Ian Lindsay & Associates: Ian Lindsay of Lindsay and Associates has played an active role in the local community since 1979. He has been with RE/MAX Vancouver Island's most advanced real estate business network since 1996. Marketing and selling residential, rural, strata, recreational, investment, and project development real estate, you'll find true real estate professionals at ianlindsay.ca.

Rockin' Rhonda: Here comes Peter. Here comes Dave. Oh, listen. Bringing stories, making waves. No missing, spinning tales in the hot podcast cave. Laughs and insights everywhere. What a treat.

Peter McCully: Welcome back to the PULSE Community Podcast. I'm Peter McCully. We're about a month into spring and the mid Vancouver Island region is watching the trees filling out with leaves. The patios are getting packed and the community calendar is getting full.

Dave Graham: And I'm Dave Graham. I haven't had time to be watching trees getting leafy. I've been cleaning out my garage.

Peter McCully: Well, Dave, that's long overdue.

Dave Graham: I've really only just begun, but I've made some progress. I've identified at least four distinct zones in there. Zone one: things I know. Zone two: things I don't know. Zone three: things that could hurt me. And then there's an entire corner. It's all dark and cobwebby, and I've decided to leave it alone for now.

Peter McCully: Well, it sounds like you've got it all mapped out.

Dave Graham: I wouldn't get carried away. Mapped out sounds very ambitious. I call this the research phase, Peter. But I've already found some interesting things, such as a pocket fisherman.

Peter McCully: What, you mean the K-Tel Pocket Fisherman that used to advertise on television? That's a classic.

Dave Graham: Yes. What an invention. A fishing rod that folds up and fits in your pocket. Perfect for all those times when you're walking down the street and suddenly think, hey, I could really do with some fishing right now. First thing — I don't fish. Haven't in years. But now I have a collector's item fishing rod just in case.

Peter McCully: Well, it's funny how these things have a way of accumulating.

Dave Graham: I found some other things. A lot of things that almost work — slightly broken, you know. But I did come across some eight-track tapes. I'm just hoping one day maybe I'll find their player. I've also located a box labelled Fond Do Set, which may or may not be true. It could take another day or two to get to that box. There's a chance it really could be my long-lost fondue set, or maybe it's my long-lost set of vintage Hardy Boys books. Either way, it'll be a good day when I open it.

Peter McCully: Have you had any time in all of this to maintain your crop of mint?

Dave Graham: Mint crop? Oh, mint crop. Oh no. I forgot about my mint. That's probably okay. Maybe getting a little crispy. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Peter McCully: I'm sure it'll be fine too. Dave, on today's podcast, we have two fine guests. The first is Roy Forbes. He grew up in Dawson Creek, picked up a guitar at 14, and never looked back. He spent more than five decades writing, recording, and performing across the country, earning a place in the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame.

Roy Forbes: A big thrill for me was when the Trans-Canada Highwaymen — which is a new Canadian quote-unquote supergroup of nineties rockers like Craig Northey from The Odds, a fellow from Sloan, a fellow from The Pursuit of Happiness, and Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies — when I heard their version of "Can't Catch Me," it just put a grin on my face. That's a different generation doing my song, and that felt very cool to me. So I'm in. Go ahead out there — cover me.

Dave Graham: When a younger generation is covering your songs, I think you've done something right. Roy was touring the island just a couple of months ago. He had such a good time, he's coming back for more. He'll be at Char's Landing in Port Alberni in May.

Peter McCully: Also joining us is Aaron Cully Drake, a BC-based author, former newspaper reporter and editor whose debut novel was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award. Aaron has a new book coming out, When the World Was Twice as Big. We'll be talking about using AI in the writing process.

Aaron Cully Drake: If you're using it to write the actual story, good luck. That's what I've got right now. Maybe in five years, but right now, good luck. You get crap in, crap out. You're not going to make a good book. But if you use it to help you write the book, you're going to have a better book at the end than you would without it, which is part of that extinction event. AI is not going to replace writers. I think eventually AI will replace writers who don't use AI.

Dave Graham: As with so much about AI, that is both reassuring and disturbing. I tried to use AI to help me figure out how to approach my garage clean-out. It kept suggesting that I take a walk and think about it. As a master procrastinator myself, I really liked that answer. I think that's not artificial intelligence — it's artificial brilliance.

Peter McCully: Dave will be joined soon by Chris Buck of the Chris Buck Band. Chris spent time in Nashville, then came back wanting to recreate some of that magic he experienced there, and so he organized the Boots and Boat Singer-Songwriter Festival. This'll be coming up on a future episode.

Dave Graham: Ajay Friese of Victoria joins us to talk about his new album and his role in a new show featuring Kevin Kline and Laura Linney.

Peter McCully: Plus, look out — this is a good one. Tom Sewid, a Vancouver Islander now living in Washington State, will be joining us ahead of the upcoming Sasquatch Watch conference in the Comox Valley. Tom has more than a few things to say about seeing Bigfoot.

