Born in New York City’s West Village to a Basque father and a Nova Scotian mother, the footloose Etch has been actively involved in music, and by extension innovative and alternative culture, since his teens, when he played bass guitar in various bands. Though his wanderlust and creative opportunities would take him across the North American continent, and indeed the world, Montreal, Quebec is his home, for all intents and purposes.

After a stretch in Chicago—playing bass with Tom Smith’s band, organizing open-mic poetry jams at the Get Me High Lounge—Etch returned to Montreal in the late ’80s. There he signed on with a struggling countercultural newsweekly, the Montreal Mirror.

More recently, through his record label Oliver Sudden, Etch has become a