Lucas Choi Zimbel - Tempered Tantrum
  • Teach Me Humility
  • War Starts When The Music Stops
  • Take A Long Hard Look At Yourself
  • Take a Long Hard Look at Yourself
  • The More We Have, The Less We Are
  • Contemplating The Calamity
  • Talk Taboo
  • Empathy Goes Home, While Apathy Dances
  • She's Out of Breath
  • Tempered Pulse
  • What Owns Who
  • This Backwards Town
  • Eye of the Tantrum
  • The Place Where All Things Sleep
Biography
LUCAS CHOI ZIMBEL

It all started with a pair or claves that I found in a box of percussion instruments. Here was the real instrument I wanted to play! The adults in the room said, “You can’t only be a claves player” which only re-enforced my contrarian streak. Two claves, no road cases, no tuning, no strings. I could nail this. Eventually we learned the xylophone in school, and then the recorder. Classic really. High school comes around and I pretended to not be able to play three of our four instrument choices because I already knew which one I wanted to play: the one that looked like a recorder. No, not the flute, way to horizontal. I want to play the clarinet only because it was held in a similar fashion to the recorder. I didn’t even know what it was called, the black recorder?

One day, why I have no idea, I asked my father for a guitar. “But not one of those country guitars” Ah, if only I knew then what I know now.

In my late teens we had a Quebec winter with dangerous amounts of snow. So much snow that roofs collapsed, killing people beneath. My mother happened to know one of the unfortunate. As the family went through her things they found an accordion in her basement that some how ended up in my living room. “I guess I have to learn how to play this now” I thought.

Eventually, the guitar became my main focus, the only instrument I ever chose knowingly. But now it was “one of those country guitars” commonly referred to as an acoustic guitar. I like the feeling of wood vibrating against my chest and the sound of hundreds of details coming together that we then characterise as “bright” or “cutting” or a thousand other terms that make more sense than they should.

Words have always come easy to me, I have been writing lyrics since I was about 12 and I am happy to say I have never finished a love song, but I’ll admit I’ve started a few. The morning paper is inspiration, as are the books that I read in the afternoon and the people I share my life with in the evenings.

Sometimes I wonder, why music? Well, if banging claves together was enough for me when I was a child, so easily distracted and impatient, the complex chords and finger picking patterns that accompany my words are more than enough for me now.

www.lucaschoizimbel.com
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  • Members:
    Lucas Choi Zimbel
  • Sounds Like:
    Merle Travis of Montreal discovers more colourful chords. Nick Drake grows up in the big city. Leonard Cohen without the enourmous ego and libido. Django Reinhardt is adopted by Americans who subsequently move to Canada. Bruce Cockburn spends half as
  • Influences:
    Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen, Merle Travis, Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell, Django Reinhardt, Bill Monroe, Pete Seeger
  • AirPlay Direct Member Since:
    03/11/19
  • Profile Last Updated:
    08/15/23 11:56:52

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