Dave Graham: I have a few questions I'd like to ask a Bigfoot. Wouldn't that make for a cool interview? Of course, we'd have to manage the language barrier, and I'd have to trust it to not just reach over and tear me in half. Maybe we should do it over Zoom. I'm sure there's an app for that.

Thrifty Foods Parksville: At Thrifty Foods, we love to help nonprofits, charities, and schools. Our Thrifty Foods Smile Card bulk program allows organizations to immediately save up to 6% on the purchase of Smile Cards in bulk, allowing you to keep more money in your organization's pockets. Ask for details at Thrifty Foods in Parksville.

Fireside Books: There's exciting news for book lovers. Fireside Books in Parksville now has a second location in Port Alberni. The Bookwyrm — used books at just $5 or less. The Bookwyrm on the corner of Redford and Anderson opens seven days a week from 10 to 5. Building your personal library for less. Fireside Books at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville is a book dragon's dream come true. Browse their extensive collections seven days a week. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever — new and used books and so much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Ask about returning books for book credit. Fireside Books and the Bookwyrm — two locations, one amazing adventure in browsing.

Peter McCully: Stay tuned to the podcast, our website, and social pages for our upcoming giveaways. We have a summer of giveaways planned.

Dave Graham: Right you are, Mr. McCully. Look out everybody. There will be tickets for 54-40, April Wine, and Beach Fest Rocks. Head to our Facebook or Instagram pages or go to ThePulseCommunity.ca for details on all the contests. All right, it's time to meet our first guest. Here's Marilyn.

Marilyn: Aaron Cully Drake is a British Columbia-based author, former newspaper reporter and editor whose debut novel was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and longlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour Writing. His work explores the deeply human experience of living and connecting outside the margins of what society calls normal. He has a new book being released: When the World Was Twice as Big.

Peter McCully: Thanks for making some time for us today, Aaron, for what I'm sure will be an interesting conversation regarding authors and the use of AI in creating a novel.

Aaron Cully Drake: Well, Peter, I'm really glad to be here. I'm really interested to see where this goes.

Peter McCully: Right off the top, Marilyn mentioned a book that you won awards for. I think it's remarkable that as a novel you wrote directly from your experience as a father of a daughter who is on the spectrum. In order to find a starting point for the conversation today about how AI could help an author create a book, perhaps you could briefly outline how long it took you to write that book and some of the steps along the way, for those who may not be familiar with the process.

Aaron Cully Drake: Okay, so it's a fluke. This one's a one-off because it took no time at all to write. I think the whole thing — from zero concept to a first draft that was ready to be looked at by some serious people — was nine months. The reason it was a fluke was that at the time I was working downtown and commuting into Vancouver on the West Coast Express, which is a train. You get an outlet and a table with a bench, and so I had my laptop and 90 minutes a day of no wifi. I had nothing but me and my laptop, and so I just started writing with no idea what I was going to write. At the time, I was trying to understand my daughter and how she was thinking, so I kept trying to write as if from her point of view. I just wrote whatever I thought of and I wouldn't look back at it. The next day I'd start writing again from where I dropped off, and sometimes I'd continue what I'd written, sometimes I'd do a new thread. I wrote for weeks and weeks. Once I hit about 20,000 words, I said, okay, now it's time to look at it. I went back over what I wrote and broke it down into two categories: cringe — a lot of cringe, a lot of really just, oh, this is horrible — but then a lot of non-cringey parts where I started to see a voice that was beginning to emerge. A voice I liked, telling an actual story. These little anecdotes were scattered across the 20,000 words, but when you pull them out and put them together, you say, there's a thread here. There's something in here. It's going somewhere. I don't know where it's going, but this is worth pursuing. I had my basis. After that, I just kept writing and writing and writing, hoping for inspiration to come, because I did not know what the climax would be. I did not know what the big reveal was going to be. It just kept eluding me. Then one day, at about 80% through the book, it hit me like an inspiration — oh, that's what's happening. That's when the whole thing caught fire. The twist was probably what really set it apart, made it something that was sellable, something the critics loved. That was just a complete fluke. The whole writing was a fluke.

Peter McCully: Well, it's interesting you say that. You're writing the book, you're 80% of the way through, and it all came together for you. Do you suppose if an aspiring author used artificial intelligence to map out the entire plot chapter by chapter in advance, that structure would help?

