I never thought that my journey with cancer would lead me to where I am today. As a musician, I always believed that my passion for music was all I needed to succeed. But when I was diagnosed with cancer, everything changed.

My love for music started when I was just six years old. I began taking classical violin and piano lessons and never looked back. Music was my escape, my solace and my passion. I played in orchestras, bands, ensembles and theaters. But it wasn’t until I heard the album Neon Bible by Arcade Fire that my entire perspective on music changed. Suddenly, I wanted to write songs that were emotional, powerful and relatable. I fell in love with Norah Jones’ style and started writing music in that vein. Over time, my music evolved into a blend of Southern Rock and alt rock/pop.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, my world was turned upside down. I lost my job, my music focus and my sense of purpose. But I refused to let cancer define me. Instead, I channeled my energy into writing music. My new single, “Chill the fck out”, was born out of my need to calm my anxiety and panic. It became my mantra, and I hope it can help others who are going through the same thing.

The most important thing I’ve learned about songwriting is to let it come from the heart. I used to force songs, but now I sit down with my instrument and let the words and melodies flow naturally. I’ve written some of my best music since my diagnosis because I’m allowing myself to be who I truly want to be.

Cancer has taught me to prioritize what’s truly important in life: loved ones and passions. If I only have a limited amount of time on this earth, I want to spend it doing what brings me joy. That’s why I’m no longer worried about other people’s opinions of my music. I want to leave behind a legacy of songs that I’m proud of, regardless of how they’re received.

My advice to anyone going through a difficult time is to focus on yourself. Take care of yourself and don’t worry about what other people think. It’s all about you now. Surround yourself with people who love and support you, and do whatever it takes to feel good.

Learning to produce my own music has been a lifesaver during this time. It’s like learning to paint, but with music. The possibilities are endless, and I’m excited to continue exploring new sounds and styles.

My motto is “Don’t be afraid to feel everything.” Cancer has taught me that life is too short to hold back. I want to experience everything life has to offer, both the good and the bad. And through it all, I’ll keep writing music that speaks to the heart and soul.

Photo courtesy of Hannah Turner-Harts

“Why stand on a silent platform? Fight the war. Fuck the norm.”

When we started LOCATIONS, we didn’t know what the direction of the band was going to be. When we were writing one of our first songs, we knew we wanted to repeat a line that felt political but not divisive. We were looking for a sentiment that everyone could get behind. We came up with “they don’t care about us” - “they” being corrupt politicians. Our song, “Loud”, came together quickly, and we had found a message that would bring “us” together.

We envisioned a chorus of voices shouting the line by the end of the track, so we enlisted some friends to come over and yell into a microphone. We wanted to get them riled up and angry about corruption before we recorded, so we went to YouTube to find a video that highlighted all of the terrible shit going on in American politics.

That’s how we discovered the first organization we got involved with, Represent Us.

Represent Us is a bipartisan anti-corruption organization that is working to pass initiatives at the local and state level. We found this incredible video (starring Jennifer Lawrence!) that explained everything that we knew was wrong with our system of government. After the video laid out the problems, it moved on to the solutions. They were talking about term limits, ending gerrymandering, ranked choice voting, and publicly funded elections to get big money out of politics. We were blown away!

We knew we wanted to use “Loud” to raise money and get our fans engaged with Represent Us. Once we saw how powerful a song with a message could be, we knew that this was the way forward. Of course people want to end political corruption, but they need to be shown how and where to put their anger and energy. We decided that we would focus each of our releases on an issue with widespread support and direct our fans to use their power and take action.

While working on our new single, “Moves”, we knew from the start we wanted to use it to take on the dog shit healthcare system we’re stuck with in this country. We’ve both spent years without health insurance or with coverage so bad that it was unusable. Lucky for us, our trade unionized in 2017 and we gained access to incredible health insurance. Just over a year later, a major medical event came knocking and put that insurance to good use. But to this day we can’t stop thinking, what would have happened without that coverage? How can tens of millions of people in this country fall through the cracks of our healthcare system without the rest of us standing up and saying THIS IS NOT OK?

