Name: Tim Easton

Birthplace: Lewiston, NY

Currently residing: Joshua Tree, CA

Musical past and present in one rambling run-on sentence:  My brothers taught me to play guitar and when I started writing poetry they said I could write songs so next thing you know I’m a street musician in Europe for around 7 years just to live life and experience things and read and learn to write and then I came back to America to start making records.

Website: timeaston.com

1.  Who are some of your favourite composers, musicians and bands from the past and present?
With composers I guess I’m a traditional Mozart kind of guy. I do like some of the modern stuff like Phillip Glass, but mostly I’m a folk musician and I love Doc Watson and Mississippi John Hurt and Sonny Terry/Brownie Maghee and folks like that. I will put them on the record player around the house most of the time. The Kinks have been getting some airplay around here as well lately. Same with Lightning Hopkins, songwriters like M. Ward and Connor Oberst move me, and I’m always blown away with the amount of work that Jack White kicks out every year.

2.  Is there a particular song or musical passage that never fails to move you emotionally?
The first song on Joni Mitchell’s BLUE album when she sings “I am on the road and I am traveling traveling traveling….” and then basically that whole album from there on out.  A lot of times, when I get misty during a tune, I’ll find it’s a woman singing.

3.  How would you describe your perfect day?
It definitely starts with a hassle free morning where I can lay in bed a while and read something.  Poetry, fiction, The New Yorker or The Week…and then I’d get up, have some coffee and toast and juice and get right to work on writing or making music.  I’m not a morning person, per se, but I like to do creative stuff right after getting up, before the news of the day or whatever distraction happens.  Now that I have a daughter, all of this has changed, and I’m learning that a perfect day involves playing with her and teaching.  A good meal with family and maybe friends, lots of laughter,  a nice walk… these all factor in there somewhere.

4.  What would your friends say they appreciate the most about you?
Sense of humour, energy, and that they cannot predict what I am going to do or say.

5.  What is your most valued material possession?
Probably my Gibson J-45 that I used as a street musician all those years ago.

6.  Who were you, or would you be nervous to meet?
I was appropriately nervous to meet Paul McCartney, and I managed to tell him that I had a four track. I guess being around Bob Dylan might throw you off your game a bit, but really, he’s just another dude who writes, paints, and plays.

7.  If you could blink your eyes and be in a favourite place right now, where would that place be?
Alaska comes to mind first.  Some amazing hangs there….but, it’s getting kind of cold at this moment, so I’d have to say on the beach in the tropics in one of those Gauguin paintings.

8.  Is there something you would like to do more of in the future?
Write write write. Take the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia through Mongolia.

9. Where would you like to find yourself in ten years?
Happy with family and friends and animals living in the country, but that’s where I am today.  So maybe it will be the city for a spell.