Shawn Hook, who just released his new EP, Rebuild, and, as a recent cancer survivor just sang the anthems for the Vancouver Canucks’ Hockey Fights Cancer Night, will headline a free concert this Saturday (Nov. 22) for Bloor-Yorkville’s official tree-lighting ceremony.
The Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter from Castlegar, British Columbia, told Now Toronto he enjoys playing outdoors in the cold.
“I do because when I’m on stage, I get such an adrenaline rush,” explained Hook. “The coldest show I played was in Mississauga New Year’s Eve, 2015. It was minus 22. It was awesome. I loved it.”
“Ask my guitar player and my bass player and they would tell you differently because with steel strings, it’s so cold, it’s like playing ice picks. It’s awful. I only play guitar on one song in this set, so I’ll be fine. Piano is tough too; fingers get cold. Just got to add heaters to the rider,” he laughed.
Hosted by TV host Rick Campanelli, the tree-lighting and concert in support of food bank Second Harvest takes on Cumberland Street and Village of Yorkville Park, from 5- 7 p.m. Local singer Storry, a Juno-nominee and runner-up on last year’s season of U.K.’s The Voice, is the opening act.
Hook, who told Now Toronto his set is 14 songs, some of them Christmas themed, played the same event six years ago.
“I’m going to come out and perform three songs first, and then the ceremony will kick off. Then, the opening act, then me again,” he said, adding, “I have a surprise guest artist joining me for a few songs as well.”
He won’t say which Christmas songs he’ll be performing, but of his original material one can expect he’ll include his global hits “Sound of Your Heart” and “Reminding Me” (the duet he cut with Vanessa Hudgens).
The two-time Juno Fan Choice who has released three full-length albums and four EPs since launching his music career in 2006, and has performed alongside The Weeknd, Shawn Mendes, The Chainsmokers and Camila Cabello, will also play songs from his brand new EP, Rebuild, a six-song collection which covers the extreme ups and downs he experienced in a short time span: a major break up, a shady business situation, a tonsil cancer diagnosis and recovery, and meeting and marrying the love of his life.
“Dear Mr. Brown” is the current focus track, a revenge or, on a less vindictive level, a karma/you’ll-get-yours song, which is not about a romantic relationship, although that would be the obvious assumption.
“A fan wrote me in the last couple weeks since the EP’s came out and she said she sends it to her ex every single day,” Hook laughed, “which is awesome but ‘Dear Mr. Brown’ wasn’t written about my ex. It’s about someone in the industry that was taking advantage of me. He uploaded unreleased music claiming he owned it. It’s kind of a Lou Pearlman character, and I’m one of many people he’s taken advantage of. And, as an artist, my biggest way to get back is through my pen, through writing, through creating art and putting it out to the world.”
A couple of Rebuild’s songs are about his previous girlfriend –the pained ballad of betrayal “Miss Me Too” and the deceptively upbeat “Lie.”
“The pandemic was challenging for a lot of people, career-wise, relationship-wise, and, for me, I ended a relationship after seven years,” Hook said. “It was really unfortunate how it ended. It was challenging. At the time, it was one of the worst things I’d ever been through and so all these raw emotions obviously came up.”
“So, there’s a couple of songs that I wrote during that era that I buried. When I wrote them, it was just therapeutic. I literally put them in a folder, recorded the rough demos, but when I was working on this new album, I wrote a bunch of new songs, but I found that folder. I was like, ‘Wow, there’s something here and it’d be a shame that they don’t ever come out.’ So, I revisited two of those songs and they made the album.”
Hook is an inspiration for those of us who have had a downpour of bad things happen to us. In 2023, he was diagnosed with tonsil cancer. Any cancer diagnosis is awful, but for a man who makes his living as a singer, it’s doubly scary.
“It’s crazy. It was the relationship, and then it was the career thing with this con artist, and then I was diagnosed with cancer, all within three years. I had to literally throw my hands in the sky. I was asking God, like, ‘Why? What’s going on?’” Hook said. “But once I did find out I had cancer, and I had gone through all this other stuff, I was like, ‘Ok, why not me?’ and I started just slowing down and taking things a day at a time.”
“I could barely talk, let alone sing, so I had to not stress about not being able to sing or pursue my craft and passion for music — which I’ve been so grateful and blessed to have done pretty much my whole life — but there was a serious threat that I wouldn’t be able to do it vocally, but also physically.”
“I have a paralyzed trap muscle, so I wasn’t sure how that was going to impact my piano playing, my guitar playing. And then the neuropathy from chemotherapy, and hearing loss from chemotherapy, all these little things. So, I was like, ‘maybe music—this is it,’ and I had to come to terms with that, which was so powerful in ways that I didn’t anticipate. It actually gave me strength. ‘You don’t need music to survive and be who you want to be. Music is a thing I do. It’s not who I am. And that was a very powerful thing to go through.”
“So now, yes, thank God I have my voice back. I play guitar. I play piano. I have some physical things, but I’m still here. That’s the most important thing.”
Hook released an EP last year called Beauty in Surrender after going into remission and now he’s got Rebuild, which, despite the negative sentiments of some of the songs, in the newer compositions show his hope for the future. One standout — which could potentially have the same impact as Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” — is “Always You,” which he wrote a year before marrying Kylie about their relationship from the beginning until now. She stuck by him when he was in the hospital and they truly found they were each other’s life partners.
Hook surprised her with it during a bait-and-switch first-dance song at their June wedding. There’s a beautiful private video of it which he plans to release in some form as the music video.
“I recorded it and produced it and got string arranger Dave Eggar — he’s done Lewis Capaldi records — to put strings on it. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is incredible.’ I finished producing it and then recorded a little decoy track. Originally, our first dance was going to be ‘A Thousand Years’ by Christina Perri, so I put that song in, but then I did a record scratch, like a fade out, and then a voiceover.”
“I said a little preamble and then it went into the song [‘Always You’], and we started dancing. Kylie was in tears, tears of joy. It was such a moment. I’m going to put the video out,” he added. “That’s the other thing about my writing, too, post-cancer. I am more hopeful now as a writer.”
It took a lot of work to get back to the point where he could sing on stage and that’s why his full show in Yorkville is special and why he — a recreational hockey player — was thrilled to be asked to sing the anthems on Nov. 8 at the NHL’s Hockey Fights Cancer Night. He told Now it was surreal.
“As a B.C. kid who grew up idolizing the Canucks, it was a true pinch-me moment. But as a cancer survivor, standing there on a night dedicated to raising awareness and celebrating others who’ve fought the same battle, it carried an even deeper meaning. It’s a night I’ll never forget, and I’m truly honoured to have been asked to be part of such a special event.”
Hook says his next goal is to go on tour in the spring.
