Craig Minowa wasn’t very good company while he was writing Cloud Cult’s epic album, “Light Chasers.”
“If you learn the tool of knowing how to write at any given moment of the day, you also learn the tools of how to not be present,” says the singer, with an almost guilty chuckle, “because you’re sitting there at the family get-together and your head is still drilling over a song and you’re on auto-pilot physically, and you’re working out lines and kinks here and there.”
Minowa seems to have worked out all those lines and kinks though, as “Light Chasers,” which came out in September, is a thorough and majestic concept album that deals on several levels with the weighty issues attached to finding the meaning of existence.
An essential component to understanding the Cloud Cult story is knowing the tragedy and subsequent healing that Minowa and his wife Connie went through. In 2002, their son Kaidin died unexpectedly, which led to a period of separation for the couple and an extended period of mourning and introspection for the songwriter. The band persevered, the couple got back together and a son named Nova was born to them in 2009.
“After Kaidin passed away, he was sort of the emissary for me, where I could reach out and I felt like I had a gatekeeper that was always with me and offered that guidance and information that I needed,” says Minowa about the sense of peace that accompanies the existential angst on the album. “But the whole idea of trying to figure out where we go in the afterlife and the big grand mystery has been a theme even prior to when we lost our son. I think it’s an inherent thing that I have as an artist, and in using music as a tool. The main thing I want to use it for is this journey of pontificating and philosophizing about what the big picture is.”
If you go
Cloud Cult
Tonight, 8
World Cafe Live
3025 Walnut St.
$13, 215-222-1400
www.worldcafelive.com
