Bluesman Roger Howse opens up on his struggle with depression
Howse played soldout hometown show in St. John's Friday night
Bent over his acoustic guitar, Roger Howse lets his instrument do the talking: a wordless song written for his wife, Ginger's Blues.
The tune lilts up and down, its melody tinged with intimacy, apology, and the way every long-married couple wander their way back to each other in the end.
All that stuffed into six strings of an inexpensive guitar.
"Not bad for a guy who couldn't play a year ago," Howse said lightly on Friday, to host Ramona Dearing on CBC's Crosstalk, his tone belying the real suffering the 54-year-old has been through in his life.
The veteran bluesman has clinical depression, and is just coming out the other side of what he calls his "probably the worst depression that I've been in, in 20 years."
He lost 60 pounds — 40 in one month alone — and felt himself slipping away last summer.
"I couldn't hold a conversation," Howse remembered. "The drugs they had me on, at that point — how can I put this? I could hear the words but I just couldn't put it together. I couldn't make sense of what all those words together meant. "
He credits the strong friendships in his adopted city of Halifax, and in his hometown St. John's, for carrying him through, as well as the benefit concerts they organized to get him back on his feet.
"That gave me the ability to sit back and start making some positive changes, and seeing things clearly."
'I just thought everybody went through it'
Depression has been alongside Howse for most of his life, rearing its head just after his family moved and he changed schools at the age of 13.
"I knew nobody. It was tough," he said.
But alongside the normal adolescent challenges of making friends and navigating a new neighbourhood came darker feelings of self-hatred.
"I lost most of the year. I sat at home and cried," Howse said, as he fought his first bout with clinical depression, without being able to put a name to his adversary.
"It was 20 years before I was ever diagnosed. I just thought that everybody went through it, and I didn't handle it as well as everybody else."
A familiar tune
In the tiny but tight-knit Newfoundland blues scene, Howse's struggles strike a chord.
"Music has sometimes been our saviour and sometimes been our tormentor," said fellow musician, concert organizer and friend Terry Reilly, in conversation with Howse on Crosstalk.
Reilly has also dealt with depression, and uses his musical experiences as the outlet to explain the disease.
"I always knew I was in really bad shape if I sat at the piano and could not face putting my fingers onto the keys. That was my darkest time."
"Me too. Same thing," agreed Howse, "I've had times where i just can't take the guitar out of the case, even."
But in the past few months, Howse has found the strength and support to brush off that guitar once again.
"The blues will never die," he said, about the music that frames his world. "There's always someone there who understands."
And there is always someone there who understands.
And sometimes, a roomful of them. Howse played a sold-out show in St. John's Friday night.
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