More About Me

If you're here, you're interested to read a bit more about me. Cool! I’ll try not to write a memoir and just hit the main points, but buckle up for a not-super-short bio…

I grew up in a relatively healthy Mennonite Christian family in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and had a pretty good upbringing, overall. I met my amazing wife, Nancy, at a Bibleschool in Germany of all places (she was from Windsor, Ontario, thankfully), we got married a year later, and a year after that moved out to Abbotsford, British Columbia in 1994 with our 2 cats for Nancy's job teaching ESL and for me to pretty much be a music bum for a few years, teaching a bit of guitar, working a few odd jobs, and then having the challenge and privilege of being home with our first 2 boys while Nancy continued to work and pay our bills. I began to work more for the church as a music pastor so our roles gradually flipped when our 2 daughters were born (yes, 4 kids, yikes!) and Nancy started her 20 yr in-the-home job of raising our kids with a bit of my help. I worked about 10 yrs for the church and had a great time playing music and helping lead a cool event called Love Abbotsford, which was an annual event when about 30+ Abbotsford churches got together on one day to do “random acts of kindness” like giving away Cokes and hotdogs and washing folks’ cars, to *show* the love of God instead of just talking about it. We then gathered in a church or outside for a musical worship celebration which we actually recorded in 2001 that I also helped put together. Good times!

But then our church hit some hard times with a major split (that we called “the kerfuffle”) in 2006 when we went from about 900 folks attending to about 300 in one week. Yeah, crazy stuff. But I learned a ton through that time which was also most likely one of the factors that had me start to ask some questions about how we went about “doing church” along with theological questions too. This was near the beginning of many years of re-thinking a lot of stuff. I resigned from that job in 2008, did a few interim things, and then got my commercial trucking license and started hauling lumber for a living. I actually loved it, since I got to listen to music and a bunch of podcasts, like The Liturgists, which was super life-giving as it was a couple of guys asking a lot of the same questions about church and theology that I was asking, and I no longer felt so alone in it. I hauled lumber for 5 years, and then switched to hauling fuel which I continue to enjoy.

But music did go on the backburner during those years after the church job. It wasn’t until I stumbled on the amazing music of the Dave Matthews Band and started trying to learn a few of their songs, that music came alive for me again. I’ve been a lifelong Rush fan, but never thought to learn much of their stuff because it’s pretty complicated and Geddy Lee sings in another stratosphere. But I call DMB an acoustic version of Rush with similar-but-different complex music, but Dave sings more in my register and plays acoustic guitar. Back in the day it might take me 10-20 min to learn a new song for church. Learning a DMB song would take me HOURS just to learn the guitar part (even with the shortcut of youtube tutorials!) and then many more hours to sing and play at the same time. But I LOVED it. I learned about 20 of their songs over several months. And then I also realized I could come up with acoustic versions of some Rush songs, which I’ve really loved learning and playing live as well.

But the extra cool thing about learning these cover tunes was that it inspired me to write my own stuff with their (and others’) influences and although I enjoyed a bit of my songwriting (mostly for church) in the past, pretty much for the first time I started to REALLY enjoy playing my own songs (Solitaire was the first of this season).

Which leads to present day when I’ve been getting out in the community to play more, like coffeehouses, breweries, etc. but I’ve also played in our local prison which has been a very meaningful experience.  And I’ve also realized I have enough new songs to work on an album that will hopefully help get me out there even more to celebrate life and goodness and hopefully bring some joy to folks in these turbulent times.

Of course I’m into stuff beyond music. Top of the list is my wife and adult kids who I LOVE hanging out with and am so thankful for. And mountain biking has been a HUGE thing for me for the last 20+ years. We live in a beautiful part of the world, with several worldclass trail networks within a 10-30 minute drive from my house, not to mention amazing stuff in Vancouver, Squamish and Whistler (only 1 to 2.5 hours away). Definitely spoiled! So grunting up, then careening down our amazing mountains 2-3 times a week has helped keep me healthy and sane. (Though some might think the things I do on a bike are a bit insane…)

Well that about covers it. Thanks for staying with me to the end! Got questions? Send me an email at boesemusic@gmail.com.