AHI Discusses Performing “Try” in Front of Blue Rodeo and the Writing Connection He Made at CSHF

by Karen Bliss | December 4, 2024

“AHI was amazing. I’ve never heard ‘Try’ done better than AHI. I might change the end — like he did,” said Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy, during his induction speech at the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, back in September at Toronto’s Massey Hall.

AHI — birthname Born Akinoah H. Izarh (his stage moniker is his initials, pronounced “eye”) — performed the plaintive hit ballad from Blue Rodeo’s 1987 debut album, Outskirts, as a special tribute to its writers, Cuddy and fellow inductee Greg Keelor.

The folk singer-songwriter tells the CSHF that he doesn’t think too many people in the sold-out crowd knew who he was. Still, he has received tons of recognition since releasing his 2016 debut album, We Made It Through the Wreckage — and over 100 million global streams of his music — so he could be very wrong.

In 2017, he won the Canadian Songwriting Competition in the folk category and the Stingray Rising Star Award at the Folk Music Ontario conference and then signed a deal with U.S. indie label Thirty Tigers (Amos Lee, Jason Isbell, Lucinda Williams). His next album, 2018 In Our Time, led to a coveted opportunity in the U.S. to perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, a Folk Music Ontario Award for recording artist of the year, and his first Juno nomination for contemporary roots album.

When he released his third album, 2021’s Prospect, that too was nominated in the same Juno category in 2022 and was shortlisted for the coveted Polaris Music Prize and a Canadian Black Music Award from the SOCAN Foundation and SiriusXM Canada. To date, AHI also holds the distinction of being the only independent artist in the top 40 of the Spotify global folk chart for a whole year.

He is releasing his fourth album, The Light Behind The Sun, on January 17, made with an all-Black creative team, but he talked with Karen Bliss about covering “Try,” the opportunities that came from performing on the CSHF ceremony, his goal as a Black artist to move the folk genre forward, and more.

How did you find taking on “Try,” a single off their very first album, that everyone waits for at their concerts? How did you approach it?

It’s a demanding vocal song. There’s a lot of high notes, a lot of diversity in the way you’re singing it. I sent back a very quick demo and they fell in love with it. I felt like, “Okay, I can really perform this song.” I wanted to do it justice. Blue Rodeo are Canadian icons,
Canadian heritage, however you want to say it — legends. I didn’t listen to a lot of Blue Rodeo growing up. I’m a little younger than their audience, but I’m also coming from a Black background. [

Can I ask how old you are?

I’m 41.

“Try” is 37 years old, but it’s still a song you can’t escape on the radio to this day.

CTV [newscaster] Andria Case is my aunt-in-law. She told me a story about how Jim’s mom’s a teacher and when she was in high school, they had all the kids call the radio station, and I think that’s how the song broke.

So, you approached the song with fresh ears.

I know Blue Rodeo. I know the catalogue, but when I was 10 years old, I was listening to probably Boyz II Men and hip-hop. I was a fan of Nirvana, but much later in my life. Jimi Hendrix came later. Even The Tragically Hip, I didn’t start listening to them until I was in my late teens. My siblings being older, that’s what they listened to.

That song [“Try”] was a discovery for me. As I was telling people or people heard that I was doing the tribute, everyone was, “Oh, my gosh, you’re doing ‘Try.’ I didn’t understand the magnitude of the song.

Did that make you nervous leading up to the performance?

I don’t get completely nervous. I just hope that I have enough time to work it out. I think it was everybody saying that I was like, ‘Okay, this is a big deal.” So, I wasn’t necessarily nervous, but I wanted to go in there and leave an impression. I don’t sing falsetto, really, ever. Doing falsetto was the part that scared me.

Your version was fairly faithful.

I tried to stay true to what they did. I don’t think I deviated too much from the original, but, I also, felt at least that there were hints of Otis Redding in there. I wanted to bring that out a little bit. Even though I don’t come from the South, I’m very well-versed in Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, that era of music. So, the way I sang the ending was a slight homage to Otis Redding.

How was it to have Jim and Greg in the audience right in front of you?

I thought Jim would be in the first row, but he was behind [fellow inductee] Tom [Cochrane]. When I walked out, I didn’t see him; I only saw Tom. Once I realized he was right behind Tom, he kind of nodded, like “Good job.” Then, after, we got to talk and hang out. We did an interview together with the band. That was the highlight for me, the fact that they appreciated it. In his speech — I was behind the stage, it was hard to hear — but he said, “I might have to change my version of how I sing it now.” That’s the ultimate co-sign.

Did any cool opportunities come out of performing at the Hall of Fame and meeting all the talent backstage?

