Forest Blakk sits down for a One On One Session at City Winery New York on February 7th, 2018. For more info visit: https://www.forestblakk.com Audio & Video by: Ehud Lazin
Setlist:
Tread Lightly
Love Me
Where I First Found You
Forest Blakk is the kind of nimble, resourceful songwriter who can take tried and true terrain like love and etch new facets in its surface. Each of his piano- and acoustic-driven songs is a gem that gleams with truth and vulnerability. There are ballads about loss, whether it’s letting go of someone you’re still in love with (his debut single “Love Me”) or physically losing someone through death; the reincarnation of love (“Where I First Found You”); feeling love through lust; or what it’s like to stand on an altar, take someone’s hand, and pledge to love them forever. “It's not as simple as just putting words on paper for me,” Blakk says. “I cannot give you a shit line. I cannot give you a throwaway lyric. It has to connect. Every single line in every song has to mean something.”
That his songs are as open-hearted and hopeful as they are is a testament to Blakk’s humanity and his personal resilience given what he’s been through in his life. He was born in Montreal and his early years were spent with his mother, who had Blakk at 17 and struggled with addiction, and his stepfather, a notorious drug dealer. “They were not equipped to be parents at all,” he says. Blakk can tell you hair-raising tales of his childhood, including an assassination attempt on his father on the family’s front stoop, rooms full of cash, and moving around constantly, including time spent in Jamaica and Florida, where the family moved to evade child services when Blakk’s teachers in Canada discovered the physical abuse his father had inflicted on him.
