Yukon singer-songwriter Elijah Bekk on overcoming injury, reigniting his passion for music and moving to Mexico City to further his career
When Elijah Bekk was 20, a doctor told him it was time to accept that he would have to live without the full use of his hands. Two years prior, when the Faro-born musician was home for the summer, after his first year of music school, he was working in a creek, building a fish ladder to count and studying salmon. An avalanche farther North had made the water higher and colder than usual, and the 6-foot-4 Bekk was elected to stand in the creek for certain tasks.
“I was in this creek hammering posts for hours and hours and hours, multiple days in a row,” he recalls. “When I woke up after a couple days of work, my hands were just completely swollen and I couldn’t open or close them. I was in a bunch of pain.”
Bekk tried to get back a semblance of normal life that autumn. He went back to college, sought student aid and switched from a guitar focus to vocal studies. But the pain only got worse and eventually he left school with one semester to go, unsure of what his life would become.
“That crushed me,” he admits. “But you know me; I’m pretty stubborn and I’m not one for giving up.”
Bekk found himself on the verge of giving up many more times over the next several years, but his family always encouraged him to stay determined, helping him find solutions—from advanced medical care to holistic medicine, somatic yoga and electric acupuncture.
“We were doing everything we could think of,” he says. “It wasn’t getting better.”
Bekk’s acupuncturist referred him to a high-level doctor who said he could help Bekk, and before long, the musician and his mother were on a plane to Hamilton, Ontario, for a Hail Mary. He stayed in Hamilton for two-and-a-half weeks, receiving treatment nearly every day.
Two years into dealing with his injury, Bekk had finally found hope that his condition was fixable, and he was willing to do whatever it would take to reignite his passion and be able to play again, including a strict diet and a rigorous exercise routine.
“A big part of the rehab was retraining my brain [into] convincing myself I was okay,” Bekk says.
First, Bekk was allowed to play guitar for five minutes a day, working through immense pain to do so. Then it was 10 minutes a day, and so on. Before long, he was playing 25 minutes a day, and though it still hurt at the end, he realized those first five minutes no longer did.
“We just built that up until I could play for two hours,” he says. “Even though it hurt really bad at the two-hour mark, the first forty-five minutes were totally fine. It was just this super-long process of convincing my brain that my hands were fine.”
By his mid-twenties, Bekk moved to Whitehorse and became ubiquitous in the Yukon’s music scene, spearheading his own solo group while lending guitar and vocal duties to many other musicians and bands. A somewhat unexpected opportunity came in 2019 when BreakOut West came to Whitehorse.
“It was my first show back, after being injured for years, and it was a twenty-minute lobby gig in a hotel,” he says. “It was the worst gig of my life. My amp wasn’t working, my microphone was cutting in and out—it was literally the worst gig ever. I remember going to my car and calling my mom, just devastated. I worked so hard to be able to play again, and it just fell apart.”
The next day at the conference, a stranger approached Bekk asking if he was playing in the hotel lobby the day before. Braced to be told what a mess his performance was, Bekk had no idea how much this conversation would change his career. The stranger was Gabriela Urquiza, who runs the GlamRock Agency in Mexico City and who is now Bekk’s manager.
“She talked about working with me then, but my injury was so hit-and-miss that I had no idea if I was going to keep getting better or regress,” Bekk says. “I had no idea what was going to happen, so we decided not to work together and just went our separate ways.”
Some years later, in 2024, Bekk was on vacation in the U.K. where he did an impromptu performance and posted some footage of it. Urquiza reached out to him asking if he was on tour, and Bekk told her he was working on an album but didn’t have much of a release plan or timeline hashed out.
“I was set on taking a break from music, once I was done recording, because I just wasn’t very happy with what I was doing,” Bekk says. Then came the question from Urquiza: “Do you want to move to Mexico?”
Bekk took a day to think about it and ask some friends and family for advice. The response was unanimous. If he didn’t go and do this, he would spend the rest of his life wondering what would have happened if he had.
“I gave my boss two weeks’ notice and she helped me find an apartment, and the next thing you know, I had uprooted my entire life,” Bekk says. “I think it was in the span of like three weeks total.”
Bekk spent some time between Mexico City and Whitehorse as he became acquainted with what would become his new life. But when the wheels touched down in his plane the first time he flew to the city, to say he felt terrified would be an understatement.
“I was so, so, so nervous,” he says. “Anyone who knows me knows I’ve always been a bit of a socially-anxious person and that I love routine. I came in at nighttime, and it’s like you’re flying over the ocean—but with city lights. As far as you can see out of the plane, it’s just lights. I couldn’t fathom how big it is.”
While Bekk has long worked to overcome personal barriers, he also credits the unwavering support of his family and friends back home for pushing him to his potential. One of his good friends and a mentor to him, Jody Peters, who played bass for Bekk, still reminds him to be proud of any accomplishment, no matter how small it may seem, even having the confidence to walk around the city by himself and to order a coffee in Spanish.
“I called him multiple times a week,” Bekk says. “I was so far away, but I’ve had so much support from people back home, cheering me on.”
Last summer, after spending some time back home, Bekk performed a farewell concert in Whitehorse at Lefty’s Well, with support from local group Baby Ronka & The Boyfriends.
“It was the most emotional show I’ve ever played,” Bekk says. “In the last year and a half I’ve gone through a lot, grown a lot and actively done everything I can to better myself as a person and change a lot, and that show was a super-pivotal moment to see that the work was paying off. I hadn’t played a show with my band in over a year, at that point, and I’d written these songs about the new stage of my life. I cried onstage, Jody cried onstage, Ben [McGrath] was behind me on the drum kit … but I’m pretty sure he cried.
“I’d never played a show that hit me that hard. My sister was in the front row and she cried. I thought it was going to be sad, but it was the happiest tears; all the crap I’ve gone through and all the work I’m putting in matters, and people see that. It was really special.”
After moving, Bekk released a string of five singles throughout the spring and summer of 2025, many of which Yukoners will recognize from seeing them performed over the past several years.
He’s now regularly opening shows for larger-scale touring artists in Mexico City, playing in various bands and focusing on creating new music and promoting his catalogue with digital marketing strategies like targeted ad campaigns and constant content creation, with a candid, honest approach, hoping his journey can be a source of inspiration for any artist facing challenges like he has.
No matter how far he’s come, there is always work to be done, but Bekk continues his journey with a newfound confidence, even if competing in such a massive market can be discouraging at times.
“It’s amazing and it’s also so stressful because the industry is so competitive,” he says. “Which is why I decided a while ago that I’m going to quit being so stressed about how good I am at guitar and just focus more on my songwriting, because there is always going to be better guitar players.”
To keep up with Bekk, follow him on Instagram (@elijahbekk) and stream his music on all platforms.
