Hamilton, ON blues-rock outfit Thomas Duxbury and New Mother Nature share “Istanbul” – an energetic, riff-driven release that pairs upbeat, sun-soaked guitar work with deeply melancholic reflection. Equal parts homesick postcard and blues-rock catharsis, the track captures the ache of being split between places, people, and past lives.

“I wrote the song when I was living abroad and feeling homesick,” Duxbury explains. “Before I left for Scotland, I was standing in my driveway talking with my buddy Bruce – who plays keys on this track/bass with us live – and we chatted about potentially doing a trip to Istanbul while I was in Europe. That’s where the line I’m leaving but my heart’s still full, I can’t wait to see you in Istanbul came from. Fast forward about a month – I’m sitting in my dorm room with my guitar, playing what eventually became the riff for this song. I’m writing some words about being alone, feeling away from home… but I can’t find a chorus. Then that memory of the driveway comes to me and I think, ‘that’s the line.'”

1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically? 

I feel like there is always this feeling of wishing you were somewhere else. Even now being back I miss the friends I made over there. Once you live away you basically (to be dramatic) doom yourself to a life of missing friends and family. With that said, it also creates the opportunity to meet new amazing people and make new friends. That hole in your heart somehow finds a way to fill itself with wonderful experiences and people. In this example, the wonderful music community of Aberdeen Scotland. Shoutout to my friends over there. In a different experience of mine in living in BC, the wonderful people I met working for Sea to Sky Parks/BC Parks. Shoutout to my Sea to Sky friends! Now, all that said, I wrote this song when I was living abroad in Aberdeen Scotland. I was sitting in my flat picking my guitar my first week there and I was feeling homesick. Wondering if maybe I made a wrong decision or something. It was a cold rainy October late afternoon on a Saturday. I’m thinking back to saying goodbye to my good friend and bandmate Bruce Cole and we’re discussing the idea of potentially doing a trip to Istanbul at some point. And I’m thinking of this line that Bruce had said “I’m leaving but my heart is still full, I can’t wait to see you in Istanbul”. And it clicks. It works with what I am playing at that moment, it works with what I’m feeling at this time. The rest of this tune kind of just came together from there. Following this, I decided to go on an adventure in town! I end up going to this local club thing with a DJ playing top 40s and like some first years or something. To be honest it wasn’t really my thing. I leave… I start walking to the bust stop, almost accepting defeat. But alas! I hear some punk music in the distance, and I think back to something my friend and fellow musician Jeremias said, “when you are lost in a new city you must follow the music”. So! I do! I sneak my way into this punk show, meet some wonderful people that I end up going on a bar crawl with. End up at this place called Krakatoa! And this place is magic. Like a neon tiki pirate punk bar. I ended up finding my way home this evening! The next night! I see that this Krakatoa place is doing an open mic, so I carry my ol’ Stratocaster there and do my best at ripping some tunes. Get invited to hang with some kind folks who eventually ended up working on some upcoming projects that are to be announced. And yeah, this experience I feel perfectly embodies this feeling of the world presenting these experiences so long as you are open. The other side of it too is that I’m always here. I have a line in this tune, “don’t hesitate to call my name from the bottom of a bottle”. Life gets low sometimes and it’s hard to forget that there is love everywhere. I left, my heart was still full, and I cannot wait to see those I care about again. But, there is love everywhere. I am so happy to have these opportunities to live these new experiences and meet such wonderful people along the way. Easy to forget sometimes that although life can be low and painful sometimes there is love everywhere.

2. What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)? 

I wanted to film this at the Hamilton airport for a number of reasons. I feel like I have such an emotional connection to this place from going to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum as a kid when my dad used to volunteer there. The number of spontaneous adventures I’ve gone on from that airport. When I used to have an old pickup truck, I used to bring my dates there to watch planes land and take off. Wondering where people are going or coming from. I wouldn’t say there was much of a story to this video, it’s more of just like a “oh wow this is kind of a neat shot” kind of gorilla videography with some lyric edits. But this place and everything to me I feel fosters such an emotional connection. I feel the video expresses this idea of travel and motion just via its setting basically. 

3. What was the process of making this video?

Yeah, so my buddy Dan Sullivan and I took my old high 8 VHS camera out there right before a sunset and filmed as much as we could before the battery died. So here we are, lining up this first shot with the plane in the background and all. And aside from a car driving by and giving me a weird look and honking (hopefully in support lol) we get the perfect shot! This is the main one you see featured in the video. Then, we look back… The trunk of my car was open the whole time… But its okay, we were racing this sunset, and the shot was too perfect anyways so we keep this open trunk in the video. Get our other shots looking for some cool locations or b footage to shoot yada yada… Decide we should get a shot of a plane landing. So I load up flight radar and find a jet. We are driving around trying to find what runway it will be landing on. Feels like some proper gorilla filmmaking. We get a spot, and boom! Battery dies… so okay great we have the main stuff we need here though. Overall, a successful day. I drop off Dan, and I drive home. I open the camera to take the tape out and forget that the battery is dead. Immediately, the cassette starts spitting out all the tape. At this point I’m thinking well… we’re going to have to redo all that. But the winter is about to start coming and we won’t get these fall themes… Luckily I was able to find a spot that repaired high 8 tapes so they were able to get it all sorted. They were confused why I didn’t want to also digitize it though. I was explaining I like to do some analog editing effects and stuff. You’ll see some glitchy type cuts and such. That’s why I digitize at home. Anyways I was able to get it all sorted and it came out great. We got an absolute magical sunset too. I recently lost a good friend to cancer pretty much within the same week as this was filmed. I like to think this sunset was some sort of gift from him maybe.