I think there’s a large portion of that “How have I never heard of this guy?” That’s the story of my career. They’re like, “What the hell, you’re Canadian? How have I never heard of you before?” But, definitely, some offers to work with me. My favourite connection was to Tenille Townes. During the soundcheck, we were standing beside each other. They had us on the same side for the final sing-along that everybody did; we were on the same microphone together. I’m a huge fan of hers. When she came out with “Jersey on the Wall” and “Somebody’s Daughter,” to me, as a songwriter, these are some of the best songs that I’ve heard in Canadian writing.

She’s going through a transition in her career, and we did some co-writing. I know she wasn’t the biggest artist there, but those are the things that matter because we’re the next generation. I don’t know if we will be in the Hall of Fame, but [if we are], in our past it happened there. Like, if we write a song together that becomes something, that’s because of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, us connecting there. We wrote a song together that we’re both like, “Holy shit — excuse my language — this song’s incredible.”

So, two Canadians coming together that never met each other, seemingly from different walks of life, different genres, kind of — she does country; I do folk-ish — that was amazing. And, some of the other people want me to do shows. It hasn’t been off the chain; it’s just been more like, “Bro, how do we not know who you are?”

You are on your third album — your fourth coming out in January. You had success as early as 2017, winning awards, doing NPR’s Tiny Desk in 2018, and then getting shortlisted for the 2022, Polaris Music Prize, which is not easy, but that year you were also one of five songwriters to win the 2022 SOCAN Foundation Black Canadian Music Awards. As a Black artist in folk music, what did that award, in particular, mean to you?

When I received that award, I’ll be honest, I was surprised. I never expected to receive any awards—maybe Junos a couple of times—but receiving the Black Canadian Music Award felt different. It felt like acknowledgment. While I’ll always be grateful for everything I’ve accomplished, there’s something deeply motivating about being recognized, especially in an industry as tough as ours. That kind of acknowledgment helps you keep going when things get hard.

For me, as the child of Caribbean parents, nobody can tell me that Bob Marley isn’t folk or that “Redemption Song” isn’t one of the greatest folk songs ever written. Like Bob, every song I’ve ever written began with nothing more than my voice and my acoustic guitar; I know I’m folk. And yet, I’ve spent my career climbing uphill in an industry that tries to tell me I’m not making “Black music” or “folk music,” when the truth is I’m making both—not because of my ethnicity, but because of the cultural significance it represents.

To have created [my new album] The Light Behind the Sun with an entirely Black team—producers, engineers, everyone—is unprecedented. It’s a defiant celebration of ourselves and our contributions to folk music. My goal has always been to move folk music forward—to
weave in the global sounds that shaped me, and to ensure that Black folk music is respected, embraced, and heard, and receiving this award brought me one step closer to that goal.

You obviously write by yourself, but in The Light Behind the Sun, there’s a handful of co-writes. Do you enjoy that?

I’ve been really closed off from co-writing for a while. For my first three records, all the songs were written by me, for better or worse. I’ve had some success. But, I wrote all the songs, and I think on this next record, I was like, I just want to open up and say yes to people. Instead of saying no [laughs].

Yeah, because you don’t have to put it out. Just because you write with someone doesn’t mean you have to do anything with it.

Prior to my first couple of records, I was co-writing with people. The experiences were not horrible, but there wasn’t a lot that came out of it for me. Now that I’ve opened up that door to work, co-writing with some incredible writers, like Natalie Hemby, who’s written for Miranda Lambert, for Labyrinth; like Grammy-[nominated] writer Ruby Amanfu. So, in this stage of my writing process were some of the first co-writes that I did, right? So super professional. They have a track record, and they’re just all good people.

Co-writing is a vulnerable thing. There are two ways you can look at it. You can look at it like just a job. You go in, you write, you get out. Or you’re going in there trying to write something meaningful, trying to write something deep, trying to write something that you can connect to. Usually, when it’s the artist in the room, there’s a little bit more kind of therapy, in a way; you’re telling people about what’s going on in your life at the moment.

Well, it’s a little early to get into talking about specific songs on the new album, but that is key to who you are as an artist, is it not?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You have to be vulnerable. You have to be honest. You may go in a session and just tell someone about some of the most traumatizing parts of your life [laughs] and then it sucks, then it never comes out. Unless you’re hitting a nerve in music, you’re wasting your time. You have to write things that other people can’t write, or else we could all just do it. You got to write things that mean something, write songs that are vulnerable, but that connect to people, that are universal. It seems easy because you could just kind of stumble on an amazing song, but to do it repeatedly, to write good songs repeatedly, it’s not a simple task because you’re taking this feeling and this idea and just compressing it down into this one singular song. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.