A collection of favorite Canadian ‘live’ albums (ok, initially I meant to stop at 10…). I do realize there’s a lot more out there (and I have), so maybe a part 2 in the future (?). Feel free to drop omissions in the comments.
SAGA – In Transit
Released in August of 1982. My first and favorite SAGA album. I have a clear memory of buying this at the Eaton’s in the Rexdale Mall, not long after it came out. The mall was a few blocks from my grandmother’s house, so I’d go there when visiting. I bought it based on the 2 songs I’d heard on the radio – “On The Loose” and “Wind Him Up”. Loved this album – “Don’t Be Late”, “Humble Stance”, “Careful Where You Step”,… In Transit marked the end of the band’s best era (IMO). Still my favorite Canadian live album. Wish there was more from the shows tho’ to make an expanded reissue.
APRIL WINE – One For The Road
One of my first concerts was APRIL WINE at the Kingswood Music Theatre, at Canada’s Wonderland, just north of Toronto. What an amazing show! Too bad this was the band’s final tour, and more so a shame that this originally came out as a single LP. The 1985 release included 11 tracks, and really the band’s best-known songs, mainly from the 1978 onward era, though it only features 1 from the band’s final studio album Animal Grace (a shame they never played more from it). But “Anything You Want” was a killer opener, followed by classics like “I Like To Rock”, “All Over Town”, “Sign Of The Gypsy Queen”, and so on, plus a medley of ballads… But, there are a few glaring omissions with the original track listing, which was largely corrected years later with 4 songs added to CD and 2 LP reissues. All classic tunes and loads of energy capping off the band’s most successful era!
TEAZE – Live At Liege
In their day TEAZE only lasted about 5-6 years, 4 studio albums and their classic Live in Japan. But the band has reformed since 2019 to play a number of shows. This recent show (just released) captures the band, now pushing into their 70s, but you’d never know it from the energy and the lead vocals (Brian Danter). A dozen great rockers and anthems here, with favorites like “Back In Action”, “Touch The Wind”, “Heartless World” and “On The Loose” (which closes the set). If you don’t know anything about this band, this live disc is the place to start.
RUSH – Different Stages
There’s lots of RUSH live albums, but this is the one I play the most (from 1998)….and then maybe Rush In Rio (released 5 years later)…. But I like the sound of this one, and the set list, which features tracks from the band’s comeback pair of 90s albums – Counterparts and Test For Echo, as well as more from the band’s 80s (despite the glaring omission of “Subdivisions”). Love the inclusion of “Analog Kid” and “Big Money”, and newer favorites like “Driven” and “Animate”, plus the full 2112. Much prefer this to A Show Of Hands. it also came with a 3rd disc (bonus), of the band at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1978. Originally released on CD, but I see a 4-LP version was issued last year.
GODDO – Lighve: Best Seat In The House
Those first few GODDO albums were packed full of punchy, energetic rock tracks, and this 2 LP set was a bold move after just 3 albums, but it is a ‘must hear’, featuring all the band’s favorites (which, most of remained in the set forever). With what became their standard opening of “Anacana Panacana” (intro tape) and “So Walk On” and highlighted with best known favorites like “Sweet Thing”, “O Carole (Kiss My Whip)”, “Under My Hat”, and a 7+ minute performance of “Let That Lizard loose”. Years later the band repeated with 2nd Best Seat In The House, as well as an archived live release and a 35th Anniversary live set. I saw Goddo years ago in St Catharines, it was actually the first sit-down interview I ever did. Greg Godovitz recently put together a new version of the band to play shows to celebrate the band’s 50th Anniversary.
MOXY – Live In Toronto
Released in 2014 as Live In Toronto and also included as part of the band’s 40th Anniversary 2CD/DVD 40 Years And Still Riding High) release a year later (which I have). One of those ‘better late than never’ things, and with a new line up led by guitarist Earl Johnson and featuring lead vocals from Nick Walsh (Slik Toxic). 11 tracks (including the drum solo), taken from the band’s first 3 classic albums. Walsh was a great fit for the band as they went through favorites like “Out Of The Darkness”, “Nothing Comes Easy”, “Moon Rider”, “Sail On Sail Away”, and “Ridin’ High”. Johnson has a new version of the band currently playing shows, I believe.
LOVERBOY – Live In ’82
I was a fan, mainly of those first 3 LOVERBOY albums (and then someone brought In Mutt Lange (sigh). But Live In’82, (released last summer on CD & vinyl!) captures the band at their peak, playing songs from the first 2 albums (arguably their best). So you get high energy performances of their biggest hits like “Turn Me Loose”, “The Kid Is Hot Tonight”, and “Working For The Weekend”, as well as favorites from Get Lucky – “Jump”, “Lucky Ones” and “Take Me To The Top”.
FM- Retroactive: FM Archives Volume 1
Released in 1995, and I don’t ‘get’ the stupid title (as there was no further volumes), this was taken from the band’s 1994 short reunion tour to promote the CD release of their classic Black Noise album. I saw 2 of the 5 shows in small venues. The shows were awesome and captured well here. Don’t recall how many songs they played, but this includes 10 songs, notably their hit “Phasors On Stun”, and Black Noise favorite “Journey”, as well as best known songs like “This Lonely World” and “City Of Fear”, and their versions of “Shapes Of Things” and “Baba O’Riley”. A CD release only (included a retroactive CD-ROM track, don’t think I ever watched it), but would be nice if their was more from this little tour or the FM archives to hear some more.
CONEY HATCH – Live At The El Mocambo
The first of 2 live albums from CONEY HATCH, back-to-back. This one was recorded & video’d during CoVid, with a limited number of guests allowed in to see the show at Toronto’s legendary El Mocambo. A great mix, representing the band’s 4 studio albums, and long overdue. Not too long after came Postcard From Germany, which had been recorded in 2018. Hoping there’ll be more, as there’s a few good shows from the 80s (Cleveland 1982).
STREETHEART – Live After Dark
This 2 LP set was recorded following 6 albums from Winnipeg’s STREETHEART. Although I don’t think Streetheart’s albums were heavy, but more pop produced, Live After Dark showed the band rocked harder live. This features the band’s hits like “Action”, “What Kind Of Love Is This”, “Hollywood”, plus their excellent covers of “Tin Soldier”, and 12 & a half minute closing classic take of “Under My Thumb”! The band’s original line up would reunite and record 2014’s One Night One Take, but I’ve yet to hear that one. but Live After Dark is a pretty essential Canadian album.
