LEFT TO RIGHT “En route to Caffeine near Haines, AK, the early bird gets the worm—and if you want to beat the birds to the zone, you need a Worm to wake you up at 2:30 a.m. The reward? An epic sunrise and the satisfaction of shralping the whole zone while the helis buzzed us out of frustration of having been beaten there by a pack of analog travelers.” Photo: Nicholas Khattar Worm in Terrace, BC, embarking to Haines, AK, with his trusted Casio. Photo: Nicholas Khattar In addition to snowboarding, you rip on the piano. I assumed you grew up immersed in music because it’s such a big part of both yours and your dad’s lives, but I couldn’t have been more wrong about that. How’d you get into making music? When I was young, I went out and got a guitar, but I never really learned how to play it. I was not musically inclined. Flash forward to going to meet up with you and Vlady in Europe; I had flown into Paris and went straight to the train station there, Gare de l’Est. I had four hours before my train would arrive. I was chilling in the train station and there was a piano in plain sight. By the end of that four-hour chill at the train station I left thinking, “I’m gonna learn how to play piano. I’m going to come back here and play it someday before I die.” I still haven’t done it yet and I’m still preparing myself to really know how to play, for when I step back into that train station. After that trip I came back to Bend. I got a cheap keyboard, the kind that had the light-up buttons. I stuck with it long enough that I bought a $200 piano. I tried getting lessons here and there but realized I could never learn that way. Eventually I met a teacher named Steven Hartwell in Bend. He told me, “You can do this, but you have a lot of fundamentals to learn before you’ll even be able to identify music.” That changed my thoughts on music completely and I started to come at it from a different approach—one that was more mathematical than abstract. Working with Steve is when I really fell in love with it. And that love persisted, but trying to play the piano and be a snowboarder is crazy. It sounds like you were really finding the passion and figuring it out but were still only scratching the surface. How did that lead to a full-on two-year program at a music school? When Jaeger had just passed away [in 2019], I didn’t have any filming plans going on, so I really didn’t know what to do. Then Hostynek invited me up to stay with him [in Nelson, BC], so I eagerly went up there. I was riding at Whitewater one day and I ran into a tree. I was riding by myself. I got super lucky. I was going headfirst at this tree, but at the last minute, I got my feet up in front of my head. I saw life flash before my eyes because if my head would have hit that tree instead of my feet, I don’t think I’d be here. I had all this rage from Jaeger’s passing and the only thing I wanted to do was sink that rage into snowboarding. Before that crash I remember thinking, “I’m gonna hit it faster. I’m gonna go bigger.” You know? All that aggression. Then as soon as I hurt my foot hitting the tree, it was, “What do I do with my life?” That was such a hard point in it all. I didn’t handle it great, and that was right when COVID and the travel restrictions were starting. I decided that I’d just stay with Hostynek, which ended up being around six months. After I came back home, I wanted to learn more about music and got interested in the idea of at-tending music school. While staying up there, Justin’s wife, Kate, had told me about the music school in Nelson [Selkirk Music School]. So, I applied. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but I ended up getting accepted right away. I dove in. I had no idea what I was doing but I was stoked to be learning. My first year all the classes were over Zoom because of COVID. When snowboard season started, I was traveling with my key-board because I needed it for a bunch of my classes. I went to the Kings and Queens of Corbet’s with the piano and everything. I was hustling to get the work done and I missed a bunch of classes but luckily my teachers were all super cool. Class over Zoom was hard, and I lost a lot of the experience because music school is such a collaborative place. So I was excited to move up to Nelson for real and take the first in-person semester. It was a two-year program, so I still had one year left when I got there. Everybody was so experienced; I was the least experienced per-son there and it was sobering having to cope with that fact. GARRETT WARNICK 053
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 21.4: Page 53
