Peter Joynt still remembers using skateboards to push a quarter-pipe down Island Park Drive with his childhood friend Alan Gustafson and brother David Joynt.
Though much has changed in the more than 30 years since that day, Joynt still lives nearby with his family. Joynt, whose stage name is The Joynt, showcases his love for the neighbourhood in his newest music video “Island Park Drive.”
The song draws on the fondness of his childhood memories around Island Park Drive, including the day with the quarter-pipe, and takes a relaxed perspective on the now-traffic-heavy street.
“It’s such a great street, and yet it’s so hard to take the street because of the traffic … Back when we moved the ramp, it was like the odd car out for a cruise, not quite the bumper-to-bumper traffic you see these days,” he said. “I’ve always been fascinated by it because of that, and because it’s got this tropical, kind of exotic sound to it. ‘Island Park Drive’ sounds ritzy and as though it should be in the Caribbean or something, as though it’s some coastal drive.”
Joynt wrote, performed and produced both the song and the music video mostly himself, with some help along the way.
He said his friend Gustafson indirectly served as visual inspiration for the music video. The 1989 Volvo wagon featured in the video belonged to Gustafson, who passed away in 2016 from ALS.
“I thought of renting a classic car, but then that kind of wasn’t quite the right vibe,” Joynt said. “Driving [the Volvo] feels like you’re driving a big couch — it’s this big, slow kind of ride, and I thought that would be perfect for the shoot … Alan lived just off Island Park Drive, and so it all kind of fit.”
As well as working at Shopify and being a rapper, Joynt is also a public speaker for schools around Ottawa. His talks focus on his resiliency and self-acceptance surrounding his speech impediment, which he says is caused by his brain producing speech from its right side, rather than its left like others do.
He says the criss-crossing of his right and left brain that causes him to stutter also allows him to find the creative process perhaps easier than others do. In fact, when he starts rapping, the stutter disappears.
Spreading his story is his way of spreading inspiration to the next generation.
“Just because you have a thing — if it’s a stutter or a food allergy, or you look different or sound different — don’t let that hold you back. You can still go on and do great things in your life,” he said. “If you put good vibes out there in the world, you get good things back.”
If there’s one key takeaway of “Island Park Drive”, Joynt says he wants people “to go slow and enjoy the ride” — something he says he has learned as he’s grown older.
“That’s what you have to think about every time you get on to Island Park Drive: it’s going to take some time, so don’t be trying to ram up someone’s tail or follow too close. Chill out. Roll the windows down. Take your time. Enjoy the ride,” he said.
“When you’re a kid, you can’t wait to get old … but when you’re old, you want to slow it down and go back to being a kid.”