THE GUESS WHO – Live At The Paramount
Another essential Canadian release, and better than simply picking up a ‘best of’ IMO. Live At the Paramount, from 1972, captured THE GUESS WHO in their prime; they had a ton of hits and some pretty cool album cuts, so this isn’t just a play through of the usual numbers. Only 7 tracks though on the original single LP (why!?), but there is favorites “Running Back To Saskatoon”, “Pain Train”, and the 16+ minute performance of “American Woman”! The CD version would thankfully add 6 more tracks and fix the running order.
Canadian Live Albums I’d Still Like to see…
A Foot In Coldwater – anything, be it from the early 70s or from one of the band’s reunion gigs over the years.
Santers – there is video of the band from Toronto, around 1982 or 83(?) Would be cool to master it for release.
Headpins – Saw the Headpins open for Loverboy in ’83, surely their must be a good live recording from that period(!?)
Harlequin – something from the band’s early 80s heyday, before they brought the guy from The Fixx in to produce!
Moxy – OK, something from the late 70s w/ Buzz Shearman.
Well, a quick run down of some new tracks & videos worth checking out! If you got any new classic rock/hard recommendations, drop me a note or put them in the comments! As always, for more info, check out the descriptions in the videos for more info and links.
RUSS BALLARD – New York Groove
Originally of the classic band ARGENT, Russ Ballard left the band for a solo career, and is likely better known as a songwriter who’s songs have become hits for numerous acts like Rainbow, Kiss, Santana, America, and this song – which was a hit for Kiss’ Ace Frehley in 1978. The song was previously covered by British glam band ‘Hello’. And now Ballard has made a new version of the song.
HAREM.SCAREM – Reliving History
Canadian rockers HAREM SCAREM have a new single out. I picked up the band’s first 5 or 6 albums way back, and always enjoyed them. This is good, very likeable compared to the early stuff.
HOUSE OF LORDS – Cry Of The Wicked
Fronted by singer James Christian, HOL is pretty consistent with good songs and album covers! 🙂 This is from the band’s new album Full Tilt Overdrive.
ENVY OF NONE – Under The Stars
the 2nd single from the 2nd (forthcoming) album of EON, which features Alex Lifeson (Rush), and Andy Curran (Coney Hatch). Check it out. Very atmosphere track, nothing like anything you’ve heard before.
STREETLIGHT – Captured In The Night
New single from Swedish band that is influenced by 80s AOR/melodic Hard rock like Journey, Toto, Kansas… Their new (2nd?) album is titled Night Vision, due out next month.
HELLOWEEN – Future World (live)
From German power metal legends HELLOWEEN, who have a new Live At Budokan release out now.
Back in 2014 APRIL WINE founder Myles Goodwyn expressed his desire to retire from playing live with the band, but it would be over 8 years, in December of 2022 that Marc Parent was announced, having been chosen by Myles, to take over the band’s lead vocal and guitar duties (alongside Brian Greenway). Parent debuted with the band last April. Sadly Myles Goodwyn passed away December 3 of 2023. But choosing Parent was so that the songs (mostly written by Goodwyn) would carry on to be enjoyed by fans. April Wine has had a busy year playing live, and 2025 looks to busier and very interesting, with festival shows, as well as a UK tour as openers for Uriah Heep, followed by a Canadian tour opening for Randy Bachman’s BTO. In this interview Marc discussed his past, previous bands, influences, how he came to join April Wine, how things are working in the band, highlights, and a few surprises.
*Check out the links at the bottom of the page for more info, tour dates, etc…
Can you tell me a bit about your earlier stuff, your musical influences and some of the stuff you grew up on listening to?
I’m a total classic rock guy. first album I ever got; I traded a buddy of mine for a Playboy magazine. It was the first Boston album. He wanted the Playboy and I wanted his Boston album. So, we swapped.
So, I’m pretty much a classic rock guy; grew up listening to that and a lot of progressive rock and I got into, after Kiss, Styx and Boston, I got into Genesis and Gentle Giant and Yes.
And I was also studying to be a jazz guitar player, so I was interested in Pat Metheny, Larry Carlton, Lee Rittenour and Wes Montgomery and all those guitar gods.
In your early days what was the scene up there? Did you play in a lot of cover bands or beforehand, in the 80s and 90s?
No, actually, the first band I ever played in was like an original band out of high school. We were called ‘Sigma’. And, the first gig I ever did I was 17 years old and we were doing originals. We had an electric violinist, we had a girl on bass, we had a sax player, we did original tunes. At that point I had a music teacher, his name was Regean Gauvreau and he was very influential because he had a big band and he would work; every weekend he would book his big band at the Chateau Laurier Hotel, in Ottawa or at the Congress Center or he would do these corporate events, and he would hire me as the guitar player in this big band. So, I had to be able to read music and I had to wear a suit, and he really taught me a lot about the business of being a professional musician. This would be, like, early 80s.
So, then I was studying to be more like a jazz guitar player, and I ended up – my neighbor was going out with a bass player in a band called ‘Eight Seconds’ in Ottawa. And she would listen to me practice, in my bedroom and she said ‘You gotta come see my boyfriend’s band’. So I went to see Eight Seconds play and I said to myself ‘I could do better than that guitar player’. You know, just as a typical 20-year-old, watching the guy play with my arms crossed in front of the stage kind of deal. And, it’s very weird, at the same time I was working in a music store in Aylmer, Quebec, my hometown; and this guy walked in and gave me some business cards and said ‘I just opened up a local recording studio and if you know any musicians who want to do demos, I would appreciate it if you would hand them my card’. And I said ‘well, I’m a guitar player and I’ve never really recorded in the studio’; he said ‘well, come on over and you can play guitar on a couple of my songs’. I did that and at the same time, Eight Seconds were recording demos at his studio. And they, at the same time, decided they wanted to trade up, or change guitar players. So, this gentleman, Manfred Leidecker, said ‘well, listen to this kid I just recorded him’. And they gave me an audition and I got the gig with Eight Seconds. The band that my neighbor took me to go see, maybe a month before. Next thing I knew I was in that band, and I was 23 years old. And the first gig I ever did with them was opening up for ‘Luba’ at the Ottawa Congress Center. And they scored a number one hit in Canada with “Kiss You When It’s Dangerous”. We opened up for David Bowie and Wang Chung and Paul Young and we did a North American tour. The next thing I knew I was living the dream. From ’85 to ’87, it was unbelievable!
And how many albums did you guys do? Just a couple or…?