Aaron Cully Drake: It depends upon what type of writer you are. I'm one that wanders all over the place, and that's why it takes so long to write anything. What I did with my third novel was I wrote down my idea of the plot — here's what the plot line is going to be — and I wrote down the chapters, here's what happens in this chapter, about a paragraph per chapter, until I had it. Then I took that and fed it into the AI and said, okay, here's what I've got going. Let's talk about this. Give me a critique. Don't blow smoke. Look it over. Tell me where the contradictions are. Tell me what's not interesting. I engaged in a conversation with the AI. It would point out structural errors. It would point out flaws in reasoning. It would point out contradictions — because that's what AI does. AI isn't artistic. AI is structural. If you give it the right prompts, it will look for patterns in how you're writing. It will look for patterns in how you're sequencing the plot, and it will start to see things that you've put down through your subconscious without even knowing. The AI will point it out. A perfect example: I was working on one chapter the other day. My process now is I write the chapter and then I'll ask the AI to critique it in context — here's the plot summary of the entire novel, here's the summary of all the characters, here's the summary of the theme. Keep these in mind. Look at this chapter and tell me where I'm going off base. It'll critique it. It'll list the three things it likes — that's nice because that gives you a shot of dopamine. You feel good about that. And then it zeros in: you have this problem, you have this problem, you have this problem. They're all structural problems. It starts to make those connections between the things your primitive mind has gotten you to write down — you don't even know why you wrote it, you just felt it was right. Then it catches those things because it doesn't think primitively or consciously or subconsciously. It just looks for a pattern. And I looked at it and it said, wait a second. You're missing something here. Your main character is starting to build out a second life, an alternative life. I hadn't even realized I was doing that. But the minute it said so, it was like, yes, this is exactly what's going on here. You've caught that pattern, and now that will help me going forward. So in answer: yes, absolutely work with it. I would say flesh it out yourself first. Then the AI will go through it and catch the patterns you've missed, and it's going to tap right into your primitive mind and say, here's what you're trying to get across here.

Peter McCully: So you think AI can help an author find their voice, or is there a risk of replacing it with something more generic?

Aaron Cully Drake: My gut tells me no, it can't find your voice for you. You've got to have a voice. You've got to find it yourself. Otherwise, you're going to start writing in the AI's voice, and that's a disaster. The truth is AI is really good at composing a sentence for you. It'll give you a really good sentence, it'll give you a mediocre paragraph, and it will give you a horrible chapter. So you don't use it to find your voice.

Peter McCully: Would it be fair to say there's a line there where AI can provide structure, but only you can provide lived experience?

Aaron Cully Drake: I'd push back a little on lived experience, because I think you don't necessarily need to have a lived experience to actually write about something — you're pretty good at imagining. But more importantly: AI is an editor. That's what it is. You're the writer. Don't use it to write, because what you're doing is being lazy. You don't know how to write it. For whatever reason, you're afraid to write what you need to write. You're caught up because you can't kill your darlings. You've got a contradiction you just can't work through, and you're not writing. AI comes in and smashes all that with a hammer because it just keeps coming back and reminding you: you have a contradiction, you have a contradiction, you have a contradiction. It forces you to write. And if you listen to it that way — treat it like an editor and not as a co-author — you're going to sail. You start to trust the process, and you're going to fly. My big knock on myself is that I agonize over sentences and paragraphs and connections. I'm so in love with my words I'm afraid to delete them. I started to trust the process and trust the AI. If it points out a spot that is wrong, my experience tells me nine times out of 10, it's bang on. And if it says get rid of it — get rid of it.

Peter McCully: Well, you mentioned editing and editors — and that's of course where many first drafts either come alive or fall apart. AI-assisted editing, the grammar, the pacing, the consistency checks — how do you think that compares to human editorial feedback, which shaped your first works?

Aaron Cully Drake: I think you're asking the wrong question there. The question is: is AI going to replace editors? And we're going to go back to what I said earlier. AI is not going to replace editors — it's going to replace editors that don't use AI. What excites me is the use of AI amongst editors gets to the point where there are editors out there who are really good, they've got great intuition, and they're using the AI to help them and assist them, to say, you're missing this. Anything the AI feeds back to them, they will then feed back to me, but it's a resonant loop. They look it over. AI looks it over. They look at what the AI says and they go, yes, and now I also notice this. They feed it back in, and you get this iterative cycle where AI and the editor are working together. Within 15, 20 minutes, half an hour, suddenly you've got some serious edits, some serious recommendations that are bang on.

Peter McCully: Research, of course, can consume tons of time for anyone writing anything. For a brand-new writer tackling perhaps an unfamiliar subject, how valuable is AI as a research companion, and what cautions would you attach to that? Because as we know, AI can make things up.

Aaron Cully Drake: I used it in my second book, which is coming out in a couple of weeks. I used it to do research on various areas. Hurricane, Utah was a good example. If I'd done that on Google, I would've ended up on Wikipedia and gotten information on Hurricane, Utah, then had to go somewhere else to extract the stuff I was looking for. But AI, because you can prompt it and set a context, knew I was looking for Hurricane, Utah in the context of my book and why it was there. It came back and said, now, referring to your book, this is why it's interesting. It finds you the things that apply — a lot better than you're going to find searching for yourself. You may find more searching for yourself, but it's going to take you an hour instead of 15 minutes to get the same result. The caution is, of course, that you can't rely on it. I'm a former editor, so the mantra is: two sources, buddy. Two sources. Double-check. Find somewhere else that confirms it, and you're good to go. One of my roles at work is to keep tabs on privacy legislation — GDPR and PIPEDA and all that. So I'll get the relevant section from ChatGPT, and then I'll go straight to the actual source to verify it.

Peter McCully: I always ask AI for a hard link to whatever the reference happens to be, just so I can pop it open and check it.

Aaron Cully Drake: Yes. I always forget to do that.

