EYE TO EYE: With Ryan and Nic MacDonald

Ryan and Nic MacDonald from the Thunder Bay rock band The Honest Heart Collective pride themselves on heart-on-sleeve storytelling in their music, so it’s no surprise that the brothers have the same openness when interviewed. We spoke with them about blue-collar jobs, guilty pleasures, and what’s been the hardest during the pandemic.

On binge-watching:

Ryan: Ted Lasso is probably my favourite right now.

Nic: The Morning Show is good too. At this point in my life, I think I get a bit guilty when I spend too much time in front of the TV.

R: Oh yeah. I’m like, “I should be playing my guitar.” The pandemic was kind of brutal. I spent pretty much the whole month of January sitting in my underwear playing video games and watching Netflix.

On guilty pleasures:

R: I took up golf. I can’t really afford to golf, so I feel guilty about that.

N: You picked up the rich man’s habit.

R: But I do love it.

N: Honestly, YouTube. I find myself going into these insane YouTube rabbit holes, most notably fantasy BookTubers (like book reviewers) because I really love fantasy novels and I’ve got a decent collection coming along now. But I find myself watching more of their videos than I do reading the books.

On working odd jobs:

N: This is the funny thing. Ryan’s had a zillion jobs. I’ve mainly had one. R: I was a paperboy.

N: We shared this paper route for a little while.

R: Yeah but then I took it over. It was four blocks. So picture tiny 11-year-old me with two big bags every Saturday morning. [I] can fucking barely walk out the door. I had to walk half a block to even start those blocks over in Westfort. N: What a horrible job.

R: My whole life I’ve had almost 30 jobs and I’m 30 years old. I just could not hold one down properly because the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do was play music.

On what hit hardest during the pandemic:

R: Losing live music and that ability to play live.

N: There was a time where I put all my instruments down for like six months.

R: Yeah, we just stopped.

N: I didn’t even feel like a musician anymore. You still look on the Spotify stuff and that validates you and says “Yes, you are a musician and you’ve done these things and you’ve had these experiences.” But I’m not doing it right now and I haven’t been doing it in like six months, so am I even that anymore?”

On favourite teachers:

N: We went to Hyde Park Elementary, Kingsway Park Elementary, Westgate High School. R: Like a couple of true Westfort boys.

N: A teacher that stands out? Paul Caccamo.

R: Paul Caccamo. 100%. Basically Paul took a huge interest in what we were doing just because from a business standpoint, there was this business element to it, and he’s just a huge music fan.

N: He’s just a really cool guy and he’s a union guy.

R: He works for the teacher’s union, he’s the vice-president.

N: Yeah, he’s not teaching anymore. Our values just aligned. He was authentic to his students, to the ones that cared.

R: He never gave us the impression that playing music was a dumb idea. N: Yeah, or a pipe dream.

On not playing live shows during the pandemic:

N: It’s been really hard for me in the last two years because when you’re not playing live, you’re not actually seeing the effects of your music on people. Because you never see the effects of music on people, really deeply. But at least when you play live you can say, “I gave these people a really good time tonight. I saw smiles on faces, I lifted spirits, I did my small part in—”

R: In making someone’s week better.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.