I was on Ottawa Rima, which is a self-produced first album. Then that generated the interest of Rupert Hine and Polygram Records. So, then we did Almacantar, which had the “Kiss You When It’s Dangerous” hit on it. And, and then they did a great album. I got the boot in ’87 and they decided to go without a guitar player. It was very support oriented, in those years. And they did another album, which is in my opinion, was their best album, which is called Big Houses. And they produced that one at Le Studio, in Morin Heights. I was not on that one, Bill Beaudoin played the guitar on that one. That was in 1990.
Were you a writer?
Yeah, I wrote some stuff on Almacantar. Not complete songs, but melodies and, certain choruses and stuff like that. I was just getting my feet wet, as the singer, guitar player, writer. That was basically my first attempt was with Eight Seconds.
Was there any other recording bands or did you, like, locally throughout the years before April Wine came along?
After Eight Seconds, I moved to Montreal in ’87 and did a bachelor’s degree in music at Concordia University, And realized that the scene in Montreal, there was a strong blues scene. A lot of clubs had bands that played blues. Three sets, four sets a night, four – 45-minute sets. So, I put together a band that still exists to this day. It’s called Wang Dang Doodle. I put that band together in 1989. And just learned the craft of playing live and singing and fronting a band, in the clubs in Quebec and Ontario. And I still play with that band once a month, just because it’s fun.
And playing the Quebec blues circuit, I met Richard Lanthier, who was playing bass in that same circuit. And I hired Richard a few times to play in my band. And he hired me to play with Carl Tremblay’s band. We basically knew each other. When Myles Goodwyn’s health issues got a little worse about eight years ago, Richard recommended me. And I auditioned for Myles on the phone. He liked what he heard and offered me the gig. And I, you know, I just had my first child, and I had a pretty good day job. Unfortunately, I had to refuse. So, I actually said no to April Wine eight years ago. And I couldn’t believe it. I was telling all my friends; I can’t believe I just said no to April Wine.
And they kept going. Myles hung in there for another eight years. Luckily for me, they didn’t find a replacement for Myles. And then Myles’ issue post-COVID, became worse. And then he said, ‘how about that Marc guy that we auditioned eight years ago?’ At that point my girls were more grown up. And I had returned to being a full-time musician. So, the timing was just right. I didn’t say no the second time around.
That’s interesting, because I remember that post going up years ago that he wanted to step back. And people flooded the April Wine groups with names and stuff and suggestions. And then there was nothing said for years.
I think a couple of guys, Myles was very, very picky in what he wanted. And I think he put a couple of guys through the ringer there, they auditioned for him, and I think it was pretty tough. I was just in the right place at the right time. Like, lucky for me, he didn’t find his guy. You know, and he liked, and he liked me. So, my voice naturally sounds like his. I don’t try to imitate Myles when I sing. I just respect the melody of the song as close as I can to the record. And I just put my own energy into it, my own vocal style. And I respect Myles’ vocal style. I try to be as close to the original as possible. But I don’t imitate. I’m not an impersonator. I don’t do that.
And he had a pretty recognizable, distinctive voice.
Absolutely! All the great singers do.
Do you remember what you were required to learn to audition with?
Well, I did “Roller” and “Gypsy Queen” for him, on the phone eight years ago. And then this time around, when I got the call the second time, I took out my iPhone and an acoustic guitar, and I just did a rough demo. And I sent it to him, and I said ‘listen, this is as rough as it gets’. It’s my friggin’ phone and an acoustic guitar. Nothing else. ‘And if you like the tone of the voice and you like what you hear, then maybe we’re onto something here.’
And he was listening to it in his studio and a friend of his called him on the phone and he asks his friend ‘What do you think of this?’, and his friend says ‘Well, what? That’s just you singing and playing guitar’. And Myles said ‘Okay. That’s the guy!’ And so, whoever that guy is, I have no idea who that guy is, but that guy got me the gig.
That’s funny.
The guy thought it was Myles.
I’ve watched the live clips on YouTube and obviously nobody can sound like Myles, but you’re close enough that the sound, the songs aren’t losing anything, you know?
Yeah. It’s all about the song, right!? It’s all about the memories that we, that the songs evoke in us. So, my, my job is to serve the song and make sure that when you come see the show, you hear that song the way you remember it and you get all those nice, warm, fuzzy feelings that you had when you were 16 years old. You know what I mean!? That’s my job.
I think for Canadians; I think April Wine is a special band because guys in our age group kind of grew up with them and they had so many hits, so many radio hits. We know all those songs, so just still getting to hear them is great.
I think so too. That’s my approach. When you come and hear the show, you want to hear the song, then we are, our mantra is to play the song as close as possible to the record. That’s what we said we were going to do and that’s what we’re doing and making sure you have a really good time. Yeah. So, you come out, you hear the songs as you remember them, you have tons of energy on stage – Brian Greenway is 72 years old, he’s still kicking ass. And Richard Lanthier and Roy Nichol have been there for like 12 and 14 years. They’re a powerhouse rhythm section. We’re a really tight band. And we’ve got great songs, great hits to play. It’s fun for us too!
It’s a huge catalog. I’m curious how familiar were you with the entire catalog before all this?
Oh, not that familiar. I was familiar with the same songs you were familiar with. I grew up listening to April Wine on the radio. So, I mean, at one point I’d learned maybe 30 songs, and then Brian comes up with the list, he says ‘Okay, here’s seven more songs, these are the American hits’. And I go ‘Excuse me?’ He goes ‘Yeah, these songs were big in the States.’ I go ‘Oh my God.’
I have the entire catalog, so like I’ve followed them since the early 80s, there’s so much to it, right? You have kind of have three phases of the band, the early band until the mid 70s, and then when Brian joined, and then the post reunion stuff. So, how much of that catalog do you guys play? Do you change it up a lot, or are you, is there a set list that you gotta keep to?
When we’re headlining, we have an hour and a half Canadian set, we have an American set, which has different songs, not all different, but there’s a few more American hit songs that are in there that are not in the Canadian set.
We have an opening act set, so, you know, we’re going to England and we’re going to be playing pretty much just the hits, because we have 45 minutes. And then we’re doing the Bachman Turner Overdrive tour in April, I believe that’s a 45 or a 60-minute set, so, again, and that’s a Canadian tour, so that’ll be just the hits, because that’s what people want to hear.
And even though I say just the hits, there’s a couple of deep tracks in there as well. Just so, you know, for the connoisseurs, there are some deep tracks in there as well. But when you have 45 minutes and you have as many hits as April Wine has, you got to pick and choose. It’s a good problem to have.
Now that you’ve been in the band for a while, have you had a chance to go back through the catalog, and listen to everything and kind of put in ideas that may be things you want to try or things that aren’t in the setlist?
