January 10, 2009
SPEED BUMPS & HURDLES Well, it's pushing a year since we started the project... I'm just able to play guitar again after 3.5 months... some valuable lessons learned about hockey and physiotherapy (in that order!). So, come mid-February, we'll finally get back to work. Have to record the cover and I'm thinking about adding a little acoustic tune I'm toying with now. Then we've just gotta mix it all. Not very flashy, but news nonetheless.
April 24, 2008
PAST THE POINT OF NO RETURN Just had three great days in the studio. Finished all the bass, drums and acoustic guitar for 13 songs... long, tiring days, but incredibly rewarding. I may add a 14th tune near the end of the process, but that depends on publishing permission, so I'll keep the details under my hat just in case it falls through.
But I'm definitely back in the studio week after next to work with Paul Linklater on electric guitar. Saw him play at Claudia Dey's novel launch party last night. Great show -- very excited about the sessions.
April 17, 2008
T MINUS 93 HOURS 10 AM Monday morning, we plug in to start recording bedtracks for the new album!! Alex Mine's on drums, Derek Watson from my old band Freshwater is on bass, and Don Kerr will be at the helm. Over the coming weeks, we'll add electric guitar by Paul Linklater, piano and accordion by Treasa Levasseur, fiddle by John Showman -- and hopefully a few other little things yet to be determined! Exciting times indeed!
February 7, 2008
NEW ALBUM IN THE WORKS Had a great meeting with Don Kerr (Rheostatics, Ron Sexsmith) on Saturday and booked his studio for early April. The plan is to record bedtracks live off the floor with a four-piece band – drums, bass, electric guitar and me on acoustic and singing. Bass and lead players are up in the air right now, but I'm delighted to say that Alex Mine will be behind the kit again for this one, and we'll work on the arrangements together through March. It's going to be a whole different kettle of fish than Out Of Order. I'm looking at 12 or 13 tracks and considering sounds like uilleann pipes, accordion and flute! Very exciting times indeed. Can't wait to share it with ya.
Stay tuned for updates.
Cheers,
Michael
November 26, 2007
Holy cow... not a word since July! Have been working on material for the new record. It'll include most of the songs I wrote in 2007 and gigged with the band this fall but I'm playing with different arrangement ideas. Right now at least, I'm thinking it'll be a more rootsy sound than Out Of Order was. And, hopefully, if I can get the right people together, we'll do as much as possible live off the floor with a bit of jamming thrown in for good measure. So it's looking like a pretty different process than last time. Planning to record in Feb or March. In other news, I'm heading to the nosebleeds at Massey Hall tonight to see Neil Young for the first time. Very exciting stuff!!
July 24, 2007
Sorry… went into a bit of an introvert mode there for a while. Our schedules have been wonky, so not many shows in the past month or so.
Was in Chicago for the first time recently, visiting a friend. Saw a great dub reggae band (can't remember the name sorry… but I think they were from Ohio) at the Wild Hare. Highly recommend that place. Also saw Lurrie Bell at the B.L.U.E.S. bar. He's been compared to Buddy Guy, so it was pretty sweet catching that gig. Met a couple of young Aussies who'd never seen live blues before! I can't even imagine such a thing! Anyway, they sure picked a good place to start.
Wrote a couple of new tunes recently, one's called Hard Wired which is a sad one about missing somebody close who died a few years ago. About how the brain seems to be hard-wired to the heart and memories sometimes really catch you off guard. The other one is called The Light Is Waiting for You which I'm pretty sure will turn into a nice heavy live jam tune when the band gets at it. I guess 'the light' is the eureka moment when you figure out what it's all about. I hope there's such a thing!
I mentioned a new tune in May called How Far Can You Fall but didn't feel like getting into much detail at the time. Here's the scoop: I wrote it after a friend told me she was coming off antidepressants for the first time in two years. I didn't know she was on 'em so I was really touched that she told me. In the song, I'm not asking so much as telling… it's a vote of confidence.
Have a couple of Toronto gigs coming up before the summer's done and then we gotta get the wheels rolling more in the fall. There's enough new material now that we've started talking about doing a new record. Out Of Order was pretty long experiment in sessions and overdubs, but the next one will be done the good ol' fashioned way, live off the floor. I'll keep you posted.
May 6, 2007
Well, lemme tell ya, it's real nice to be writing again. I went through about 14 months where I just wasn't compelled to write anything. It got a bit scary. But strangely enough, when Out Of Order was finally put to bed, I started getting that funny sensation back. Like a switch in my head had been turned off for a while so I wouldn't be distracted from making the record! Strange stuff. So I took some of my buddy John's advice and just picked up the guitar more to fool around without any expectations.
The first thing I started working on was the line "your money or your life" that I'd scribbled down in my notebook sometime last fall. I started out wanting to write about Ned Kelly, a folk legend I learned about in Australia last year. But it wasn't feeling right. Then I watched Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and everything just poured out. The song's called Thieves.
Then I'd been responding to an email question from a travel friend in Paris, about whether my trip had changed me in any way. A lot of people have been asking me that. It's not like I was away for a long long time or anything, but as long as I could manage. And it's been something I've put off for much too long. Anyway, in trying to assess the possible effects and then explain them to other folks, Let a Little came out. I played it last month with Jess singing harmony (she heard it for the first time just before our set!) and it sounded really nice. Looking forward to the band getting at it.
Next was How Far Can You Fall which I wrote for a friend. That's still a bit too personal to get into yet.
And last night I finished another one with a sort of trad Irish + country feel. I recently said something I had no business saying and my conscience taught me a lesson. The song's called My Tongue Is A Traitor. Will hopefully have that in a set soon too.
The main Lyrics page just has songs from the record, but I’ll add another page with other tunes soon, so check back in a while.
April 22, 2007
At the moment, what comes to mind is how pissed off I am that my guestbook keeps backfiring on the server end... Sincere apologies to the folks who wrote those nice notes. I'm told they are lost forever... but thank you for writing them! Hopefully it'll get sorted out soon enough and you'll pop back to say hi again.