It is literally insane that Americans can see how the rest of the developed world treats healthcare and not believe that we deserve the same. Healthcare is a human right. No person should have to make the decision to lose their home, or spend their life savings, or risk their mental health, in order to get the medical treatment that their doctors say they need. Hundreds of thousands of people file for bankruptcy because of medical debt every year. Why are we allowing this to continue?

We live under a system that prioritizes profit over health. Americans spend thousands of dollars more per person on healthcare than any other country, and yet we don’t have anywhere near the best healthcare system by nearly any metric. Think about that. Where is all of that money going? It’s not going to healthcare workers. It’s going to the insurance companies, who make a profit off of denying coverage to our sick and dying people. It’s going to pharmaceutical companies, who make a profit off of selling life-saving drugs at extravagant markups.

How do they spend these immoral profits? A massive amount of money is spent on lobbying and donations to our elected representatives. Let’s not forget the Super PACs, which are legally allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money to spend on influencing elections. In the 2021-2022 cycle alone, these PACs have reported total receipts of over 1.5 billion dollars. We know that the vast majority of politicians are bought and paid for. It’s out in the open. 43 Senators just voted against capping the price of insulin! It failed to pass with the necessary 60 votes. We have to put a stop to this madness.

In New York, there’s been a bill called The New York Health Act floating around Albany for over 20 years. It would move New York to a single-payer system that would give all New York residents access to quality health services without fear of financial ruin. You can learn more about the details of the New York Health Act here. 

The bill finally has enough co-sponsors in both the Senate and Assembly to pass. New Yorkers and their representatives WANT to revolutionize our healthcare system. The problem is that the leaders of the Senate and Assembly have to bring it up for a vote, and they won’t because they don’t want it to pass.

Despite Governor Hochul proclaiming “Every New Yorker deserves the dignity of having access to quality health care”, she has remained silent on the passage of the New York Health Act. If she really believed that, she would at absolute minimum vocally support the bill. Her silence is deafening. We called the office of Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to get the most recent excuse on why the bill hasn’t been brought to a vote. Three calls ended with the promise of a call back that never came.

Do their campaign contributions affect their positions? I’m sure they would say of course not, but it’s easy to follow the money. In the meantime, countless people are suffering and dying. Shame on them!

It is long past due that we guarantee access to healthcare as a human right in the richest country in the world. Collective action is an existential threat to the immoral healthcare system that Americans are trapped in, and that is what we are trying to achieve with LOCATIONS. But we can’t do it alone; we need you to join us.

Get involved with the Campaign for New York Health. You can give your time, your money or at least your voice. You have power, it’s time to use it! Call your state representatives, and make sure to demand that Senate and Assembly leadership bring the New York Health Act up for a vote. Call your own representatives and make sure they’re putting pressure on leadership to push the bill across the finish line.

Together, we can pass the New York Health Act and guarantee access to healthcare for everyone in New York. Once the rest of the country sees how single-payer healthcare works and wakes up to the fraudulent scheme that is the American healthcare system, the movement will spread like wildfire. Canada passed it province by province, and we can do it state by state. Every other country with a similarly-sized economy has guaranteed access to healthcare. Why should we settle for less?

Take action now.

Photo courtesy of Ren Shelborne

If you’re reading this, you already know the state of the shitshow we colloquially call the American Government. But given the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade and ever-present threat to gay rights in America, I thought it would be nice to spotlight a woman that I hadn’t heard about until recently, despite her being an integral activist in the fight for gay rights. Maggi Rubenstein was an incredible woman who found ways to transform adversity into educational movements for the LGBT community.

Maggi Rubenstein was a nurse, educator and activist born in 1931 in San Francisco. In retrospective interviews, she says she had feelings for both boys and girls growing up, but never acted on her desires until the early 1950s when she married her first husband. Despite marrying at the acceptable age of 21 and remaining abstinent until her wedding day, she was met with disapproval from her parents because her husband was not white. They ultimately split up around a decade later, and Rubenstein began dating a woman. Like many bisexuals, she’s talked about feeling pressured to “pick a side”. In a 1981 interview with The Gay Life, she says, “...in the first relationship, I was heterosexual, in the second...I was a lesbian. What I came to realize was that I really am both.”