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Brian came up with a bunch of songs the other day and sometimes he brings out tunes and I go ‘Man, I haven’t heard that one yet!’ It’s such a huge catalog. I’ll go back and listen to the albums, listen to a bunch of stuff and I’ll come up with a suggestion, and he might say ‘That one didn’t really stick with the public…’, and he knows; he’s been there since ’77, so he knows what was popular, and what wasn’t.
When Myles was still with you guys, you guys had gone into the studio at one point. Was there anything finished or kind of any plans to finish any of that stuff?
I had the honor of writing a song with Myles. He had this song lying around and he and I worked on it and then when he did his last show in Nova Scotia, he brought the guys in and they recorded it and I put some vocals on it, played some guitar. So, there’s a song out there. It’ll probably end up on a live album.
There’s a live recording of Myles’ last show. So that’s in the works right now. I can’t say more because I don’t know where we’re at in that process. Where the powers that be are at in the process. But I’m pretty sure that we’re going to have a bonus track on that album and it’ll be, you know, Myles’ last song.
And you’re on it!?
Yeah.
Have you done any recordings with you in the band? Taped any live shows or anything or any live video professionally that can be used for promotion or for release?
If you go on the website, there’s a video that hits you as soon as you open the website. That’s a promo video that was professionally done. They just took a clip of “Roller” and put it on there as an audio track. So that video, we’re really proud of it. It gives you an idea of the energy of the show live. But there’s no audio yet. There’s no audio that I know of anyways, no professional live recording.
I think that would be a cool idea kind of to reintroduce the band that this is what we sound like now.
Totally agree. I think that even when Myles’ last live show, you could have a package in there where there’s some live songs of us now, so you get a bit of everything. I think that’s what they’re working on. Maybe that’s why it’s not out yet.
Has there been any discussion of eventually recording some new material?
Well, that’s a tricky situation because I think Myles was the main songwriter and Kim, who is Myles’ widow, her job is to really preserve Myles’ legacy.
So, to bring out new songs, they would have to be things that Myles has had a hand in. And he’s got a bunch of snippets on his phone. So, I think one of these days we’re going to have to go through all those snippets and see if there’s good ideas in there, which I’m sure there are, that we could potentially turn into songs.
The other option is, I know when the Thin Lizzy guys wanted to record without Phil Lynott, they ended up finding a new name. Not that you guys need to find a new name, but even… alter the name a bit or ‘featuring’…. But it’d be cool to hear the band, something live and in the studio, as is.
I totally agree.
We’ll have to see. Right now, there’s a lot happening right now just for us, playing live. So, it’d be nice. We’re going to be touring a lot, so it’d be nice to set something up where we could record the shows. We always want to be better musicians. We always want to get better and make the show better. So, there’s nothing like recording video and audio to listen to yourself and to watch yourself. That’s the best way to critique and get better.
It’s interesting because Myles, for years, was very dead set against people recording at shows and taking pictures. So there was a scarcity of stuff out there for a long time.
I think he was a little… I didn’t know the man as well as the other guys. I didn’t get to spend much time with him, unfortunately. But I think he was a little resistant of the new technology until he wrapped his head around it, then he really embraced it. You know!? Even just GPS. I mean, he still liked using maps until he understood it more and then he loved it. Maybe that’s why he didn’t like people taking pictures and shooting video because he was afraid, they would use it in a context that he didn’t approve of.
Do you have any favorite albums in the catalog now that you’ve gone through it all?
Harder, Faster – for sure. Live stuff is always great. There’s great energy. I love the ’81 show in London, they’re really firing on all cylinders. There’s so much out there. Now that I get to sing it, it’s like I like them all. I like them all and I hear them in a different way now.
Do you have any other plans to do anything… Recording-wise – outside of the band?
I had to keep busy during COVID. So, I did like 50 videos of other people’s material. It’s started out as just an I-Phone and a guitar and ended up being productions that would take 3-4 months. it was really fun. So, I’m always interested in recording and getting back to that. I’m always coming up with ideas and putting them on my phone. I just have to take the time to elaborate on them, writing songs. Now that I’m going to be touring a bit more, I have 2 young daughters, so me to take time off, I have to spend as much time with them as I can, so right now I’m more in to ‘papa’ mode because I know I’m going to be leaving soon. So, I’m taking care of my daughters, and spending as much as time as I can with them before I take off.
To answer your question, there’s always songs in my head, and I’m always interested in recording and putting ideas down. I can’t wait to get back to that. I was really into it during COVID when I had more time on my hands. But now, it’s really fun to concentrate on making the April Wine show as good as possible and making it the best people have ever seen. April Wine were a powerhouse in the 70s when there were 5 people in it, and a lot of people were blown away by that show, and our idea is to bring it in to today and still give it that great energy, playing those great songs.
Has there been any talk over time about adding a 3rd guitarist back?
At first, Myles’ idea was to do exactly that. And what happened was, logistically, nowadays it costs so much to be on the road, so expensive to fly to a gig, and fly equipment around, stuff like that. So, it just turned out that was easier logistically for 4 guys (instead of 5) in terms of transportation, in terms of everybody flying out of Montreal. Gary Borden, who is Sass Jordan’s guitar player, had the gig, and at the last minute we had to pull the plug on Gary, unfortunately. And it had nothing to do with him or his playing, anything like that – he’s great! It’s just that it didn’t make sense to bring in a guy from Niagara Falls compared to guys flying out of Montreal. So that’s why it’s a 4 piece, because it’s just too damn expensive to be on the road today, and bring a show to people, and keep shows at a reasonable price. So, maybe one day we’ll get back to that idea of the 5 piece like the early 80s.
That’d be cool! have you had a chance to meet any of the band alumni, like Gary Moffett, Jerry Mercer, and some of those guys?
Well not Gary Moffett, not yet – but I can’t wait! But Jerry Mercer came and kicked our ass in Montreal. He’s 84 years old. Have you seen the video of him playing with us? (Yes). And he said ‘I want to play “Roller”‘, and I thought ‘oh boy it’s going to be like geriatric Roller tempo or something. and Holy Shit (!), man, he came out and kicked our ass! Wow! i want to be like Jerry Mercer at 84, I want to have that energy. He was just amazing!
I saw them in ’84 on the farewell tour, and then a number times in the ’90s when they came back. And Jerry’s solo was always a highlight of the show. It wasn’t like any other drum solo (where you might run to the bathroom), it was pretty intense, and you stuck around and watched it.
