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Keeping up with Kim Churchill

'Frenetic' Australian singer-songwriter opens for Daniel Wesley on Saturday at the GLC
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Nothing beats youthful enthusiasm. Every so often we come across a young person so full of pie-eyed exuberance that keeps our own crusty maturity in check. It reminds those of us tethered to a desk and computer every day that, yes, there is a world of wonders beyond the office window.

Kim Churchill is one such individual. Speaking with him on the phone, it seems as though the exceptionally talented guitarist-vocalist is bursting at the seams. Even after a full day of traveling and sound checks for a show in Port Alberni, Churchill's speech is cackling with energy that works like a shot of caffeine for a writer 250 kilometres away.

"I'm kind of a frenetic, hyper-active person," he admits with a laugh.

And is the case with people harnessing on yielding energy and enthusiasm, Churchill has an almost biological inability to stay in one place for any time. He's a drifter and a troubadour who's lucky enough and talented enough that he's able to make a living playing music wherever he goes. He's been on the road more or less continuously since graduating high school in 2009, which he says suits him fine.

"A big schedule with things to race around and do keeps me from tapping my leg too hard on the ground or something. I don't know. It's good to have a fast lifestyle. It keeps me sane, I think," he says.

And so when, late last year, he stopped touring so heavily and sat down to work on the follow-up to his 2011 EP Turn To Stone, he says it was a completely new experience for him.

"When you're preparing an album, you have to sit back and just spend a lot of time working on the songs. It's very hard to do that whilst being on tour, so I had a few months in Australia where I wasn't gigging that much and I was mainly just working on the songs," he says.

He has no home base, choosing instead to drift from city to city when he's not playing shows or working on songs. He'd write songs in the moments where nothing was going on — sitting on a bed in a hotel room or in his van — and then take off for some other locale when he'd had enough.

"So I'm kind of like, thank goodness that it's back to touring because I've missed it a bit," he says.

Most of that energy is funneled into his music. He says it's where he "exhausts" most of it. His live show is of a one-man band reinterpreting Another Side of Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin III into one foot-stomping, fuzz-driven collection. His new album Detail of Distance, due out in May in Australia, is the sound of a pie-eyed, 21-year-old reinterpreting Churchill's guitar is a voice all its own and, even at his young age, he's poised to take on Australian classics as master of the instrument.

But as impressive as all that is, it's his subject matter that's most affecting as he tackles the deepest philosophical issues of human existence and tackles them with a joy and wonderment that is unfortunately lacking in pop music today. It's the voice of a talented young kid roaming the world, impressed by what he sees despite the problematic aspects. Detail of Distance is the work of a young master with big things on the horizon, if this is a just world in any way.

"I'm very, very happy with (the album). It's very different from anything I've done before and to me personally, it's miles above anything I've done before," he says.

Of course, with a release date two months away, he's in the pre-release void that musicians know so well. No matter how proud you might be of your work, wondering how people will react can be a little grueling. The longer the wait, the more frustrating it can be.

"I'm in the period where I'm being taken around to all the different industry people that are going to be involved, and all the people that may be involved, so you don't get an idea of what your every day person who listens to music is going to think of it," he says. "You get this weird web of opinions that are based on what other people's opinions are going to be. You get the record label guy going, 'Oh, I think it's a transition from your earlier album. It could have been more like this.'"

Which, of course, doesn't mean a whole lot to Churchill in the end. He's the sort of artist with real conviction in the work that he's done. If he wants to write a stompin' rock song, by golly, he's going to release it.

He's been a regular visitor to B.C. lately, touring the province four times since 2010. He's hit Whistler every time and, as it happens, often runs into people from back home that he hasn't seen in years. With each visit, he runs into someone or other. It's beginning to lose its surprise element.

"It's always different people but there's always a bunch of people from here and there over in Australia that will shoot me a Facebook message when they see that I'm coming and say, 'Hey I'm here now!' It's like a Lucky Dip of what friends from your past you're going to run into in Whistler."