Peter McCully: Aaron, as someone who wrestled with your own books, what would you say to a brand-new author who wants to, as they think, shortcut the hard parts? What are the hard parts?

Aaron Cully Drake: There are hard parts and there are painful parts, and there's a big difference between the two. The hard part is getting up every day and just writing. Writing and trusting the process. There's no AI that's going to fix that. If you can't write it, AI's not going to write it for you — or it will, but it's going to be junk. Don't even go there. The painful part is when you're struggling with editing a chapter. It's probably because you can't let go of something in it. You're hooked on an anecdote, maybe a scene, a sentence even. You just can't let it go because something inside you hates the idea of killing your darlings, or you don't want to perturb the logical structure you've got in your head, and you just can't do it. So you spend hours going over that same chapter — tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, because you're too afraid. If your AI is properly configured, properly prompted, it knows where true north is because you've told it the plot, you've told it the theme, you've told it the characters, you've told it what's important. And it never forgets that, and it will never stop telling you where you're wrong. You feed the chapter in, it tells you what to fix. You make an adjustment, feed it back in — it tells you to fix the same thing. You make another adjustment, feed it back in — it tells you to fix the same thing. It will never lie to you. It will always tell you where the problem is. It's like AI is your mom, except without the guilt. It just constantly wants your success and it will constantly remind you of what you need to do. The painful part is getting over that block of I can't kill my darling. But if you have someone — or something — you trust telling you again and again, you've got to kill it, you're going to get past that part and the painful parts are going to go away.

Peter McCully: Now, your new book that you mentioned — When the World Was Twice as Big — tell us what it's about and what you used AI to help you with in the writing of it.

Aaron Cully Drake: That one is about what happens to the main character in the first novel after everything goes down, everything goes south, and everything gets resolved. This is the next few years of his life as he tries to pick up the pieces, move on, reconcile himself with an abusive father, and deal with memories of his mother. It's a hero's journey. He ends up out in the wilderness planting trees for years before he can even get the strength to come back to town and figure things out. I finished writing the first draft well over a year ago, so that was before AI really started to take hold. By the time it found an editor and a publisher, I hadn't touched it with AI. I'd used the AI for things like, tell me about Hurricane, Utah because I need some background on that. I think that was fortuitous because it had me focus not on what I should write or how to write it, but on how do I fix this scene, how do I fix this discontinuity, how do I fix this contradiction. I started to talk to it about things like, I've got two scenes here, they're contradicting each other, I can't figure it out, let's talk about it. It would point out the areas where there's a contradiction. The best part is you feed them in, you don't tell it what the problem is, and the AI comes back and says, your problem is right here. And you knew it. Nine times out of 10, it finds the contradiction you already know is there. So it was an accelerant. It helped me have the courage to move forward. I would say it at least doubled my productivity for sure.

Peter McCully: When you write your next book, Aaron, will there be parts of the process that you will not use AI for?

Aaron Cully Drake: I can't foresee any reason I would use AI for the actual writing if I'm starting from scratch. I'm using it right now in my third book, and I'm using it intensely on every single chapter. But once again, the chapters have already been written and now I'm trying to fix everything, which is what takes the longest time. If I'm starting from scratch, I will absolutely use it to help me figure out ideas about how to get from point A to point B in terms of what's logical. I came back from a vacation in Greece with a wonderful title in my head but no plot, and the title was, I Think This Vacation Could Have Been an Email. I said, well, that's gold. Someone's going to pick that up in an airport. All I've got to do is write something with it. So I went to ChatGPT and said, here's my title, I just came back from Greece, let's talk about it. It started to rattle off possibilities. Then it said, would you like me to make a plot for you? I said yes. It went off on a tangent. It was a disaster — in the end, I don't like anything you're saying there. But if you work with it consistently and say, here's the North Star, let's make sure we work towards that, it will circle around your own thoughts. It will iterate anything you say and bring it back to you. Its ideas tend to be structural, tend to be thematic, and they keep you on track. I'm going to use it for that. I'll write everything myself, but once I write it, I'm going to say, have a look at this and tell me if we're on track.

Peter McCully: In preparation for our chat today, I did a little looking around on the internet and found some prompts for authors writing books. One that caught my eye was a very short prompt: take a look at my book and take a look at the story. Examine the characters and see where we're in trouble with the story plot, because perhaps something has been left hanging open. I thought that was really interesting.

Aaron Cully Drake: It's brilliant. I'll pull up mine here. This is the one I'm working on right now. This is a dark humour novel, first person. Always consider the plot in my plot summary document that I've uploaded, consider a characters document. Stay in alignment with the elevator pitch. When asked to critique, consider the entirety of the chapter in the context of the plot summary and the characters. Act as if you were a mid-twenties urban employed female, because that's the target market. If you consider it fairly close to these documents, do not worry about looking for problems — only highlight significant problems. Always offer tweaks. List the good first, and then spend more time detailing the problems. Review the structure, identify holes if significant. Finally, pick out writing that has no point. Identify scenes that don't move the story forward.