Well, if you’re a drum solo fan, you’re going to love Roy Nichols’ solo, it’s really cool; it’s very original. It’s one of the highlights of the show. There might not be time for it when we’re the opening act, but when we’re the headliner we have a drum solo and a bass solo, and we stretch out a little more, which is fun.
Roy sings as well!?
Oh, Roy’s a great singer, a great producer. He’s got his own studio. He’s a super-talented guy!
I’ve seen clips of him online doing Journey.
Yeah, he’s got a Journey tribute band. And Richard Lanthier has a Harmonium tribute band, and a Deep Purple tribute band. I had a Steely Dan tribute band before getting this gig. As musicians we have to have a lot of projects on the go to stay busy; and that’s the nature of the beast (haha).
Do you listen to a lot of music, whether on Spotify or buy anything?
I tend to listen to a lot of blues-oriented stuff, a lot of new stuff – Spotify’s throwing stuff at me all the time. I have all kinds of different tastes – Kasey Musgraves, and I like Blackberry Smoke, and Joe Bonamassa’s band with Glenn Hughes (Black Country Communion). I like Slash’s stuff. I like all kinds of new stuff too. Kasey Musgraves is a great singer-songwriter, who I listen to all the time with my daughters. And my daughters like all kinds of new stuff, so they’re keeping me hip to newer stuff. (lol) And every so often I’ll get sick of it and say ‘OK, sit down, these are The Beatles, these are the Stones, and this is Led Zeppelin.’
Did you have a big record collection, growing up?
Yeah. I had a good vinyl collection, and then it turned into cassettes, because we would do these cassette recording blitzes because we could listen to cassettes in our cars. We would get together on Sundays and spend the whole day just recording albums on to cassettes.
HIRSH GARDNER is best known as the drummer for American AOR band NEW ENGLAND, who burst on to the rock scene in the late ’70s, releasing their classic AOR debut album in ’79. That album, co-produced by Paul Stanley and Mike Stone featured the hit “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya”, as well as favorites “Alone Tonight” and “Nothing To Fear”. New England released 2 further albums – Explorer Suite (1980) and Walking Wild (81), before splitting up. Hirsh Gardner moved on to produce other artists and has just released his third solo album Third Time’s A Charm (Deko ent.), which features a mix of Hirsh’s new songs and revisits of some classic New England songs. An excellent disc of hard-rock and AOR, and a ‘must’ for any fans of New England. In our conversation a few weeks back Hirsh talks about the making of his new album, and a bit about his past, influences, and old days in Toronto, as the first thing i learned was Hirsh was born in Ontario, and grew up in the Toronto scene of the late ’60s, before moving to the US for school in 1969.
I’m just a little north of Boston. Boston has been my basic hometown for many, many years. I came here in 1969 from Toronto.
You must have caught a good part of the Toronto scene back then!?
Oh man, big time. Basically, when I was in high school, I used to sneak out at night and go down to Yorkville and just hang out in all the clubs – The Purple Onion, the Minor Bird, the Riverboat, the Avenue Road Club, all those guys are peers of mine. All the musicians, Luke and The Apostles, Mandala, Edward Bear.
I was born in 1969, but through all the Canadian groups that I’m on on Facebook, I’ve heard all these names.
Yeah, I mean Crowbar – Sonnie Bernardi and I basically grew up together. We played hockey, and on Sunday afternoons, his parents ran the coat check down at the Concord Tavern.
So, Sonnie and I would just say, we both became drummers and Sonnie and I would go down on the Sunday afternoon matinee at the Concord and we’d see everybody play down there. That was amazing. It was a great time to be a rock and roll musician in Toronto.
Were you born in Toronto?
I was born in Toronto, yeah, and went to school there and then in ’69 decided to go to Berklee College of Music in Boston. So that’s what brought me down here.
So, Third Time’s A Charm is half new songs and half New England songs that you’ve redone.The new songs, which very much fit the mold of New England, got a little bit more bite and the drums sound great on this album. I’m wondering how you came about to do this like half and half type thing.
Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s one that a lot of people are getting inquisitive. So I had between 9 and 11 songs that were completely done. And a few years back New England was doing a gig in LA and Jimmy Waldo and I arrived at the rehearsal studio slash recording studio first. So we set up the drums and set up Jimmy’s keyboards and just to try things out; we figured ‘well, let’s run down a couple songs’.
So obviously, “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya” was our biggest hit song, so we decided to record the keyboard tracks and the drum tracks just to see how everything sounded. It was nothing that we were planning on releasing. And then in the last year or so, year and a half, as I was recording the new album, I came across the old files of the drum tracks and the keyboards and I listened to it in my studio and I’m going ‘holy shit, this sounds amazing!’ So, what I did is I grabbed my guitar, and I played a little bit of the guitar tracks. Of course, I was nowhere near as good as John Fannon, but I was able to outline the song with the guitar, put a little bass on it and then I just decided to sing the lead vocal and put in all the background vocals and it just started to sound so amazing.
And I’ve heard a lot of covers of the song, “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya”, over the years. I mean, BRONZ, a band from England did it and a band called HOUSTON did it. It just seemed to me that nobody really did this song the justice that I think it deserved. I mean, the song definitely deserves to be hard again because it’s such a classic song and judging from the responses that I’m getting on social media, most people agree with that. So as I was recording the new album and the nine to 11 songs, I sent the version of “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya” to Chris Laney. Chris Laney is the co-producer on the album. Chris is also the guitar player, keyboard player for the band PRETTY MAIDS, and I’ve been a huge fan of theirs for years. Chris and I hooked up a few years back and became fast friends. So, Chris laid down all the guitar tracks, and ff course, he erased all mine because they sucked (lol). And when I got the song back, it just sounded incredible. Chris did such an amazing job. So, I thought at that point, let’s take four or five more New England songs, especially the songs that I’m either singing lead on or songs that I wrote in New England, or co-wrote in New England.
Then I decided to do “She’s Gonna Tear You Apart”, which was on the third New England album. I sent that basic track to Chris and he just recorded some more amazing guitar tracks and then “Hello, Hello, Hello” was next, which I think that was our second hit single. And then, I don’t know if you know, Ron Bumblefoot Tahl; Ron’s an amazing, amazing guitar player and a pretty good friend of mine. I found out that Ron was a big New England fan from way back when, so we hooked up, he’s actually playing on my second album, and I sent him “Nothing To Fear” because I knew he loved New England songs and he could play anything. So, I asked him if he would record all the guitar tracks for “Nothing To Fear”. So, what you’re listening to on the new album is Ron Bumblefoot Tahl on guitar, Jimmy Waldo on keys, Gary Shea on bass, and me on drums and vocals. That song turned out amazingly well. And then, (of course) I wanted to get all the guys in New England on one of the songs, so “Holding Out On Me” was a great choice because that’s definitely a diehard heavy metal AC/DC type of song, I had John Fannon play guitar on that, Jimmy Waldo on keys, Gary Shea on bass, and I have a guest drummer on that, Allan Sorensen. Allan is the drummer in Pretty Maids. I asked Chris Laney if Alan would be interested, and he loved it. Listen to the drums on that song, they are just stellar!
