Conversations with Bryn Scott-Grimes

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Bryn Scott-Grimes.

Hi Bryn, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
It all began on the living room floor, where I was born on a beautiful, bright May morning in the green rolling hills of Waterloo, Ontario, in a neighborhood called Westmount. I was a week or so late beyond my expected due date. My parents said when I was first born, I refused to open my eyes and looked like a cross between an eggplant and a truck driver. I suppose I was unhappy with the transition from warmth and safety to a world of bright lights & loud sounds. I must have opened my ears up instead, though, as all of my earliest memories are linked to music.

Shortly after my birth, my parents gifted me a wooden music box with three wind-up songs in it – “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” “Lara’s Theme,” and one other tune I don’t know the name of. Listening to these melodies as a toddler is the earliest memory I have. I also remember dancing naked to Peter, Paul, & Mary’s “Too Much of Nothing” when I was 3, though I may remember watching the VHS home video of me doing that rather than the event itself. My parents had a stellar and widely varied CD collection that would go on rotation every day for dinner. I came to associate good food, family, and music as a sort of power trio, I guess – something which, to this day, I still cherish and value.

I was a strong, athletic child, but I also had severe asthma, forcing me to carry puffers around everywhere. It landed me in the hospital on multiple occasions, including my worst bout in grade five, which almost killed me. I was in the hospital on a respirator for three days, and my whole grade five class wrote hand-written letters to me wishing me a safe and full recovery. It is a paradoxical miracle that I now make a living with my lungs as a virtuoso wind instrumentalist and singer. I am very blessed for it, and I give back to the community by inspiring others to discover the flipside of their great weaknesses and by teaching the world how to breathe one riff at a time.

I was first inspired to pick up guitar after watching a band of schoolmates perform at an assembly at the age of 13. I ended up joining that same band six months later, and we recorded in the lead guitarist’s dad’s professional studio. I was hooked. A few years later, I wrote my first three songs for a history class assignment where you could make ‘anything you want’ about ancient Mesopotamia. I wrote “Gladiator Blues,” “Mournin’ Mesopotamia,” and “Born a Minoan,” and made recordings for my assignment and got an A+.

In my mid-teens, I spent a summer working for my uncles in Texas. At the time, I was playing a lot of blues guitar, so the sound of harmonica was ever-present. I ended up making a trade with my uncle to scrape and paint the porch in exchange for a set of 12 multi-colored plastic harmonicas. Like guitar, I was hooked immediately and began experimenting with home recordings using a shotgun mic and Adobe audition shortly thereafter. After less than a year of playing, I recorded a cover of Little Walter’s “Fast Boogie.”

Fast forward to my late teens – I went to York University for music and graduated with honors in 2012 after a thorough and diverse musical education covering everything from world music, counterpoint and harmony, and improvisation to avant-garde composers of the 20th century, music of the Middle East, Celtic ensemble, funk, soul, R&B, and rap and beyond. I really enjoyed my time there, though I can’t say it prepared me for life as a musician in the music industry!

After graduating, I started performing solo, in a duo, and as a harmonica sideman for various songwriters. I also started teaching harmonica for extra side cash by founding The Bryn Scott-Grimes Harmonica School. I hung a wooden upholstered sign outside my Ossington Street bedroom. I taught thousands of lessons in my bedroom, where I propped my mattress up against the wall and set up two chairs and a whiteboard in the middle of the room. During this time, I wrote and recorded music fervently, including self-producing an entire album in a washroom that was just big enough for a drum set.

In my early twenties, I also worked at Goodlife for a stint as a personal trainer, and I still take on clients part-time here in Nashville as a certified NASM trainer and nutrition coach. Music is and always will be my first and foremost passion. Fitness is my 2nd.

In my mid-twenties, I co-founded a professional recording studio called Silverthorn Studios with one of my best friends and bandmates, Taylor Abrahamse. The studio was a huge undertaking and ended up becoming a hub for emerging artists, musicians, producers, and engineers for seven years. We even eventually attracted some celebrity clients like Kiefer Sutherland, Jim Cuddy, and Eddie Kramer. Unfortunately, the landlords needed to sell the building in 2022, so we had to close up shop and go our separate ways.

