If biking is good for your health, Rich Aucoin should be a fitness guru by now.  

The Halifax-based musician cycled across the US to every gig on his “Press On” tour from March 23 to June 26, raising both money and awareness for mental health issues. 

Now, he’s touring Canada, with a stop in Kingston at Blu Martini on Oct 19.  

This wasn’t Aucoin’s first charity tour. Back in 2007, he toured across 6,500 kilometres of Canada. Prior to that, he ran half-marathons. 

On his charity tours, Aucoin offers his fans, friends, and family the opportunity to pledge money to various mental health organizations. Some of the organizations he has donated to in the past include the Childhood Cancer Canada Foundation and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. 

After his most recent US tour, he donated to Mental Health America and the Canadian Mental Health Association. 

“It felt like I could do some good,” Aucoin said in a phone interview with The Journal. “It was an amazing experience just for me to travel and see everything but also it was a great to kind of use the platform of the tour to raise more awareness for mental health issues.”

This time around, he’s hitching a ride into Kingston with his drummer, Taylor Knox. 

“It’s been a couple of years now since we’ve played Kingston,” Aucoin said. “I’m excited to show anyone that’s seen the show before the new version.” 

The songs on his new EP are a preview of what fans can expect to hear on his upcoming album. 

He recorded the EP over the last couple of years, both on tour and off, all across Canada. There’s a total of 60 different musicians who have contributed to the making of the EP. 

Incorporating different mediums into his music is a habit for Aucoin. His music videos and concerts visuals often recreate scenes from famous film. 

“The show is like a montage of every movie you’ve ever seen, so there are 800 movies that are cut up into the video show and a coordinated light show and lots of confetti and a parachute comes out at some point, it’s a pretty fun time,” Aucoin said. 

He re-enacts scenes from some of the most famous movies in film history in his music videos. For his song “It,” he takes inspiration from movies, like “Forest Gump,” “Taxi Driver,” “ET,” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” 

He makes no effort to blend the scenes together, but uses the most iconic scenes to amp-up the tension of the music.  

In the chorus of, “It,” he repeatedly asks the question, “Will you let it hold you down?” In the context of the song, “it” refers to the fear of chasing your dreams. For Aucoin that means being a movie star. 

In the meantime, he may have to settle for the stage.