We’re all yearning for good news after the year we’ve had. Camosun alumni Michael Wilford found just that when he opened up his email one morning recently and found out that he has made it into the finals of the International Songwriting Competition’s blues category for his inspiring song “Scotch.”
Over 26,000 songs were submitted to the contest; the finalists are 1 percent of the total submissions. There are 14 songs in the blues category. Aside from the winner from each category, there is also a grand prize winner.
The panel of judges for the competition includes Tom Waits, Dua Lipa, members of Coldplay, and many others. All the songs also get entered into the People’s Voice Awards, where the public can vote for their favourite song.
Wilford—who graduated with a diploma in Contemporary Music Performance in 2018—says that “Scotch” was written during periods of change for him.
“The first lyrics that I wrote that actually made it on to the song, I wrote in 2015, right before I moved to Victoria to go to Camosun,” he says. “I think it was in August or July of 2015. So I was thinking about being away from home, thinking about missing my family but knowing that I was going to be pursuing something that I loved, so that it was all worth it. That was written in that period of change, and then I properly wrote it with my friend Joshua at school in 2017-2018, which was the year that I finished school, and then it sat until the next big period of change, which was the pandemic. So it came from those three periods, which were big moments in my life.”
Once the pandemic hit, that was the final push Wilford needed to record the song.
“With music shutting down in 2020 because of the pandemic, I pulled the song out again, called up Ben Erikson, who is the mixer and the engineer for the song, and we did another version of it, added some more guitars with Chris Lloyd, who is a local performer, and then I felt like the song was ready to come out. So it really took the world shutting down for me to feel like I was ready to step out on my own. Before that, I’m a drummer, so normally I just play for other artists.”
Wilford says that the song’s musical origins come from a humble place.
“The main idea of the song really came from when my friend Josh bought this $10 acoustic guitar and was trying to learn some blues riffs on it,” he says. “Him and I were hanging out and he just started playing the riff that ended up in the song, and I loved it. I just started singing over it.”
Wilford—who says he is “heavily inspired” by bands like Arctic Monkeys “and, at the time, some of the big songs on the radio back in 2017, songs like ‘Way Down We Go’ by Kaleo.”
“Bands like that always had big influences on me, but, really, the sound came from that riff that Josh was playing. I’d been sitting on the lyrics and suddenly I was like, ‘This is perfect. Let’s make it happen,’” he says.
Wilford says Camosun helped shape his career in the music industry.
“[The Victoria Conservatory of Music] actually hired me straight out of college as a junior faculty member,” says Wilford. “I’ve been working there the last couple of years teaching drums and the Rock Band program. It’s been really amazing, partly because it’s a job in the field I wanted to work in, but also because I’ve been able to work in an environment where I’m surrounded by my teachers from Camosun, the people who mentored me and the people who taught me pretty much everything I know. So I get to see them every day, we stay in touch, they support me, and they help me continue to develop, which has been really amazing.”
The contest winners will be announced in late April or early May, according to the contest’s website. For more information on the contest, and to vote in the People’s Voice Award, see songwritingcompetition.com.