I had lived in Toronto for my entire twenties, but after the pandemic, a breakup, and the loss of Silverthorn Studios in 2022, I really needed a clean start, which is why I headed south and eventually landed in Nashville. Since my dad was from New Mexico and my mom was from Ontario, my sibling and I have always had the benefit of being dual citizens, being able to freely move and work in both Canada and the United States. I spent the majority of my youth growing up in Canada, but I also lived in Santa Fe, Boulder, and Nederland, Colorado, as a kid.

How I ended up in Nashville specifically was an impulsive roll of the dice, but a great decision nonetheless. It wasn’t planned ahead of time, but rather an instant decision that took place when I was living in Asheville in my Nissan Cube that I had converted into a 1-man camper. I had lived in it for three months and had hit my limit of car life – I wasn’t doing car life because I was homeless, but rather just to explore and get to know myself on a deeper level, away from everything and everyone I knew.

I remember the exact moment I decided to move to Nashville, standing in the parking lot of a Barnes & Noble on the outskirts of Asheville. I just got in my car and drove straight to Nashville. I started looking for apartments right away. It took me about two weeks to find one I liked, and I found out later that I had chosen the most prominent songwriting neighborhood in the world – Music Row – by accident.

We all face challenges, but would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
110% smooth peanut butter.

NOT, lol!

Despite my struggles with asthma as a child, which was a major challenge, my childhood was pretty smooth and happy. I’ve found coming of age and transitioning from a young adult to an adult-adult to be much harder. Growing up, I was close with my immediate family, and we all had a way of balancing each other out and being there for each other. I spent a lot of time traveling with my family in the US on road trips, daydreaming, sketching, and scheming about how to become a professional cartoonist when I grew up. I was an easy-going, chill kid who got along with everyone and did well in school, so it was pretty smooth sailing for a while.

Things got a little rough for me, starting middle school around the age of 13, which was coincidentally the same year that music ‘came into my life’ for good. Socially, I found myself somewhat ostracized and started to withdraw into my own creative world, which has served me well for a long time, but even to this day, I find it difficult to ‘get out there’ and be super social and active in the scene as musicians are expected to be in so many ways. Left to my own devices, I’d just spend all day songwriting and practicing my instruments, then take a walk in nature, which doesn’t fare well in an extroverted world built on productivity, coupled with endless, bombastic social media.

I’ve also faced many challenges that were ultimately good for me and have helped me forge strong character traits that I’m sure will pay off for years to come. For example, except for my brief stint as a personal trainer at Goodlife, I was self-employed for my entire twenties and still am to this day. It has been an ongoing challenge learning how to make ends meet whilst launching a music career, staying creative, healthy, and happy, and maintaining and nurturing relationships, both familial, romantic, and otherwise. Building and launching a professional recording studio in Toronto was a massive series of obstacles that lasted seven years – too many to describe here.

I’ve had a handful of significant long-term relationships that all ended in heartbreak, too, but now, looking back on it, I just feel like I’ve paid my dues in the love department, so I’m ready for ‘the one’ – haha (if it even exists). You really have to pay your dues in every area of life: finances, career, relationships, creativity, spirituality, health. They’re all kind of the same in a way – each requires you to ‘tend the garden’ and take big risks and overcome hardship in order to grow and get to the next level, and for some reason, it’s impossible to keep them all at 100% all the time.

You have to let some things get out of balance to grow in other categories. It feels unfair, but at the same time, we’re not machines or superheroes, so it makes sense.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar with what you do, what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a professional harmonica player, guitarist, and singer-songwriter. I write songs that mix musical virtuosity, idiosyncratic exploration, playfulness & lyrical craft. I am influenced by a huge array of genres from every decade of the 20th and 21st centuries, but most heavily by folk, rock, blues, baroque pop, jazz, hip hop, old Broadway musicals, and the Great American Songbook. If I had to pick five artists I look up to the most, they would be Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Little Walter, Ella Fitzgerald, and John Mayer.

