Noah Reid, who plays Bilheimer Capitol Theatre in Clearwater, Florida on May 8, 2025. Credit: Photo c/o Polk and Co.

When Noah Reid took Tina Turner’s “The Best” from a pop anthem to an acoustic love song on “Schitt’s Creek” in 2018, he became half of one of the best TV couples of all time.

Five years after he played Patrick Brewer, boyfriend-slash-business partner of David (Dan Levy)—and their tearjerker wedding—Reid has shifted his focus towards a singer-songwriter stint. Before he makes his Clearwater debut on Thursday, Reid talked to Creative Loafing about how he came to be a performer.

While the 37-year-old spent most of his life onscreen, music has been a passion since he learned to play piano as a kid and his mom would transcribe any melodies he came up with on staff paper. At the same time, he became a regular on stages and on screens (most notably as the voice of Franklin the Turtle).

As a young man in theater school, Reid used music to get into character. “I had my piano with me in my apartment and I would sit at the piano, just play around and make up songs from a character’s perspective as a way to get a little bit deeper into how they might think, what kind of sound they might be producing and what kind of things they would listen to,” he said during a phone call from his home in Toronto.

“That became a way to kind of explore character, and I think as I got even further into it, I was like, ‘oh, what if I’m the character? What if I’m exploring my own landscape?’”

He explores that landscape on his latest studio album Adjustments in a more personal way than ever. One of the deepest tracks on the record, “Left Behind” could be interpreted as the pain of being an afterthought to peers who are about to move away or make a big change in their lives, while you stay where you are.

“I think the best songs feel both specific and universal at the same time and when I play that song live, it means something different to me than it meant when I wrote it,” he explained. Reid sees the song as more of a way to accept and make peace with the fact that while saying goodbye to the good old days can suck, everyone has their own path, and it’s also more than okay to go at your own pace. “The gift of a song is that people get to absorb it into their own lives and interpret it, kind of lay it over top of their own experiences.”

On the record’s sixth track, “Another Fucking Condo,” he faces another hard truth, being how Toronto has no shortage of perpetual construction sites. It’s not the feeling of empty space being filled that gets him down, and he’s “not anti-development by any means.” It’s the fact that pieces of the city he was born and raised in are being knocked down to make room for more modern, probably cheaply-made condos that people will pay an arm and a leg to live in.

“Every time that I see one of these big old beauties coming down, these amazing old brick structures that they won’t make the same way again because it’s not cost effective, it just feels like we lose another piece of the architectural history and the culture of this city,” Reid said, adding that he understands Toronto’s expansion isn’t unique.

While he’s on a break from acting, he hasn’t abandoned the art.

“I think of the two things as these parallel tracks of my life that I jump off of one and onto the other one. I don’t know if I can think of them as one or the other, now they’re so enmeshed. Most of my songs have to do with experiences in the acting world, and most of my acting experience now has to do with music in some way,” he said. “Often in my life, when I think ‘is it this or is it that?’ The answer is both, and that’s a real Gemini thing. I embrace it.”

Though there are currently no plans to acknowledge “Schitt’s Creek’s” tenth anniversary(which Reid swears he would leak if he had any intel), he remains as close to the cast and crew as ever, and he hopes that fans of the show gained a sense of being true to themselves, along with a little bit of faith in life.

“It’s not just okay to be who you are. It’s incredibly impactful, and it’s the best thing you could be, and no matter what your background is, or what you’re carrying with you, you’re valued, and there’s hope, there’s joy, there’s laughter, and some things do work out.”

Tickets to see Noah Reid play Clearwater’s Bilheimer Capitol Theatre on Thursday, May 8 are still available and start at $35.