In 1969, Rubenstein came out as bisexual to her coworkers at the Center for Special Problems - a clinic that specialized in issues surrounding sexuality. Very special problems, indeed. She was motivated to come out publicly due to the rampant bisexual erasure she was witnessing, at the clinic and elsewhere. She came out to her children and parents shortly after, and was met with more acceptance than she was with her marriage. Her mother thought that “all lesbians do is hug”, and was perhaps relieved by her daughter’s new, “sexless” lifestyle.

In 1973, she paired up with her coworkers and fellow activists, Tony Ayers and Margo Rila, to start San Francisco Sex Information, which was essentially the first hotline for people to anonymously receive information regarding sexual and reproductive health for free. The organization quickly became a haven for bisexuals who had previously been met with judgement and exclusion from both gay and straight communities. As the community began to expand, Rubenstein and her partner at the time, Harriet Leve, began working on what would eventually become the San Francisco Bisexual Center. The purpose of the coalition was to present workshops on bisexuality and sexual health, as well as campaign politically against anti-LGBT legislation. It began in 1975 with a meeting of 20 bisexual doctors, educators and activists in Rubenstein’s attic before being moved to the house of Dr. David Lourea, one of Rubenstein’s colleagues at the Sex Information hotline, in 1977. These small gatherings gained quiet traction throughout San Francisco, but began growing rapidly after the organization publicly fought against the Briggs Initiative, a ballot point proposed in 1978 that would ban any non-heterosexual people from working in public schools in California.

The San Francisco Bisexual Center also became a safe space for trans people in the early 70s. Gay and lesbian organizations would frequently turn trans people away because of how they were presented, so in addition to the workshops on bisexuality, the Center started hosting in-depth workshops on gender and sexuality. It’s clear from the language in these workshops that the Center highly valued androgyny and saw the future of the LGBT community as a genderfluid one, which was very exciting to read, given that the stereotype of 60s and 70s bisexuals is that they were transphobic. The Center was far ahead of its gay and lesbian counterparts on the topic of gender.

Moving into the 1980s, the Center’s focus shifted from exploration of sexuality to education in regards to sexual health and the AIDS crisis. When bathhouses and BDSM clubs (where a majority of gay men gathered) were being closed to slow the transmission of AIDS, she campaigned to keep them open, because it was the best place to provide safe sex information to as many gay men as possible. Her and Dr. Lourea worked not only to make sex safe, but to promote the idea that safe sex was just as sexy as unprotected sex. Rubenstein also organized a “Women and AIDS” program to educate people on how to have safer “hetero sex”, as they called it, regarding AIDS. Because of the homophobia and bi-erasure prevalent at the time, very few people were talking about the spread of AIDS to women and bisexuals. The organization pushed for bisexuals to be recognized as a demographic that was at risk for AIDS, but were ultimately overlooked by the gay communities and demonized by straight people as the reason for transmission to the heterosexual population.

Devastatingly, this exclusion led to the downfall of the Center in the 80s. Given that a majority of leaders in the center were doctors, nurses and sexologists, they needed to turn their energy and efforts towards actively helping the overrun hospitals and clinics in San Francisco and offering AIDS prevention education. They had to turn away from the workshops and community building activities that the Center was known for and had been founded on. The Center shut down in 1984, before Rubenstein and Lourea reframed and reopened as BiPOL with a more political focus.

We are in a time period where bisexuality is more accepted and understood than it has ever been, but the pop culture acceptance does not mean the work is done. Many bisexual people still feel excluded from the queer communities around them, and bisexuality is still seen as a proclivity towards promiscuity and a “fake” sexuality used to “get attention” by a majority of straight people. Learning about the political and educational movements organized by Maggi Rubenstein and the members of the San Francisco Bisexual Center has cemented for me the massive role that bisexual activists have played in the fight for gay rights over the last century, and reaffirms the importance of acceptance within the LGBTQ+ communities today. We don’t have to relate to the experiences and struggles of everyone in this big, beautiful and ever-growing population to work together towards a common goal.

Given that Maggi Rubenstein doesn’t have her own Wikipedia page and a majority of her writings are behind paywalls, I gathered a majority of references and information for this article from verilybitchie’s video essay, “Bisexual Activism in the 70s: The San Francisco Bisexual Center”. Her presentation is thoughtful and drenched in far more humor than I presented here. I highly recommend giving it a watch.