One of my life’s primary pursuits is to write the best songs I possibly can and to find the audience that needs to hear each song the most. The best songs are simultaneously universally relatable yet refreshing and unique in some way, whether it be the lyrics, the production, or the way all the elements combine that hasn’t been done quite the same way before. My aim is to fully nurture and actualize my artistic potential and musicianship and to write songs that make me and other people feel empowered, lively, creative, hopeful, strong, awake, and explorative if my tunes end up standing the test of time, without compromising my artistic vision or bending to the whims of commercial musical constraints – even better!

Overall, I’m really proud of how consistently I’ve nurtured and pushed my creativity – how much I’ve mastered and explored the harmonica and guitar and how far I’ve come with my voice, which I’m still working on but which has improved by leaps and bounds. The musicianship is one of those endless horizons I just love to crack away at, day in and day out. You can always get better, and there’s no limit – it’s incredible.

I’ve had a few really inspiring career moments too – last year I landed my first 3 sync placements in a Canadian feature film called “Stealing the Sky” written by Marie Dame and directed by the original Anne of Green Gables actress, Megan Follows. I got the chance to act on screen in a bit part as myself playing harmonica in an alleyway with a homeless woman dancing to my harp boxing (harmonica+beatboxing). After the filming, they needed more music for the score, so I sent them a handful of my original songs, and they ended up using them all over the soundtrack, including the feature song during the credits. The film hasn’t been released yet, but you can find it on IMDb. They’re currently seeking an international film festival for their debut.

I’m also proud of myself for sticking to my guns and following my passion no matter what. I’m blessed to have discovered mine early on – some people never do, or they do, but they’re afraid to do anything about it. It is absolutely as difficult as people warn you about, but when you’re all in 100% until death do you part, there’s a comfort in all the messiness, uncertainty, and anxiety that comes with a life in the arts.

What sets me apart is my sense of play and exploration. I have a knack for coming up with instrumental lines that are truly fresh – they don’t sound so derivative or copy-cattish as other artists. That’s not to say I don’t borrow and steal like crazy as all artists do, but as a general rule of thumb, I tend to lead with my inventive instincts, which I sharpen on a daily basis through improvisation, songwriting, practice, and philosophy.

It’s also nearly impossible for me to do something ingenuine just for attention. In the music industry and especially in the age of social media, there are a lot of people who fall into the trap of creating just to be noticed or to be financially successful, without any actual inherent enjoyment in what they’re doing. Since a very young age, I’ve just done what I feel like doing when it comes to art, which sounds so simple but is actually really hard to do, especially if you’re also trying to make a career out of it.

The pressures to create something commercial are extremely strong and can become an almost unconscious driver for a lot of artists, and lead a lot of people who are supposedly “doing what they love’ into unknowingly doing what they can tolerate whilst making it appear as if they love it.” The best art is born of real, highly emotional experiences, not the desire for someone to like your song, no matter how well-produced or clever it is. There are certain songs I like that are more contrived or calculated, but they’re exceptional to the rule.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I like the heart, charisma, community, and respect for musicians here in Nashville. Coming from a much larger city where you’d expect there to be a more flourishing music scene, I was delightfully surprised to discover that a smaller, more passionate, and connected population makes for better comradery, accessibility, and overall excitement when it comes to music.

There’s also a genuine sense of hope here – a sense that you can really make something of yourself with a lot of grit, hard work, risk-taking, and cooperation. In a lot of other cities, I just couldn’t get a whiff of hope – like it had abandoned the city, leaving behind a ghost town of vanilla lifestyle dwellers.

As for what I like least – the poverty. Though it’s not as present downtown, when you find yourself in certain neighborhoods, it’s evident there’s a lot of social support still lacking here. It’s not as bad as places like LA, but there are still way too many destitute individuals here that need help.

I could also do without all the potholes and broken bumpers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brynscottgrimes.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brynscottgrimes/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brynmusic/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/brynscottgrimes
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/bryn-scott-grimes-1
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2Q9m4cAsJEI3sV0OKsoqPS

Image Credits
Laura E. Partain and Saajid Sam Motala