Peter McCully: A final question for you today, Aaron. As we all know, there's an ongoing debate about whether AI-assisted books are truly authored, quote unquote, by the person whose name is on the cover. Where do you stand on the ethics and the authenticity of AI-assisted writing?

Aaron Cully Drake: If you're using a spell checker, is it still writing? Yes. If you're using a grammar checker, is it still writing? Yes. If you're using computer-aided drafting, is it still yours? Yes. Because the heart of it — the actual beating part of the story — that's what you're trying to bring out. Is AI helping you show that beating heart? If you're using it to write the actual story, good luck. That's what I've got right now. Maybe in five years, but right now, good luck. You get crap in, crap out. You're not going to make a good book. But if you use it to help you write the book, you're going to have a better book at the end than you would without it, which is part of that extinction event. AI is not going to replace writers. But I think eventually AI will replace writers who don't use AI.

Dave Graham: Aaron Cully Drake — what a fascinating mind, and what a worthy conversation to have for writers and readers and folks who are just simply trying to figure out what to do about AI. You'll find links to Aaron's work in our story notes at ThePulseCommunity.ca.

Peter McCully: Also on our website, we keep a growing library of stories for kids. Our Skookum Kids Stories include the adventures of Captain Dave on the Mellow Submarine. And in the latest story about Peter and Gracie, the American Eskimo dog, Peter and Gracie start their own Neighbourhood Heritage Festival.

Dave Graham: Tune in to find out how it turned out and download the colouring page so you have something extra to play with while you listen. We call them kids' stories, but I wouldn't want to be ageist about this. Everyone's welcome to enjoy them.

Peter McCully: Our Radio Archaeology series brings you classic, original radio episodes of Dragnet with Sergeant Joe Friday and Gunsmoke with Marshal Matt Dillon.

Dave Graham: We also invite you to join Cindy Thompson of Parksville with her podcast, A Resilience Project. It features stories that illustrate people moving from surviving to thriving.

Peter McCully: Our partners in podcasting include Non-Partisan Hacks with Parksville councillors Sean Wood and Joel Grenz, offering a fascinating look at how the sausage is made in municipal politics.

Dave Graham: You'll find all this and more at ThePulseCommunity.ca, and we encourage you to sign up for our newsletter. That means being among the first to know about upcoming guests and contests.

SOSD69: When families are supported, our whole community thrives. That's why SOS launched For Our Families — a campaign dedicated to keeping essential and enriching SOS Child, Youth and Family programs open, accessible, and vibrant. You can make a donation through the SOS website, and you can help by teeing off at the first-ever SOS For Our Community Golf Tournament, June 6th at Morningstar Golf Club for just $180 per person. Enjoy the driving range, 18 holes of golf, a golf cart, buffet dinner, on-course challenges, the chance to win a brand-new vehicle from Parksville Chrysler, and other great prizes. Bid on great local items in the silent auction. Support local children and youth. Strengthen local families. Learn more at sosd69.com.

Ian Lindsay & Associates: Ian Lindsay of Lindsay and Associates has played an active role in the local community since 1979. He has been with RE/MAX Vancouver Island's most advanced real estate business network since 1996. Marketing and selling residential, rural, strata, recreational, investment, and project development real estate, you'll find true real estate professionals at ianlindsay.ca.

Peter McCully: Dave, I wanted to come back to your garage clean-out for a moment. It seems you've begun to work through a time capsule of your own making. You might even find a treasure of some kind in there.

Dave Graham: Oh, I'm already there, Peter. I found a rotary phone, and you know what? When classic technology makes a comeback, I will be the coolest kid on the block — just like I'm going to be once I lose enough weight to get into my bell-bottom jeans from the 1970s. And if I can find my platform shoes, I'll be ready for the disco. Our next guest can trace his career back to the 1970s. What a ride it has been and continues to be. Here's Marilyn.

Marilyn: Roy Forbes grew up in Dawson Creek, BC, picked up a guitar at 14, and never looked back. Known in his early years as Bim, he spent more than five decades writing, recording, and performing across Canada, earning a place in the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame and a UBC honorary doctorate. He has been the host of Roy's Record Room on CKUA for more than 20 years.

Peter McCully: Roy, thanks for joining us on the PULSE Community Podcast.

Roy Forbes: Happy to be here, Peter.

Peter McCully: You grew up in Dawson Creek, up in the Peace Country, northeastern BC. It's a long way from the singer-songwriter scenes that were happening in those days in Vancouver. What was that world like for a young musician who was dreaming big?

Roy Forbes: Oh, it was challenging. The word dreaming is a key word because in the sixties — I started to play in '67, quite a few years ago now — I had to live through magazines, and every now and again, something relevant would show up on TV. You know, like seeing Eric Clapton with his Gibson SG that had been painted in a psychedelic manner, and looking at how he held his pick and how he had his fingers loose, not clenched up the way I was doing. Little things like that, but you had to figure it out on your own. No internet to look up the chords, nothing. There were mentors. George Houser was an older guitar player, and he was really a good mentor. We all would jam with each other, all of us like-minded musicians. My friend Terry and I figured out between us how to write songs. We did a rock opera in 1970 for the Grand Prairie Battle of the Bands, which we won. By the way, Peter, I put in the 10,000 hours or whatever Malcolm Gladwell says, and by the time I got to Vancouver, I was 18. I was ready.

