No Genre Necessary: T.O.’s Colin Munroe Making Eclectic Sound Heroic
Posted December 3, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Colin Munroe does a lot of singing for an unsung hero.
But that’s the Ottawa-turned-Toronto native’s love, playing the underdog and making ‘genreless’ music that just might propel him to the next level as an independent recording artist.
Munroe – whose impressively eclectic mixtape Colin Munroe Is The Unsung Hero led to a hot set at Kensington’s The Boat Tuesday night – is only now making a musical footprint, stepping out of his comfort zone and showing off some new friendships ahead of his debut album release slated for spring 2009.
Joell Ortiz, Black Milk, Skyzoo, Saukrates, Dallas Austin and MIMS are just a few of the names appearing on the project in various capacities, causing more than a few people in the biz to sit up and take notice.
So just who is Colin Munroe and how did a kid from the Ottawa Valley who was home schooled reach the so-called verge?
“It was a situation of having a bunch of instruments lying around and no one playing them, so why not, you know?” he explained out in the cold on Augusta Avenue Tuesday night.
“It was kind of a nice way to escape, just put the headphones on and play an instrument.”
Which is still kind of the way he handles his shows and recordings, using minimal support and as many things that make sound as possible to hit listeners with the sort of stuff only the Internet age could facilitate.
“I think that my music is a product of my generation,” he acknowledged. “It might be the first generation that’s truly genreless. It used to be that you were a rock kid, a rap kid, now there’s everything on everyone’s playlists so I think what you’re going to start to see is a real blurring genres.”
Never mind starting to see it. It’s everywhere. Like Munroe might well soon be.
On Wednesday he was off to L.A. for a set at the legendary Viper Room and despite the fact that Tuesday’s was his first show in Toronto since January the fledgling musician had little trouble drawing a solid crowd.
So what’s up with the unsung hero thing, Colin, and how’d you pull all those artists onto your tracks?
“It’s really just a persona that I think everyone adopts when they’ve always been the underdog and they have to work hard and prove themselves,” the still fresh-faced artist explains.
“(As for the cameos) I just reached out, said, ‘Hey I’m interested in trying to do something with you guys are you interested?’ … a bunch of them were.”
And now so too are a bunch of fans, though Munroe prefers to call them ‘friends.’
The upcoming tour and release of Don’t Think Less Of Me will likely bring Colin Munroe a lot more of both.
But please, give the young man a chance. He admits this coming tour is his “first real jaunt,” and the album, though full of promise, won’t have the same sort of name recognition.
Which is probably why Munroe chose to dub the coming full-length what he did.
“I’m just figuring things out,” he admits. “I’m in process, not the same person I was six months ago and I won’t be the same person in six months from now … but hopefully there’s still something worth saying in that process.”
And if that doesn’t work, he might try singing it. And quite heroically so at that.
