During his battle with leukemia in 2021, Guelph’s Steve Neville got back to his roots and started writing music again.
Neville just released his first solo album, titled OFF TRACK.
Neville was previously part of the now former band The Balconies, a pop/rock band based in Toronto.
When he got sick, he and his young family moved to Guelph because there was seemingly less pollution here.
Initially, Neville thought his symptoms were COVID but with a batch of negative tests he went to the emergency room to find out within an hour he had leukemia and had to start treatment in the ICU right away.
Since he was in the hospital during the pandemic he was limited to one visitor a day for a maximum of one hour, so his partner Amanda was his visitor.
“So the rest of the time I was kind of on my own. And it can obviously get quite boring and lonely. So I had my acoustic guitar brought in. And I spent most days when I was feeling up to it, playing and writing the songs for the album,” said Neville.
He couldn’t go to the studio to record so he would record at home and send in the vocals and guitar so his producer Liam Jaeger could mix it with other instruments and back up vocals.
He wrote a song while he was in the hospital called The Waiting Room."
My legs are weak
I can barely walk and I've lost my voice
I have to whisper to talk.
Stuck in a box of painful routines/breathless and unseen”
“When I was actually singing that, for the record itself, I was still very breathy and my lungs were still very impaired, but I had pneumonia that had damaged my voice, and my lungs,” he said.
“And I kind of relate that to being breathless and unseen. Because I couldn't communicate with people and I kind of felt like I was sometimes, I almost felt like a specimen in a lab, the doctors have come in and poke and probe at me.”
Writing music while going through cancer treatment compelled him to be creative and work through his emotions and fears, he said.
“You know, the album is in many ways, it's, it's a documentary of my life. It's almost like a diary,” he said.
His son Leo was eight months old when Neville was first diagnosed. He said he felt sad thinking he may not watch his son grow up.
Luckily, Neville is doing better health wise, he monitors for cancer relapse and is still isolating to avoid catching COVID as he is immunocompromised.
“So it's very tricky. And it's also something that my whole family has to navigate like my partner and I. Especially because you know, the choices I need to make for my health, she has to make as well for me, for my well being,” he said.
“That's, that's really tough. Just kind of navigating that immunocompromised reality.”
He said he hopes his album which speaks from the heart resonates with people.
The song he said best captures the album in its entirety is called Going Home. “So I feel like Going Home really captures that. Just kind of drive to return to something and just kind of start a new chapter in life,” said Neville.
The album would not have been made if Neville hadn’t gone through battling cancer. “It completely transformed my process of writing lyrics,” he said.