Peter McCully: When did you know the music was going to be your life?

Roy Forbes: From a very young age. I've always been obsessed with records, from before I could read. Apparently, some adults would come in and pick up a record and say, who's this? I'd say, that's Hank Snow on RCA Victor. I don't know how I knew all that stuff, but I was totally obsessed with music. I began writing songs — I think my first attempt was in Grade 2. Then when the Beatles came in '64, the big deal was they wrote their own songs. I thought, well, I could try that. I always paid attention. You look at a single and you've got the title in bold type, and under it, in brackets, Leiber-Stoller, and then underneath, Elvis Presley. I became aware that people had to write these songs. That's what got me going.

Peter McCully: Now, do you remember the lyrics to that very first song that you wrote?

Roy Forbes: The one in Grade 2? No. I think it was a song about a failed love affair of two kids in Grade 2. That's all I remember.

Peter McCully: Well, I think you did pretty well to remember that.

Roy Forbes: Yes, for sure.

Peter McCully: Now, you mentioned Hank Snow. I read somewhere that your first concert memory was seeing Hank Snow perform, and you talked about feeling like Hank and you were the only two people in the room. How old were you at that point?

Roy Forbes: I would think '61 or '62, so I would have been eight or nine. In my mind, from when I was two or three, I knew that I understood music. Somehow I knew it, even though I couldn't articulate it, and I knew that I was destined to do what I'm still doing today, all these years later. When I saw Hank at the Vogue Theatre — which by the way later became the Elks Hall where my band would play — I just thought, if Hank could know me, he'd know. I fantasized that if I had a guitar pick, which I'd never even touched at that point, and he lost his, I could give him mine. Little kid dreams. He was a hero around the house. We had his records and he was big on the radio. I did a lot of high-powered dreaming. Seeing Neil Young in '71, when I was 17 — that was a whole different thing because by then I was writing. I loved his After the Gold Rush album. Seeing him on that tour where he had a back brace and he sat and told funny stories and played all these songs — he played one he'd written the night before — it was like I had been given permission to do what I was going to do anyway. That was a mind-blower as well.

Peter McCully: Now you mentioned that was 1971. You were performing under the name Bim in those days and landing opening slots for acts like Supertramp and Santana. Can I read you something that I found on the internet about that Santana show?

Roy Forbes: Please do.

Peter McCully: This is how it goes: "I saw Bim, as he was called back then, walk out alone on stage to a wild crowd as the opening act for Santana at the Edmonton Fieldhouse in the early seventies. He played 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry' to end his set, earning the crowd's collective attention. His last note was answered by the respect of 2,000 collective souls sharing a moment of exquisite silence, followed by the cheers of all the new Bim fans. Santana was great, but this is what I remember 40 years later."

Roy Forbes: Wow. I wasn't aware of that. Brings it all back. I joked that I did my half-hour set in 23 minutes.

Peter McCully: What was that sudden leap like, from Dawson Creek to those big stages? And how did a young kid hold his own in front of those crowds?

Roy Forbes: Well, when I first got to Vancouver, I played a few coffeehouse gigs, the Gastown Saloon, People's Park. I did have a manager because a band called Spring had come through town in the winter of '71. They had a record called "Country Boy Named Willie" at 45, and they were touring it. I had been prolific in those days — written about 10 new songs. They loved me. It was so cool. I found out later some of them were Vancouver's top session players at the time, and their manager, Roger Schiffer, gave me his phone number. When I got to Vancouver that fall, Roger got me an opening spot for Rita Coolidge at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. By that time I'd written maybe 50 other new songs. I went out there and they loved me. I got screaming reviews in the local papers. I thought, okay, I've arrived. Of course, that wasn't quite how it worked. I ended up leaving Roger a year and a half later and hitting the coffeehouse circuit and really learning how to perform. So by the time I got to Santana, which was probably '76, I'd had a fair bit of coffeehouse-style performing under my belt. You know, Peter, the people I worked with would put me on these shows and I'd just go out and do my best. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

Peter McCully: That's life.

Roy Forbes: Yes.

Peter McCully: Your first commercial success was the single "Can't Catch Me."

Roy Forbes: Yes.

Peter McCully: You performed that under the name Bim. And I realized I don't know where the name Bim came from.

Roy Forbes: It was a nickname I had when I was a kid. We used to joke it stood for big in music.

Peter McCully: Then in the eighties you went to your given name, Roy Forbes.

Roy Forbes: I just felt more like Roy Forbes, and perhaps bullishly made the shift in 1987. I still have people coming up to me saying, hey, wait a minute, you're Bim! Albert Costello tried it. John Cougar Mellencamp tried it. And I did it. I paid a bit of a price. But the people who figured it out — they're back, and they're as supportive as they ever were.

