By Keith Walsh
As the COVID19 virus storms across the world, Belgian singer songwriter Gilles Snowcat checked in to give an update on how it’s affecting his creative and personal life.
It seems he’s taking it all in stride.
“I love turning s$%# into sugar,” he writes, “or most likely into wine, I can’t complain about playing music and drinking Korean soju with my lady, mostly compared to families that are now shattered, people struggling to survive, and cats and dogs and other pets left alone since their owners are sent to emergency or graveyard. My situation is quite fine, I think the biggest change is that I have time to put my rusty fingers at work on bass guitar — Bootsy Collins’ lines, which is tricky and fun, mostly for an untidy player like me. I’m also reading the biography of Ahmet Ertegün, big big man he was. Adaptation is easy, since it doesn’t change that much compared to how it was before, so there’s only little adaptation needed.”
Snowcat says he will release his new album, the follow up to 2015’s Nama Time and 2017’s Bareta, in September for sure, regardless. “Every event has an effect on creativity for sure,” he writes. “But once I’m behind the keys or the microphone, I don’t think of that virus at all. So it doesn’t influence me directly, I’m not gonna write a song about coronavirus for sure.”
I asked if he would release an update to his 2018 book The Rock Star Paradox, which puts a gonzo twist on the typical do it yourself manual for artists. The latest version is the 2019 update.
Snowcat replies: “There are no huge updates that would justify a 2020 version. The 2019 version has all the important features needed and can remain that way until something groundbreaking comes into the picture. And if you crave for more, get the memoirs of Keith Richards or everything written by Simon Napier-Bell, you have the lessons from the source.”
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