The Canadian country music scene’s Bass Player of the Year is a familiar face around Westlock, having taught guitar lessons here and occasionally performed around town.
Travis Switzer was named to the Canadian Country Music Awards’ All-Star Band, recognizing the hard work he’s been doing all year. It’s the fifth time he’s been nominated, and the second consecutive year he’s won.
“It’s always a surprise. It’s kind of the last thing on my mind, to be honest,” he said. “In the music business you’ve got enough going on in your head, it’s hard to think about being nominated or winning awards.”
The past year has been a busy one for Switzer, who played with some well-known Canadian acts like Chad Brownlee, Jason Blaine and One More Girl, but he spent most of the year touring with Grammy award winner Deric Ruttan — who was also honoured with a CCMA for Songwriter of the Year.
“It’s a pretty decent list of people I’ve played with in the course of the year,” he said.
Switzer used to be known around Westlock as a guitar teacher, but as his music career picked up some steam he had to give it up out of fairness to his students; being away on tour for weeks at a time makes weekly lessons impossible.
“My kids and their parents were wonderful and understanding,” he said. “The last couple years it was a real challenge to make that work, and it wasn’t fair to the kids.”
Touring as a musician is basically a full-time gig for Switzer, who spent several months of the year on tour last year, including one five-and-a-half week stretch with Ruttan. He’s currently on a tour of the Northwest Territories with Juno-winning Aboriginal artist Leela Gilday.
“I spend a good chunk of my time on the road,” he said. “It’s full-time.”
He’s been so busy recently, in fact, that he spent the week of the CCMAs running around performing — including a Gibson Guitars show that coincided with the awards — so he didn’t have much time to take it all in.
“Without musicians, there wouldn’t be any events happening so you’re kind of running around all week,” he said. “I wasn’t even able to attend my own awards show this year, because I was playing a show.”
His wife, R.F. Staples music teacher Anne-Marie Switzer, accepted the award on his behalf.
While playing in a backup band tends to keep Switzer out of the spotlight, he doesn’t see that as necessarily a bad thing. He’s not interested in doing any singing or songwriting, but rather enjoys his supporting role.
“I’m not a solo guy,” he said. “My wife and I, Anne-Marie, she’s a wonderful singer and we do our own thing sometimes mostly for fun, but that’s about as far into the creative process as I get.”
That said, he’s nonetheless thrust into the role of creator and having to use his left brain more often than not when he finds himself in the studio and has to improvise his own bass line on the fly.
“There’s certainly a creative aspect to it,” Switzer said.