Peter McCully: Now, you mentioned you'd written about 50 new songs by the time you got to meet Rita Coolidge, who at that time I think was courting Kris Kristofferson.

Roy Forbes: They were courting. Rita barely had time to talk to me because she was too busy spooning with Kris. So I didn't really meet either of them. But the exposure I got from those shows — one in Vancouver, one in Edmonton — was amazing. Very helpful to me. I could pull those reviews out and say, this is what I do.

Peter McCully: When you're writing all those songs, how do you know when a song is really finished, and how do you know when you've got enough of them to make a record?

Roy Forbes: What a question. I don't know if songs are ever really finished. What I get to is the point where I can live with them. They don't give me a poke every time I sing them. Then I feel like they're ready for the stage. And then if they go okay in concert, I'm often tempted to say to the audience, okay, this is a brand-new one — which of course means you really have to like it. I really try not to do that until after I've sung a song and gotten a decent reaction. But songs are in a constant state of evolution, even if it's just changing one word. "If I Were a Raven" from Crazy Old Moon has an opening line. The original line is "nothing seems to be right" — but the note feels like it needs two syllables, so about three years after recording and releasing it, I started to sing "nothing appears to be right." It sings better. It heightens the meaning of that opening lyric.

Peter McCully: Songs are very personal, obviously, and they've been recorded by artists like Shawn Colvin, Sylvia Tyson, Susan Jacks, Garnet Rogers. We'll have to talk about the six degrees of Roy Forbes here, because I've met two of those people.

Roy Forbes: Oh, there you go.

Peter McCully: What does it feel like to hear somebody else inhabit a song you wrote? And has it ever changed how you hear one of your own compositions?

Roy Forbes: My friend Betty Chaba was the first person I heard sing one of my songs — "Right After My Heart." I almost felt invaded, like, what is this person doing with my song? Now I feel totally different when I hear Sylvia Tyson sing it. At the time, she was keeping up with the times — that would be '79. She had synthesizers on there, which of course I was not a fan of. But I listened to it recently because we've put up a page on my website, Roy Gets Covered, where we've got a lot of those people singing my tunes. One day I was practicing it for a show and I thought, wait a minute, I'm phrasing it like Sylvia did. The influence goes back and forth. You mentioned "Can't Catch Me," and a big thrill for me was when the Trans-Canada Highwaymen — a Canadian supergroup of nineties rockers, Craig Northey from The Odds, a fellow from Sloan, a fellow from The Pursuit of Happiness, and Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies — when I heard their version, it just put a grin on my face. That's a different generation doing my song, and that felt very cool to me. So I'm in. Go ahead out there — cover me.

Peter McCully: You were very famously a part of UHF — Sherry Ulrich, Bill Henderson, Roy Forbes. Such a great combination of voices, and you produced a couple of albums. Will there ever be a third?

Roy Forbes: I don't think so. I think we're all off doing other stuff now. But very fond memories and some very exciting musical moments with Shari and Bill. You get that three-part harmony going — Bill and I really meshed as guitar players. I treasure that. When I hear myself playing a solo, sometimes I hear a bit of Bill's vibrato, and I think he got a bit of my vibrato as well when he's rocking out with Chilliwack. It was fun. I love those albums and I love all the shows we've done. Never say never though, right, Peter?

Peter McCully: That's right.

Roy Forbes: Never retire.

Peter McCully: For folks who haven't heard of it, Roy's Record Room is on CKUA, which they can listen to online. You've been on for 20 years. You spin 78s, 45s, LPs — very eclectic stuff from your own collection. My question is, when did you start collecting records, and how many do you have in that collection now?

Roy Forbes: I've always had records in my life, as a consumer, as a kid — buying the Beatles records, Who, Jimi Hendrix, and all of that. We had 78s in the house when I was little and I was always intrigued by those. Then of course it became the album years, never buying a 45. I'd always pick up records when I was on the road and had time to go into a junk store or a record store. I really hit the collecting hard in the early nineties. Instead of buying a reissue album of Clyde McPhatter, I decided I wanted the original record because they haven't messed with the original sound. Early nineties, I started with 45s, 78s, and albums from their era of release. With the 78s, if you get a Louis Armstrong from 1926, it's pressed from the original stamper made in the studio. That's about as close as you're going to get to Louis live, rather than something off a reissue album that has added reverb and compression. Buying individual records turned into buying collections, picking through them, getting rid of what I didn't need. So now I'm spending a lot of time going through what I have, playing them on the show. I haven't really bought a lot of fresh stuff in a while, although I do have a pal named Al who phones me up every now and again, reads me a bunch of records, and I can't resist.

Peter McCully: Never have too many — unless you're moving from Nova Scotia to British Columbia and they charge you a dollar a pound.

Roy Forbes: My grandson Riley lives in Port Alberni, and we always joke about moving over there. At one point I said, first of all, we'd have to book the barge for the 78s.

Peter McCully: Your last album, Edge of Blue, you described it as feeling like your first album, even though it was your 14th. Did losing your sight change the way that you write and hear music?

