The rich music scene in the Pembina Valley has another new sound.
Warren Friesen, a musician from Winkler who now resides in Niverville, has just released his latest song “A Promise of Better Days.”
For Friesen, retirement has resulted in time that needs to be filled — what better to fill it with than music?
In the past few months, the Winkler musician has released three songs, but he is especially “thrilled” about his latest one.
As for how Friesen dreams up his songs, it’s a creative process of playing around until something promising materializes.
“I would like to say that I'm insanely intentional in terms of my song-writing style, but I'm not. Sometimes inspiration will strike in terms of, ‘I want to address that theme, that topic, that idea,’ . . . but for the most part, I will tinker in my studio with my keyboard and get some chord progressions going and I will start humming a melody.”
After the melody, lines of the song begin to appear, and before long, a song is born. Friesen says that this is how “A Promise of Better Days” took shape. The lyrics were loosely inspired by the style of Donovan Woods.
“[I was inspired by] how he can step away from clichéd songwriting lyrics and tell a story in a very, very original, matter-of-fact way,” he says. “I want[ed] to write a song that has that.”
The first verse of “A Promise of Better Days” features a figure who walks in through the front door of a “weather-worn apartment block” and is “always fighting with the broken lock.” Friesen says that after he formulated this image, he realized that it could be a powerful representation of depression.
“The theme . . . [came] out [that] everybody hits those low points — and I'm all too familiar with low points dealing with mental health issues,” he says. “So, [I wrote] something a little bit inspirational in terms of, ‘hold on, give it some time, surround yourself with the right people, do your praying and meditation and your physical training, . . . and things will get better.’”
The song’s message is something that Friesen strives to internalize himself; he has recently encountered difficult terrain that affects his creative process through his guitar playing.
“About four or five years ago, I noticed something in my right hand,” he says. “I was playing at Manitou Opera House . . . [and] my strumming hand . . . locked against the body of the guitar.”
Friesen says that after the performance, he had his hand looked at and was diagnosed with a condition called Muscle Dystonia, a movement disorder that causes painful spasms.
“I'm getting treated. Things are up and down, . . . but playing live with my acoustic guitar is next to impossible,” he says.
Friesen overcomes this hurdle with the help of the community and his studio at home.
“I have access to wonderful musicians [if I want to play live],” he says. For his recordings, Friesen uses software on his computer to add “very realistic sounding" guitar to his tracks.
“I program with keyboard, so I'm playing it, but not necessarily in real time,” he says. “I creat[e] chord progressions, picking and choosing sounds.”
Friesen says while his current setup is not his first choice for creating music, he is still glad that technology that can help him continue his passion exists. He calls the switch to using computer software “humbling.”
Friesen is no stranger to music — he began his music career back in university.
“I was . . . sharing an apartment with a couple of my buddies, . . . and these guys played guitar really, really well and had some really simple recording equipment in our apartment,” he says. “I started doing the vocals for some of their soundtracks and [things] like that, and I found I had a bit of a knack to hear a melody, write some lyrics, and create a song. And that's kind of where it started for me.”
Creating music became a solace for Friesen during the moments he needed a break from all the books and assignments from his classes. Around this time, Friesen had his first public performance at his sister’s wedding. He admits that the song he wrote showed his viridity at the time.
“Like anything else, [when you’re practicing] songwriting . . . and you're doing it over and over and over, you get better at it,” he says. “I had to get some of the cheesy stuff out of the way at the beginning.”
Friesen’s talents have matured into a respectable music career with plenty of moving parts. His music is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon or YouTube; each listen on these platforms goes a long way to support a local artist. For those who would like to hear a live performance, Friesen will be a part of Summer Music Night at Altona’s Gallery in the Park on August 15th at 7 p.m. On this night, audiences will also be treated to Friesen’s duets with his wife, Robyn.
For aspiring musicians out there, Friesen has a word of encouragement.
“You [don’t] have to know how to play an instrument in order to [write songs],” he says. “If you can hear a melody and if you can hum it into a microphone, you've started to create a song.”
Listen to Warren Friesen’s “A Promise of Better Days” below.
~With files from Ty Hildebrand~