut of it on my YouTube channel.
Where do you connect most with your fans?
My main avenues are my own website, Instagram, Twitter and Twitch right now, but again, I’m really all over the place so to make sure you don’t miss out on anything you’d have to follow all of them. I’ll drop the links for ya here:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4gqlEjlgia9now94HAPJnd
Bandcamp: https://crookedforestband.bandcamp.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crookedforestband/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crookedforestband
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaimeejakobczak YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3MYexMMZ0IomV01LozN7eg
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/crookedforest