Forest Blakk at KiSS: Old Lives, Future Hopes & How Art Brings Light to Dark Places

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hkb2VDjgzw&feature=youtu.be

An excerpt from FOREST BLAKK‘s official bio:

“He was born in Montreal and his early years were spent with his mother, who had Blakk at 17 and struggled with addiction, and his stepfather, a notorious drug dealer.
Blakk can tell you hair-raising tales of his childhood, including an assassination attempt on his father on the family’s front stoop, rooms full of cash, and moving around constantly… to evade child services when Blakk’s teachers in Canada discovered the physical abuse his father had inflicted on him.”

Forest has been musically inclined since childhood, using an old Don Henley tune as a reprieve from the gloomy surroundings he was born into. He ran away from home at 13, and moved in with his grandmother at 15. She bought him his first guitar and will be seeing him play it, all these years later, to an arena crowd later this summer.

In a former life, Forest gained local success in a band but he didn’t seem too interested in talking about that…

“Yeah, that’s the past. The past is the past. I think like all things, that was my elementary school [outlet]. Yeah, I had to learn. I paid my dues like I think a lot of artists do… but I hadn’t really found myself… I had to go from the caterpillar to the butterfly.”