How much of the album does Chris Laney play on?
Well, he’s playing on, he’s playing on “Faith In Your Heart”, which is one of the originals, “Angel In The Sky”, which is a co-write with me and Chris. And he’s playing on “Never Gonna Lose You, “Tear You Apart”, and I think that’s it. He contributed a lot of guitar and he’s just such a talented young man. He really is great.
The original songs you wrote, have they been songs that you’ve written in recent years or things you’ve kind of had over the years?
No, I think most of them are pretty new. I’m looking at my song list here, “Lover’s Lullaby” was written in the last few years and “Reach Out For Love” is the most current song. Maybe “Faith In Your Heart” has been around for about four years. “Angel In The Sky” was a co-write with Chris Laney, so most of these are pretty new. Yeah. I’d say within the last year to two years at the most.
Wasteland For Broken Hearts was your first solo album. How did that do? I’m just looking into this stuff the last couple weeks now.
Yeah. I mean, all the albums that I’ve put out, definitely have some rabid fans out there. So Wasteland was released worldwide, on MTM in Europe.
Yeah, I think the first album. Yeah, I don’t know where I dropped out, but Wasteland For Broken Hearts was the first solo album that I did. Yeah.
And that was released worldwide on MTM Records in Europe and Marquee Avalon in Japan. And of course, it was released on GB Music, which was our own label here in the States. Still getting great response from a lot of the songs on that album from folks on social media, which is pretty cool.
How does it compare to your new album? Is it still in that same mold, that AOR hard rock?
I think that the best way to describe my music is it’s definitely AOR. But one of the things that I love doing is I love mixing it up. On the first album, you’ve got even a ballad that’s in acappella, which is just all voices. And then you’ve got some, just piano and voice. And you’ve got some hard rock stuff.
I like to put a diversity in there. I mean, a lot of albums that I listen to, a lot of heavy metal,… It starts with heavy metal and it ends with heavy metal, which is fine. I prefer to mix it up a little bit and show people a little bit of a different taste on my songwriting abilities. And that seems to have been working for me, so I’ll keep doing that.
From the first New England album, and the second, you guys had a very hard rock – AOR sound, very catchy, very memorable. What influenced you guys and influenced you as far as where you went?
Well, New England’s influences go back to, you know, the melodic prog bands – YES, King Crimson, and then later on, 10CC, Electric Light Orchestra, The Beatles, of course, were a huge influence on all of us, especially with the vocal harmonies and things that you hear. The first New England album, you’ve got a lot of those influences that come through. And even the name of the band. You know, we get a lot of flack for, we came out after Boston. Boston came out in 77, we came out in 79. And people go ‘Oh, they’re just copying Boston!’ And that wasn’t the case at all. Essentially, the name New England, was because (number one), we’re from the area, but we thought we were writing a new English style of music, because those were all our influences. So ‘New England’, that’s what it meant to us. It wasn’t necessarily, because of the area that we lived in, but partially. But there’s a new English sound by an American band. That’s sort of stuck.
Do you consider yourself more of a singer or drummer, or do you like adding the singing, or is that kind of a, something you’d rather somebody else do, or?
Well, that’s a good question. I definitely consider myself a singer now. And, I’m actually playing less drums now than I was even two or three years ago, but… I guess I would say that vocally is kind of where I’m at right now, because I’m always writing, and if I’m coming up with lyrics and melodies, you know, I’ve got to put them down. So, I’ve worked with vocals now more than I have before, and it seems to be working out okay.
The first New England album did well; you had the hit off it, and it’s kind of easily found, and the second one, but the third one never got released up here. What was going on at that point that you guys didn’t have more of a deal?
I think Elektra Records, they had the second album, which is Explorer Suite, and the third album, Walking Wild. And, I’ll be quite honest with you, they just blew it. They just completely blew it for the band. The head of A&R in that record company was pretty lame. And they really didn’t do anything to help us out, and they didn’t distribute it properly. And I think that that was part of the reason that the band met it’s demise, is that it just didn’t get any support from the record company. And years and years later, here we are, I just saw a poll of the top 50 AOR bands ever, and New England was voted number 14! It’s like, okay, if the independent people are telling us that that’s what they thought of the band – unfortunately, the record company didn’t really log on to that program back in the early 80s.
That’s the one album I’ve never seen up here. The third album is a bit of a mystery. Who produced that one?
That was produced by Todd Rundgren, believe it or not. And Todd did an amazing job. I mean, some of the songs on that album are just incredible. “Love is Up In The Air”, “L-5”; there’s “She’s Gonna Tear You Apart”, which is the song I covered on my album. Todd did a great job. It’s unfortunate the record company and the head of the A&R department didn’t do their job.
The first two albums were co-produced with Mike Stone. How did you like working with him? He had a long history, worked with a lot of big bands.
Mike was unbelievable! Rest in peace, Mike Stone. He was a wonderful human being. He was a funny guy. He was great to be in the studio with. But yeah, he produced QUEEN right before he came and produced our band. The vocals, the sounds that he got from us were just amazing. He got great drum sounds.
This is a pretty cool story. So, we were recording, I believe it was at Cherokee or the Record Plant in LA. And, Geoff Workman was in the studio next to us producing the 1979 JOURNEY album (ed: with roy Thomas Baker). Well, I guess…they were just marveling at the sounds that Mike was getting. and low and behold, they hired Mike to record their next album based on what they’d heard from the New England album. And they asked us to go on tour with them. So, I can’t say enough about Mike Stone and his production abilities. I had always been interested in production and, recorded and was producing for many years after New England broke up. And a lot of the things that I do in the studio are just direct copies of what Mike did because it works.
Are you planning on doing any live shows either doing your own thing to promote this album or is there more New England shows in the works?