If you’ve ever been through grief, perhaps you can agree it’s a whole mess. I joined the grief club, not by choice, in fall of 2019 when my mom was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Waking up to this reality felt like falling on concrete pretty much every day, too real to shake the funk where it put me. Along with my family, emotions were heightened as we experienced some of our highest highs and lowest lows, never wanting to miss any moments of opportunity to create memories together.

Call me an optimist, but there’s been hope throughout my grief journey that I’ve only come to know by actually going through it.

As soon as I realized loss was inevitable, I sought help from a grief counselor to help me navigate it. Before long, I came to understand the five phases closely aligned with grief, both through research and through personal experience. But what I realized in the course of “facing it” was how unboxable it all is. Unable to contain it to an hour-long therapy session, I’ve also realized I’m unable to label it with five stages and be set. For me, grief has brought up countless emotions. And that’s perfectly okay and even normal.

My debut EP, boxes, was inspired by the mess of boxes I inherited from my late mother upon her passing in March 2020. While it is a reminder of my loss, it is also a glimmer of the life she lived and how I’ve been blessed by it. Each box is filled with gems of every kind; photo albums, holiday decor, china sets and her gardening tools. I’ve found myself overwhelmed by all of it at times, but have come to know it as a gift to be unwrapped every time I “face it”. Loss, not unlike boxes in an attic, can bring life with it too, if we let it.

With time, I’ve wondered how to answer this question about grief: “What does healing look like?” And for me, it has so many answers. One of them, though, has been “reflection”. With a song for every [messy] stage of grief, below is a glimpse of how I’ve been healing.

Sometimes taking a break and getting our own lives in check, or dealing with some of the things we have to deal with individually, can lead to a better place in the future of coming back to something when the time is right. We have to focus on ourselves because we have to reinvent ourselves and we have to establish ourselves as individuals so we can survive. It's about finding balance in where you are and what you are as a person in the moment, and I feel that sometimes it can clash with ideas that you have.

There’s a certain way we do things as New Politics. We all get together and write, but in the last five years it's become more challenging to be together in the same place. As a result, we each have had different experiences which has allowed us to try new things sonically.

We share everything equally, which is awesome because it's an honest-to-god brotherhood and there’s something thicker than blood in our experience of these last ten years, but at the same time it can be exhausting. Having the ability to experiment musically on our own is healthy and helps allow for greater creativity.

At the moment, we’re just doing our own thing and we’re almost reinventing ourselves.

We always had to compare ourselves to our last record or our last single, then you have the pressure from the label. I prefer we take a step back and then come back to it when it's right. The universe will let us know when. I prefer then to turn that energy into something that I understand, that comes naturally to me, that makes sense, that gives me a new challenge but I can be in the front seat 100%.

This time I'm writing and doing this solo project with none of that in mind. That doesn't mean that it ain't fun - don't get me wrong, there’s a challenge and a magic and all of that as well that I love and there’s a time and place for that - but I think right now where I am in my life I also have to realize the stakes or I'm not growing and learning ways that I can better myself or change my outlook on things or challenge myself in a healthy way. This project is the perfect thing for that. It touches all of those points for me and I want that to also show in my music. I want to release my music because I like the songs and I believe in them. In a way I'm back to my basics; I'm back to the core of who I am and I'm starting to find this different sense of enjoyment.

It is challenging knowing one thing and doing one thing for ten years but then at the same time me releasing these songs now in the last year I'm just like ‘what the fuck have I been waiting for’. I haven't had this much fun in so long and that's not to say New Politics hasn’t been fun. I will always be proud of that; it's some of the best memories and experiences that I could never replace and I hope I never have to. I wouldn't trade New Politics fans for anything. They’re part of that experience that is irreplaceable. I just don't want to force anything. I want it to come how New Politics naturally came. We didn't have answers, we didn't know what the fuck we were doing, we just did it out of passion and that's how it should be.

