Born in Toronto, David Deacon left his studies in philosophy at St. Catharines, Ont.’s Brock University to pursue creative arts in Paris. While he found his skills improved in both writing and visual arts, when he returned to Canada he struggled to make a living. No matter, he got another itch: motorcycle racing. But one day, on a practice run for motorcross outside Ottawa, he had a massive crash.

“I was basically D.O.A.,” he says. “I ended up with 11 hours of neurosurgery, a plate in my head, pins through five breaks in my right femur and three in my left shin bone. Just a mess. So I quit racing bikes, and a couple years later I started racing cars.”

Heading into another risky venture is not the path most people who almost die might take, but it was the right one for David.

“When I was in the hospital and I'd survived, I said to myself, ‘If I had died, I wouldn't have regretted a single minute in my life.’ I said to myself, ‘You know what, man, you gotta live the rest of your life like that. You gotta live it so that if that day happened in five years or 10 years, or however many years, that you actually stayed that engaged in your life.’ So that's what I've tried to do.”

He went on to win the Canadian endurance racing championship in a Porsche RSR, then BMW sponsored him to race the M1 in the States and then to race for their factory team in 1981 at the 24 hours of Le Mans (he was the first native Canadian to do so). Two years later, Canadian Tire sponsored him, Jacques Villeneuve Sr. and Ludwig Heimrath Jr. to race Le Mans again.

“I kept doing it until the fear and the consequences did overwhelm me because I finally got married and with the prospect of having a kid, I thought, ‘I don't think I should do that anymore.’ So I got into other dangerous things like music,” he jokes.

Of course, the 20-year gap between albums was filled with other creative endeavours, including his painting and poetry, but mainly as a successful entrepreneur. At one point, he was general manager of the Porsche division of Volkswagen Canada Inc. and founder of the Rothmans Porsche Challenge Cup Series (1986-1991). He and his brother started Azure Dynamics Corp., a very early developer of hybrid electric technology. He also got hired to turn around Semcan Inc., an environmental solutions company.

But it has been a life of big ups and big downs. What of the “big price” for his choices, besides the motorcycle crash and plate in his head? There was a car crash, two divorces, going broke in his 50s, and, as he puts it, “the lonely winding road of artistic pursuit in three disciplines.” He adds, “There is more, but maybe that’s enough?”

His hope now with his big return to music?

“With the broad streaming platforms that exist today, I am hoping that the strong local geographic following I had the last time around can turn into a broader following everywhere,” says David. “I would love to be playing for the next decade and figure, at this point, I’m sort of on house money.”