Well, I think that in the future, there’s a possibility that we’ll be doing live shows. A lot of the live stuff that I have been doing has basically been with myself, my guitar player Joe Filoni and my keyboard player David Sumner. We’ll actually go out as a trio and crank it up just like a regular rock band without drums and bass. And we’ll do like a 45 to an hour set of all of these songs with just the three of us. Because it’s really difficult these days getting a band together, getting people off the road. And everybody’s in a tribute band, so it’s difficult putting five people or six people together in the same room and rehearsing for six months and then going out on the road. So, we have our trio, which we do and I’m looking forward to doing some gigs in the future with that as well.
I know you did stuff with Warrior with Vinnie Vincent and the other New England guys. There’s that three CD set coming out on Cherry Red of all the recordings. I imagine you’re on that.
Well, I play on all of that stuff. I really didn’t have anything to do with the release of that and, I’ve disavowed myself from being involved with that particular record for a bunch of personal reasons. But all the stuff that’s on there is stuff that I played on and, I’ll tell you what man, WARRIOR was an incredible band and it’s just too bad that it didn’t work out. Vinnie got the offer to join KISS right when we were in the middle of recording all those songs and, obviously he’d be dumb not to take that offer. So, our band Warrior just broke up, and I came back to Boston and Jimmy Waldo and Gary Shea stayed out in L.A. So, that was that story. But yeah, it was fun listening to some of those songs and I’m glad that any fans that are out there of New England and Vinnie’s get a chance to hear this new music – or Old music, as it were.
Going back, who were some of your favorite songwriters, and what were some of your favorite albums growing up?
Obviously The Beatles. They were just such a huge influence on all of us. I think I learned Rubber Soul , it was, I think the first album that I ever bought. And of course I’d been listening to records long, long, long before that. My aunt was a huge Swing era fan so she turned me on to all of these – Duke Ellington, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa…So I had a huge record collection of all the Swing era guys and then … I just became a huge Beatles fan. Songwriters(?)…a lot of people ask me, ‘who influenced you on drums?’ and ‘who’s your favorite songwriter? I’ll listen to anything that is quality production and quality songwriting. I don’t care if it’s Taylor Swift or if it’s Chris Laney from Pretty Maids. I love those guys, and I love their songs. So that’s kind of where I’m at with that. I really don’t focus on any individual, particular person for drums or for songwriting. I hope that answers the question but that’s kind of where I’m at. I’ll listen to anything at all that’s out there that has a great hook and quality songwriting.
I was kind of looking for a few of your favorite albums growing up that kind of influenced where you ended up, that type of thing.
All the Deep Purple stuff. Ian Paice is one of my favorite drummers out there as well. Of course the Beatles. I remember watching the Ed Sullivan show when the Rolling Stones came on and played “Get Off My Cloud”, and I remember that drumbeat was so melodic, and Charlie Watts just killed it, because I was transfixed to the TV.
So those are some of the things that hit me early on that were influential. Electric Light Orchestra were amazing! I love the songs, I love the production. Todd Rundgren – the Something / Anything album was something that I lived with. Humble Pie, Steve Marriott, those were the bands that I listened to. A lot of the English rock bands…of course, King Crimson and YES, I mentioned those guys earlier. And Bill Bruford, listening to him play drums was a mindblower! Just amazing.
Have you kept up with any of the Canadian bands from way back?
Not really. I visit my sister up in Toronto every once in a while, and I think about 10-12+ years ago there was this incredible show that featured all the ‘early 60s-70s artists. It was down by the lake front, in some warehouse type of building. Crowbar played, I think The Paupers played, Stichin Time… That was when Domenic Troiano was still alive, he was there. Mike McKenna from Luke & The Apostles. Luke and The Apostles were probably one of my favorite all-time bands out of Toronto. I still keep in touch with Mike McKenna. He was sort of a mentor to my band in Toronto, which was called The Blues Faction. And we played the village, we played all over the place in ’66, ’67, ’68 – right in those glory days, back in Toronto.
Are you doing any more videos for the new album?
Well, we did one for “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya”, I thought it turned out pretty darn good. And we’ve talked about doing a video for “Nothing To Fear”. I’m always doing a bit of video editing and throwing stuff up on my website (www.hirshgardner.com). Right now, there’s 3 or 4 videos up there, plus there’s a lot of blogging and other things, so check it out!
URIAH HEEP kick off their Magician’s Farewell’ Tour in the UK in February. Supporting Heep will be Canada’s APRIL WINE and US band TYKETTO. (*Added updated dates for Europe below).
As a fan of both Uriah Heep and April Wine, I see this as an exciting bill, and Hope that April Wine is on the tour when Heep comes to Canada and the US. Both bands, in very different incarnations each time shared the stage in the early 70s when April Wine opened for Uriah Heep in Ontario, in 1972 and then years later when it was the other way around for a few US shows.
I belong to a few groups online of band, and actually (but not unbelievably) see fans of one or the other who has little to know knowledge of the other band, so I wanted to give a wee bit of background, as well as the current line ups, and 5 recommended (starting point) albums from each….
Both bands formed in 69, but really got going in 1970. UH’s debut album came out in 1970, while AW’s came out in 71. While UH took a few albums before they had a hit single, AW had one (“Fast Train”) off their debut album and would continue to have hit singles off every subsequent album here in Canada, while UH didn’t rack up the hit singles, but became an international concert draw with a number of big selling albums from 72-75. AW pretty much stayed in Canada, with limited releases outside the country, before they had a big radio hit in the US in 78 (“Roller”) and went on to huge international success from then til about 82. While AW’s most successful period ended with the 3 guitar line up breaking up in 84, UH’s comeback lineup split in 85, with a new line up soon coming about. AW returned with a new line up in 92, and have carried on since, releasing 4 studio albums up until 2006, and continuing to tour, now as a 4-piece, with a few line-up changes along the way, most notably with singer/guitarist Marc Parent taking over for founder Myles Goodwyn in 2023 before Goodwyn passed away last year.
April Wine consists of Brian Greenway (since 1978’s First Glance album, when the band took off as a 3 guitar act). Richard Lanthier (bass, since 2011), Roy ‘Nip’ Nichols (drums, since 2012) and Marc Parent (lead vocals, guitar, hand picked by Myles Goodwyn).
When Uriah Heep added Phil Lanzon (keyboards, songwriter) in mid 1986, and Canadian singer Bernie Shaw (end of 86) the band found some long-term stability, and from 1988 ’til last year Heep has released 9 studio albums and numerous live albums. The band lead by founder Mick Box (guitar), Lanzon, Shaw, Russell Gilbrook (drums, since 2007) and Dave Rimmer (bass, since 2013).
For my fellow fans of each band I’ve selected 5 recommended studio albums + 1 live album – should you want to check out either band you’re not familiar with.
