In conversation with Mississauga’s David Leask, winner of the 2021 Mississauga Music Awards Songwriter Of The Year.

1. What does winning Songwriter Of The Year mean to you?
It’s very meaningful to be recognized for songs on my latest record, “Voyageur In Song”. Every melody and lyric across my long journey as a song chaser has led me here, to writing these songs. So I am deeply moved by the honour. 

2. Where did the inspiration come from to write Voyageur In Song?
Jowi Taylor, the project’s creator of the Six String Nation guitar (a guitar built of over 64 pieces of Canadian history and culture) and his wonderful storytelling of the different pieces inside Voyageur, intrigued me and inspired me to dig deep and write and record these songs. The other source of inspiration for the record comes directly from Voyageur, the guitar itself. I wrote and recorded the songs with Voyageur.  As the thousands of Canadians who have held her will tell you, you can feel a profound resonance of meaning coming out of the pieces of story from which Voyageur is made.

3. As a prolific songwriter, what's your approach when you start to write?
As a writer, I always try to have my antenna up, constantly listening, not just for lyrical and musical ideas at the embryonic stage of the process, but all the way up to when you lay down the final vocal in the studio.  
Re-writing and reviewing songs are a very big part of creating a great song.

4. If you could relive one moment in your career, what would it be and why?
For me, the moment I would want to relive, is not necessarily career oriented but really wanting to hear the next new idea - whether lyrical or musical - coming flying at me out of nowhere that fills me up and gives me goosebumps.  The magic and the mystery is that you never know if that will ever happen again or where that fragment of an idea might lead you!

5. Of your seven albums, which would be the first one you'd give a stranger and why?
I would have to say my latest record, “Voyageur In Song”, would be the record I would give to a stranger, particularly if they were Canadian! 

6. What succinct advice do you have for aspiring songwriters?
Listen to lots of great songs and songwriters and try to find the essence of what it is about each song that resonates with you and that makes the song great.  
Then, keep listening deeply into yourself and try to cultivate your own intuition and voice as a writer.