The magic that we have in New Politics is phenomenal but it's also incredible to have this experiment that I'm taking on now and I'm only getting started. I can't wait for my first limited edition of merchandise or going on a small tour or doing surprise shows. It's like I got a spark back, and it's not that I lost it, it's a different kind of spark. It's a spark that is personal for me.

At the moment I don't really have an answer. I don't really know what I'm releasing, I don't know what's going to relate to people and I'm also doing this with an independent budget. I have to use the cards that I'm dealt with and accept this is what reality is right now and I have to make the most of it. It's patience and persistence. I just have to love what I'm doing. That's the most important thing. I have a lot of experience which I'm really grateful for and I can really use that to my advantage moving forward and I'm just so excited.

Photo courtesy of Kate Matthews

I've learned a lot of valuable lessons while earning my "degree" in the music industry. I also take a great deal of pride in having worked myself up from as bottom as it gets.

As a person of colour and a minority, playing gigs in my home country of Canada was literally all about survival in some hostile territories early on. So it was with great satisfaction that after a brutally tough few years, I found myself in the very fortunate situation of sharing many big stages around the world with many of my idols and legends of music. It felt like a dream that you don't ever want to wake up from, only for me it was really happening.

So here are a few of those important lessons I learned, along with some fun road stories, that have shaped not only the artist but also the person I have become.

Lesson 1 (from The Rolling Stones): There is Always More to Learn

The year was 1998 and it was springtime in my favourite party city of Montreal. My band at the time was a bluesy rock power trio called Wide Mouth Mason. We were known for putting on a great live show and were nearing the top of the charts in Canada. I mostly remember witnessing the full force of paparazzi as we arrived at the Molson Centre, where we would be playing the first of a five-show tour opening for... The Rolling freakin’ Stones! Strangely, I wasn't nervous at all and we played a very solid and confident set which was enough for not only a standing ovation from the crowd, but more importantly from their crew as we exited the stage. Apparently, the Stones' crew were notorious for being extra hard on the support acts, so that felt pretty awesome.

Then we went to Toronto’s SkyDome to play in front of 68,000 fans, which is easily the most people I've ever played for. My parents were at that show (RIP Dad) and I remember nearly getting vertigo during the set and trying not to fall over! After the shows, the only member of the band who would come into our dressing room to say hi was the ever dapper Mr. Charlie Watts. We eventually met the whole band. Mick would wear a disguise to watch our show from the soundboard in the crowd; Keith and Ron mostly played pool backstage and would let us watch their intense high stakes games; but Charlie, he was my dude. I would relish the opportunities to sit and chat with him mostly about music. Then one day in Milwaukee, he sat down and joined me for a coffee, while he had tea of course. He then asked me what new music I was listening to. I was a little bit taken aback, I mean why did this musical icon care to know what I was listening to? So I named a few artists like Ben Harper, Jeff Buckley, Me'shell Ndegeocello and whatever other new albums I was currently listening to. Mr. Watts then pulled out his reading glasses and a tiny notepad from his inside blazer pocket and started writing everything down. Huh? Then the very next day, I ran into him backstage and he thanked me for my suggestions. Apparently, he went to the record store and bought all of the albums I mentioned and he really enjoyed them. I was blown away.

The biggest takeaway for me was that no matter what you've accomplished in your career, there is always more to learn. And that willingness and open mindedness is what can help you become the best you can be. I shed tears the day of his passing last year, but those lessons will stay with me forever. Currently, I am the elder statesman in my band, The Steadies, and I am constantly absorbing new music from my young bandmates. I definitely feel like it has made me a better and more well-rounded musician with a finger always on the pulse of what's 'cool'. Thanks Charlie, and rest in peace legend.

Lesson 2 (from Alanis Morissette): Always Be Kind

I'm going to give some love to this particular powerhouse lady. As a youngling, I remember watching her on a goofy Canadian comedy show for kids called “You Can't Do That On Television”. Fast forward to summer of 1995, and my band showed up to play a club in Banff Alberta called Wild Bill's. I had heard Alanis Morissette just played there the night before to not very many people. I was like, "you mean that girl from that TV show"? Well a month later, she became the biggest star on the planet and had a #1 worldwide hit record in the now classic “Jagged Little Pill”.

Some of Pereira's tour laminate collection