Liona Boyd funnels pain from neurological disease, divorce into new album
By Nick Patch (CP) – 17 hours ago
TORONTO — To say that renowned classical guitarist Liona Boyd has a lot riding on the success of her new album would be something of an understatement.
In 2003, the 60-year-old Canadian was diagnosed with task specific focal dystonia, an incurable neurological disease that effectively rendered Boyd's trademark fretboard feats a thing of the past.
But Boyd has endured, reinventing herself as a singer/songwriter on her new disc, "Liona Boyd Sings Songs of Love," which came out Tuesday and features 16 tunes written - and, for the first time, sung - by Boyd herself.
The record took years to make and, Boyd says, brought about the dissolution of her marriage. But she says she now feels revitalized.
"I spent basically four years of my life getting this album together," she told The Canadian Press in an interview at a downtown Toronto hotel.
"Getting the pieces, getting the duet partner, moving house four times, getting divorced - oh my goodness, it's been a process. I've never put so much effort, ever, into a record. It's taken me on a journey, it really has."
That journey began in the mid-90s, when she realized she was struggling with guitar techniques she had long ago mastered. Even though she already practised incessantly, she figured that she must play more, that her skills were slipping.
Meanwhile, she looked for answers. She estimates that she spent $100,000 and nine years searching for what the problem was with her playing, until she visited the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., where she was diagnosed with focal dystonia.
The condition occurs when a person over-trains specific muscle movements, causing those muscles to contract or twist - with focal hand dystonia, for instance, the fingers will either curl into the palm or extend outward without control.
It was Boyd's fierce work ethic, then, that was causing the problem.
"I was an obsessive-compulsive workaholic, as my husband used to say," Boyd said. "I had to watch a lot of TV shows with him that I didn't really want to watch, so I'd sit there and do my right-hand guitar fingerings."
"Little did I know that it was wearing out my neural receptors in the brain. I had no clue. I thought more was better."
Initially, the diagnosis was devastating.
"There was no physical pain at all in my hands, it was just a lot of mental anguish, because if I can't play guitar, my life is over," she said. "I was a guitar addict my whole life."
It didn't help that the diagnosis unravelled her marriage to California real estate developer John Simon.
"(He) wanted me to quit music," she said. "He said: 'You can't play classical the way you used to, just quit, just paint, do something normal or just be my wife and we'll tour around the world and have a luxurious life."'
"But I had so much music to give the world and so I struggled on. It was very heartbreaking for me until I knew what I was dealing with. And, even now, it's not easy. It's been a struggle. It has not been easy at all."
The breakthrough for Boyd came when she decided to try singing, a decision that came after a lifetime of "lip-synching 'Happy Birthday' and just being afraid to open my mouth."
Her insecurity over her voice was deep-rooted. At six years old, she says she was kicked out of a choir because she couldn't sing. More recently, Ozzy Osbourne - a neighbour of Boyd's when she lived in Los Angeles - recommended she visit his vocal coach, who then told her she was too old and would never be able to sing.
Yet there was also some encouragement along the way. She said Gordon Lightfoot long ago urged her to sing, as did her once long-term boyfriend, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
After being forced to overcome her reluctance to singing, Boyd says she now feels more comfortable behind the microphone.
"I'm not a diva and I don't want to be," she said. "I feel very blessed that I've discovered after all these years that I can sing."
She can also still play guitar, although certain techniques necessary for advanced guitar are very difficult now. But, she says, complex guitar licks might not fit the personality of her new record anyway.
"I see that even though I don't have the fast finger, it wouldn't have been appropriate for this record, in a funny way," she said.
"You think a mile a minute, the faster the better when you're young. You want to do all these fast licks but, really, music is about emotion, it's about touching the heart and our souls."
She's complemented on her new disc by Srdjan Givoje, a duet partner from Dubrovnik, Croatia, whom Boyd calls "an absolute gift from the gods" because of his ability to harmonize and play guitar.
Boyd plans on touring next year and releasing another disc in November (she says it will be more "spiritual and new age-y"). She says she considers these two releases to be the best she's ever done.
Mostly, she says she's just thankful that she's survived a tumultuous period in her life with her career intact.
"I once presumed I would be 90 years old and still playing tremolo and this technique I was famous for," she said.
"It is a daily struggle, it's not easy. But I feel so blessed and so lucky at this stage in my life to be starting a whole new chapter."
Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Liona Boyd & focal dystonia
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