Canadian singer-songwriter, music philanthropist and entrepreneur Danny Lamb has released his memoir, ‘Bass Clef On The Brain: Finding My Voice, Taking Off The Masks, And Learning to Love Myself.’
The book opens with a question Lamb has spent his life answering: what do you do when the life you’re given isn’t the one you expected?
Diagnosed with hydrocephalus at three, Lamb’s parents made the choice early on that he would live a life of possibilities rather than limitations. That resolve was tested at 14, when a shunt failure led to brain surgery, a new scar, and a depression that lasted two years, taking with it the soccer dreams that had given him a sense of community and identity as a kid. At 16, a Rotary Exchange offered a way forward, though not without another rejection first, Lamb was turned away by France because of his disability, before Brazil opened the door instead and changed the direction of his life for good.
‘Bass Clef On The Brain’ traces that path from a transformative year in Brazil through global touring as a musician, founding a music school, and becoming an international advocate for hydrocephalus and spina bifida awareness. Lamb frames resilience not as overcoming but as refusing limitations altogether, a book he describes simply as being for anyone who has ever been told they can’t. “Yes, you can,” he says.
The idea for the book had been sitting with Lamb for six or seven years before it finally took shape, accelerated, in the end, by a breakup that ended cordially but left him needing to look inward. “I have come to learn that when faced with adversity, I have a habit of wanting to dive deeper into the question of why,” Lamb says, “and the writing of ‘Bass Clef On The Brain’ was no different.” Writing it became a way to hold himself accountable for the role he played in a relationship ending, while also separating out what was never his to carry in the first place.
Though written from his home in Niagara Falls, the book draws on stories, people and experiences gathered from around the world across 38 years, three brain surgeries, a childhood learning disability diagnosis, and the eventual, difficult decision to walk away from soccer, the game that had once given him purpose. “The adversity that pushed me to discover my own voice in music and life has also continued to teach me how to use my voice, stories and abilities to create spaces that people feel comfortable and confident to find their own,” Lamb says.
That mission extends well beyond the page. Lamb is the founder of the Danny Lamb School of Music and co-founder of A Song, A City, a music movement built to connect, celebrate and amplify the voices, stories and abilities of people living with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. He has shared stages with Marianas Trench, Mother Mother, Fefe Dobson, Hollerado, Faber Drive, Honeymoon Suite and David Wilcox, and his work has been featured by the BBC, Global TV, CTV, CHCH and Canadian Musician Magazine. A Song, A City’s crowdfunded first ever tour across the UK and Europe was significant enough to be documented as a case study in the second edition of a college Business Communications textbook, used to teach students how the campaign came together.
‘Bass Clef On The Brain’ was edited by Bev Hotchkiss, founder of Backhouse Press & Collective.
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