Charismatic. Flamboyant. Compelling.
They're words that accurately describe the larger-than-life onstage persona of the man born Ryan Corrigan, and known to us as Hawksley Workman.
The singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist's live performances draw from the gifted artist's theatrical training, and from an innate desire to ham it up.
And Workman makes no apologies for his 'Mak shau!' approach to performing.
"The shoe-gazing grunge era did very little for me even when it was happening; it does even less for me now that it's gone," Workman explains.
"I think I'm very much an artist but I also think I'm very much a performer. The two don't cancel each other out, in my opinion. They just enhance each other.
"It is your job to put on a show. The alleged great saviours of rock of the grunge era presented this idea that if you add entertainment to the music somehow you're decreasing the artistic importance of it. I never really bought into that, and still don't.
"I think it's my job to take people on a journey; if I didn't do that I personally wouldn't be having a good time and I wouldn't have the kind of live following I have."
That following is loyal, and ever-expanding. (Witness the fact that even a decidedly-modest show such as Workman's return to Ottawa this weekend has twice been relocated to a larger venue.)
It's also well-earned, for not only is he a dynamic performer, but Workman is also a songwriter of uncommon ability -- a reality that was arguably obscured amid the bombastic presentation of his 2003 release Lover/Fighter. The recently released, low-key Treeful of Starling, recorded mostly at home and featuring sparse instrumentation, removes all doubt. Restrained, melodic gems like Rain and Goodbye to Radio are the work of an accomplished tunesmith.
Of course, straying from the world of balls-out rock may inevitably mean limited airplay for Treeful. Or, the optimistic Workman insists, it may not.
"I think every song on this record is a hit," Workman says. "I think I only ever write hits, when it comes right down to it, because I've never gone out to try and reinvent the wheel. I love the structure of songwriting. I love pop music. I love verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus. And I've always been surprised when people say, 'Oh, he's an eccentric,' or, 'He's writing with an esoteric style.' I've never figured that out, because I've always been very true and honest to the simple pop structures.
"Are there any hits on Treeful of Starling? The whole record's a hit. Is it fashionable? It's not particularly fashionable. But sometimes with the way the world is becoming tightly corporatized you have to tell the corporate machine that it's fashionable. If you're able to get the corporate machine to believe it's fashionable, it is fashionable."
