INTERVIEW WITH IAN GORMELY
VICTORIA ARAKELYAN
HUMBER COLLEGE
THE BIOGRAPHY&CONTEXT
Ian Gormely, 33, was born in raised in Vancouver. After doing an undergrad in Victoria, he moved to Halifax in 2006 and finished one-year journalism program in Kings College, then worked there for one more year in City Magazine. When his wife, who is also a journalist, got a job in Toronto, they both moved to the city. Today Gormely writes for Exclaim! and has a weekly entertainment column in Metro. He says he initially got into music journalism because he was extremely uncool as a teenager, and wanted to know more about music to increase his coolness. He also started playing a lot of instruments at that time and played in a post-Nirvana rock band in high school. That snowballed into bit of an obsession, as Gormely puts it, and led him into being an assistant editor of Torontos leading music magazine.
The coffee shop picked by interviewee was a tiny one, with one long table at the center and a couple of tables for two on the sides. I managed to get one of these before he came - sitting in front of each other at a separate table appeared a better idea than being surrounded by a bunch of people at the long table. The place generally smelled like cinnamon and ginger. A lot of arty people were sitting around, infusing the atmosphere with ions of laidbackness.
Gormely was also clothed very laid-back: plaid shirt, faded jeans and a cap. He ordered the same ginger tea that I was already sipping - probably appreciating the role of mirroring in a good interview (or simply appreciating ginger tea). We greeted each other with a handshake and right away engaged in a little conversation about music - that served as a best icebreaker I could ever imagine. All the anxiety I felt before immediately disappeared. That was a luxurious advantage though - we had this topic that we knew we are both passionately interested in, and that 10-minute chat about music tendencies and value of music journalism has set the perfect pace for the further interview.
Gormelys body language did not change at all throughout conversation - he was sitting with his shoulders on a table, leaning towards me and gesticulating lively.
The Interview
V: Do you remember your first interview ever?
I: Yes, I was interviewing Canadian band The Weakerthans, their bas player, in 2003. I was feeling super anxious, I did all kinds of notes and questions, and then he was going to call into the station and I had to record it there, which was new to me. So I went there, and they didnt call, and I had to just go home. Which becomes a pattern in music journalism. And then finally they did get on the phone, and I had all these questions, and I was asking them. Looking back now I guess that is just a wrong approach, you just go through your list that youve written down in the order youve written them down and that doesnt make any conversational sense, I was not engaging with the music the way I supposed to, I was asking them surface questions as opposed to asking about music itself.