Roy Forbes: Maybe not so much the hearing. There's all the talk about you lose one sense and the others get more attuned — I wish that were the case with my hearing, which is terrible. I've always written in my head. I'm always turning over musical ideas or lyrics. I've done that since before I became a writer. I really have to be on it now because I can't just grab a piece of paper and scribble something down. So I've got a little recorder that travels with me in my left-hand pocket, and my phone. If there's an idea I need to get down, I use the computer a lot more than I used to when I'm finishing up lyrics. My mind is my demo studio. I hate to waste energy on doing a demo. Usually I'm a first- or second-take kind of guy. So you end up going into the studio trying to recreate something that's already there but perhaps doesn't have studio-quality sound. Edge of Blue — I had gone through a dry spell, writing-wise. When I lost my sight, I had about a six-month period of just getting used to the idea that it wasn't coming back. I had my old Stella, a $7 Stella with 10-year-old strings, leaning on the couch. I didn't have my good guitars out because I didn't want to wreck anything. But the old Stella can take a lot of abuse, so I wrote most of the record on that Stella, using my old cassette recorder to get ideas. When I finally had enough material for the record, it felt triumphant that the writing had come back and that I'd gotten a few songs I actually really like.

Peter McCully: Speaking of the album Edge of Blue, tell us about the song from the album, "More Than a Little Bit Blue."

Roy Forbes: That was a gift, as they all are — all the good ones. I was drumming on the old Stella, as I mentioned, and a melody started to pop up the way the good ones come — usually unintentional. You'll get a melody, the melodies start to form words. The melody formed "I'm here, you're gone." Then I think the title came fairly quickly. I got to the bridge, and I thought, okay, I'm really liking it because I was moving in a soul direction. I worked away at it. I didn't have all the lyrics, didn't know what it was about. Until I'd had it a couple of days and I thought, wait a minute, this is about my sister Lil, who had died in 2015 and was one of my big musical inspirations. Then I knew it was about her because I'd found that much of the song. It took another week or two before all the lyrics finally fell into place. I structured it so that I would have some time at the end to do a little bit of testifying, you know, James Brown, Sam Cooke, Little Willie John, Clyde McPhatter — the way those guys testify at the end of their tunes. So I left a little spot at the end where I could really get into it. It was magical coming up with that one.

Song: "More Than a Little Bit Blue" — Roy Forbes

Peter McCully: Roy, you're still performing, still hosting the radio show after more than five decades. What would you like folks to take away when they leave one of your shows?

Roy Forbes: I hope people can come in, maybe laugh and cry, laugh some more, maybe cry a little — forget their lives for a couple of hours, become a part of what's happening. It really is a give and take. Any live show, you've got the performer and you've got the audience, and they're giving it back and forth. It becomes one big organism. If I'm giving it to the audience in a good way, they'll most likely give it back to me in a good way. And they're cheering, whatever their response is — they're out of whatever is going on in their lives for a couple of hours. They're taking a break with Roy.

Dave Graham: Roy Forbes — 50-plus years in and still making music that matters and stories that stick. You'll find Roy's tour dates and music in our story notes at ThePulseCommunity.ca. Roy's coming back to the mid-island with a show in Port Alberni in the coming months. Now I want to go through my vinyl records. I'm sure I have a Bim album in there somewhere. I think it's time to give it another listen.

Peter McCully: We'd like to hear from you if you have a story to share or anything to add to the conversation. Find the contact link on our homepage and leave us a voice or text message.

Dave Graham: You'll find links to all our podcasts, plus events, contests, and Vancouver Island webcam links at ThePulseCommunity.ca. You can also find us on Apple, Amazon, iHeart, Spotify, TikTok, and YouTube, and we're at Facebook and Instagram.

Peter McCully: Dave, we've had some frosty mornings as recently as last week, but the forecast says that's probably behind us now and it's just going to keep getting nicer out there. We have an exciting summer coming.

Dave Graham: Oh, I can't think as far ahead as summer. My world is three square feet of floor space that I have cleared in my garage.

Peter McCully: And what about that dark corner that you don't want to think about?

Dave Graham: Exactly. Not going to think about it. Oh, it's spider territory now. Probably big ones too. I'm sure there are wolf spiders back in there. Do you know how big they can get? And tarantulas — oh no, do we have tarantulas on the island? You've got me thinking about it. I need a happy thought.

Peter McCully: How about some lollipops and rainbows, Dave?

Dave Graham: They're frightening. My love of sugar, it's scary.

Peter McCully: Take some deep breaths, Dave. Four in, four out. Tomorrow's another day.

Dave Graham: That reminds me that I have a Blue Jays game that I need to watch tomorrow. I've become convinced that the Jays cannot win if I'm not watching. It's a big responsibility. I think I'm coping pretty well. Anyway, what was that you were saying about deep breaths? Deep breaths of what, exactly?

Rockin' Rhonda & The Uptown Blues Band: Here comes Peter, here comes Dave, oh listen. Bringing stories, making waves, no missing. Spinning tales in the podcast cave. Laughs and insights everywhere — what a treat. Peter and Dave, they're on the mics. All right, join the ride. It's gonna feel just right.