Ian William Craig reflects on a complicated life on the emotive, ambient “Weight”

“Grampa had been afflicted with dementia for the last ten years or so of his life. Before this time, he also struggled with alcoholism, albeit in a functional way. As a result, our relationship before he began to fade was a difficult one: he was a traditional man and didn’t take very kindly to some of my choices, and his opinions would be rather forcefully expressed. His traditional nature also meant that since I was the only son in the family, I was somehow responsible for carrying on a perceived legacy. I admit I was complicit in this too, being young and brash at the time. These things combined to foment a great deal of conflict. I bring this up because it was at his house that this record was made: he was living in a care facility at the time and my parents gifted me with two weeks in his empty condo to make a record in. Because life is an unpredictable thing, the day after I arrived, having trekked all my gear across the province and set everything up in the living room, they called at 7 in the morning to say that they were flying in too because Grampa had been moved to palliative care, his lungs filled with fluid as a result of the smoke. He held on for a week or so before passing away, drifting in and out of memories both true and false with people who may or may not have been present in his room at the time. My parents convinced me to keep recording. This meant the whole thing became a document of where we all found ourselves at that time, but this song specifically is a song for my grandfather made in his own home on his piano. To still find mutual love and respect there even after all that happened, and to see that a lot of what did go on was as a result of misshapen expressions of those feelings was humbling.”