Torquil Campbell: songwriter for hire

It was a bit of a panic attack that led former Niagara-on-the-Lake resident, musician Torquil Campbell, to his latest creative venture. 

The singer and leader of Montreal-based rock group Stars has hung out his shingle, so to speak, as a songwriter for hire, accepting commissions from anybody to create an original song for them at $1,000 a pop. 

“Things were closing down, it looked like there weren’t going to be any gigs,” Campbell reflects, “I was lying there thinking about how I was going to pay the bills and put food on the table. I just tweeted this sentence out, not thinking that anybody would take me up on it. Boy, was I wrong!”

That tweet was on Dec. 30, 2021, and his offer soon became part of an international news broadcast. Since then, he’s agreed to 50 commissions, representing a full year of work for the talented multi-instrumentalist, who now lives in Vancouver with his wife, Shaw Festival actor Moya O’Connell and their 12-year-old daughter Ellington.

Though Campbell’s mother and sister, Shaw Festival stage manager Beatrice, still live in NOTL, he and O’Connell left the town for Vancouver in 2018. O’Connell is currently studying for her Masters of Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia and taking on directing projects when she can.

“It’s people who have listened to Stars for a long time, supporters and audience members through the years,” he says of those 50 commissions. “I have mothers who want a birthday present for their child. There are people who want songs about themselves, about their brothers, sisters, lovers. It kind of runs the gamut.”

The promise to each taker is that once the song is written, it belongs to them. Campbell kicks off the creative process with a virtual meeting with each client, discussing ideas and themes to guide the writing and recording processes. 

“The raw material is truly them, it’s their life,” explains Campbell. “That’s the cool, exciting thing for both me and the listener. Everyone’s story is incredible, everyone’s life is a movie. I think that we’ve forgotten that music can be a private, personal experience. This is like a musical tattoo, allowing people to have a different relationship with music, something that will really resonate for them.”

Campbell points to a song titled “Juliet, His Love”, written for a man to present as an anniversary gift to his wife. Another commission is a song for a child with special needs. Another is for a person whose sibling has committed a terrible crime, and wanted a song to help in their healing
process.

When the composition is completed, he records his version of it and sends the client a digital audio file, along with a postcard verifying the ownership of the rights to the song. Unless the client decides to share the song, it could very well only be heard by the songwriter and the client. Ever. 

It’s a unique idea, but not totally out of the ordinary. After all, musicians have created music for specific purposes for years, whether it be for television or radio commercials or theme songs for programs. And visual artists often work on commission. 

“Artists are for hire,” he agrees. “We all want to work for money. I think art has been put in a kind of ivory tower where people think it isn’t accessible to them. They will buy a $4,000 couch but the idea of buying a $4,000 painting is anathema to them. People have a right to spend their discretionary money on pieces that make them feel beautiful, or special, or speak to them about their lives.”

In a follow-up tweet this past weekend, Campbell pointed out that for him to make $1,000 via the popular streaming service Spotify, a song would have to stream 400,000 times. It highlights the inequity between the intrinsic and financial values the average listener or fan places on music. 

“We have to be less precious with our art and share more,” he explains. “We have to be more democratic about it, and not resent ourselves for making something exclusive. We give something value by making it rare. With streaming, songs have become too common, and maybe we have to go back and rethink that.”

Campbell says the bespoke songwriting venture is kind of a perfect gig for him, as he’s never considered himself a confessional songwriter. 

“This isn’t for everyone,” says Campbell. “A lot of people have to write from personal experience. Art, for them, is a kind of exorcism of their own stuff. I’m much more interested in art being a way to tell other people’s stories, finding empathy and understanding because you are looking outward at other people and how they can relate to your own life.”

The 49-year-old doesn’t ask for money up front from his clients. That eases the pressure on him to deliver within a strict timeline. It also allows him to spend some time on his many other projects, including a new record with Stars, scheduled to be released this May, their first since 2017’s
There is No Love In Fluorescent Light. 

Campbell is also one of the owners, along with Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo and Our Lady Peace singer Raine Maida, of cannabis company LOOP/POOL, which funnels five per cent of its proceeds into a new philanthropic effort for struggling musicians called POOL/FUND. 

In addition, he hosts a weekly podcast about art, culture and politics called Soft Revolution with fellow Canadian actor Ali Momen, and is currently doing sound design and music for a production of playwright Ellen Close’s Cipher at Calgary’s Vertigo
Theatre. 

He comes by his tireless work ethic honestly.

“My father (the late Canadian actor Douglas Campbell) taught me to hustle in this game,” Campbell laughs. I never want to feel like I’m waiting for someone else to make my destiny for me. You have to be your own creator, your own engine, as daunting and exhausting as that may be sometimes. At the end of the day the institutions won’t be there for you, you have to be there for
yourself.”

With the way the idea took off so quickly,
Campbell says this is something he can see himself continuing to do once the arts world, hit so hard by the pandemic, gets back to normal, providing he can
fit it into his hectic schedule. 

And he doesn’t rule out the idea of a collection of his commissioned compositions one day seeing the light of day as an official release. Campbell would have to ask permission from his clients to make the music public, of course. But a brief look at his Twitter account would give one the idea that many of them would be happy to share their stories via Campbell’s songs. 

Stars fans would surely be interested in hearing the results of his labours.