APRIL WINE
Stand Back
The band’s 1975 album that was full of hits, and arguably their most popular amongst longtime fans. “Oohwatanite”, “I Wouldn’t Want To Lose Your Love”, “Victim Of Love”, “Come Hear The Band”….There was 5 hit singles off this album, and every song is memorable.
Harder… Faster
It was a tough choice between this and the previous album First Glance, but this one features the hit “Say Hello”, as well as favorite AW rocker “I Like To Rock”, “Before The Dawn” (from by Brian Greenway), and the band’s killer rendition of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man”.
Nature Of The Beast
The band’s biggest commercial success, and height of their popularity. From 1981, with “Just Between You And Me”, “All Over Town”, and their heavy remake of (and hit) Lorence Hud’s “Sign Of The Gypsy Queen”, and heavy album cuts like “Future Tense” and “Crash And Burn”. Much of this album featured in the live set for years, and a number from it still do.
Back To The Mansion
The overlooked gem in the AW catalogue. From 2001, BTTM saw the band recording as a 4 piece again, and taking a less heavier direction. But plenty of good songs here like ‘I’ll Give You That”, the ballad “Paradise”, Brian Greenway’s excellent “Holiday”, and an interesting version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock”.
Greatest Hits Live 2003
Recorded on the BTTM tour, w/ Carl Dixon added for keyboard & guitar. Sure, One For The Road from 1984s Farewell tour sounds heavier and features the classic 5-man line up, but Greatest Hits Live 2003 (what a lame title) covers more hits, and is a bit more representative of what AW sounds like in later years. Features 21 live tunes, plus 2 studio cuts.
URIAH HEEP
Look At Yourself
Heep’s 3rd album and the one that got the ball rolling, defining their heavy prog sound, and loaded with classics like the title track, “July Morning”, “Shadows of Grief” and “Love Machine”. The last to feature founding bass player Paul Newton.
Demons And Wizards
The band’s commercial breakthrough and most successful album. Features 2 of Heep’s Best known tracks, the hit “Easy Livin”, and the single “The Wizard”, along with huge fan favorites “Circle Of Hands” and “Rainbow Demon”. The first to feature the ‘classic’ line-up of Mick Box, David Byron, Ken Hensley, Lee Kerslake and Gary Thain, as well as Roger Dean artwork.
Abominog
Fast forward 10 years, and the band’s brand new line-up, and new sound for the 80s. Abominog featured a more American sound (aka Foreigner) with new singer Peter Goalby, as well as the hit “That’s The Way That It Is”. Killer album, despite a lot of covers, but everything going together so well. Favorites be “Too Scared To Run”, “Sell Your Soul”, “Chasing Shadows”, and a cover of Russ Ballard’s “On The Rebound”. Also included bob Daisley (Rainbow, Ozzy) on bass, and keyboard player John Sinclair (Heavy Metal Kids).
Sea Of Light
After more line-up changes, a few bum record deals, and less than stellar releases Heep returned to their ’70s style in a way. The 3rd to feature Canadian singer Bernie Shaw and keyboard player Phil Lanzon (by now a major writer in Heep). Tho modern sounding, SOL featured more variety, a mix of acoustics, different keyboards, more progressive tracks, and a few big riff driven rockers. This album brought a lot of old Heep fans back with tracks like “Against The Odds”, “Logical Progression”, “Words In The Distance” and “Love In Silence”.
Chaos And Colors
Heep’s latest from 2023. The band has been on a roll since 2007 when drummer Russell Gilbrook joined (bassist Dave Rimmer a few years later). This is the band’s 5th studio album of new material since then, and arguably their best. More progressive, more varied, still heavy, with favorites like “Age Of Change”, “Hurricane”, “Golden Light”, the single “Save Me Tonight”, and epic “You’ll Never Be Alone”!
*Future Echoes Of The Past : Live
So many great UH live albums (like the classic Live: January, 1973)…but I’m going with this from 2000, from the band’s tour in support of 1998s Sonic Origami. A huge mix of classic Heep and gems from the band’s 2 latest at the time. Sounds amazing.
A new listing of some cool new (and newer) song releases. Please check out the details in the video descriptions!
MAGNUM – Kingdom Of Madness (live)
For MAGNUM’s new Live At K.K’s Steel Mill release, the first single us a lyric video for the classic “Kingdom Of Madness”.
“The title track ‘Kingdom Of Madness’ from our 1978 debut album is one of the most frequently played songs of our career, an absolute fan fave and typical of the music we wrote back then. A true classic and the perfect encore at every show for almost fifty years. A MAGNUM gig wouldn’t have been complete without this number!” (Bob Catley)
GRAVE DIGGER – Killing Is My Pleasure
“Here it is at last, our new studio album, true to the motto: #gravediggeroldschool. With Tobi Kersting in the band, we have focused on the essentials of our sound again after many years with numerous concept albums: Concise straightforward metal songs that burn themselves into your brain stems after the first listen. “Bone Collector” doesn’t sound like off-the-shelf stuff, but highly energetic, fresh and you’ll notice that we had a lot of fun with the songs. We’re looking forward to your reaction, the release of the album in January and 45 years of Grave Digger live with you,” (vocalist- Chris Boltendahl)
ORIANTHI – Some Kind Of Feeling
Blues guitarist ORIANTHI (ex Alice Cooper) has a new album coming in spring 2025. This is the 3rd single (and title track) from it. Produced by Kevin Shirley.
UTILITY POWER – Challenger
Vancouver metal band UTILITY POWER release their 3rd album this week. This is the title track from Challenger.
WHISKY OF BLOOD – Baby Revolution
Hard rockers WHISKY OF BLOOD’s new single from their latest album Diablesse Of Revolution (released in September). The album features a couple of guests, notably Chris Holmes (Wasp).
THE DAMN TRUTH – The Willow
Canadian band THE DAMN TRUTH have released a new single from their next album (2025). Great psych influenced hard & classic rock!the band start a UK tour Nov 24, and have album launch shows in Montreal and Quebec City in March.
BLUE OYSTER CULT – The Alchemist (live)
From the band’s upcoming live release50th Anniversary – Third Night, from the 3rd New York show in 2022, celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary, and performing the album Secret Treaties. “The Alchemist” comes from the band’s last studio album The Symbol Remains in 2020.
ROD RODRIGUEZ – Mom’s Lullaby
From the new album Tales Of A Changing Life, Part 2, by this Canadian -Brazilian guitarist. Influenced by, and recommended for fans of Dream Theatre, Rush, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani.
SVEN GALI – Lunatic Fringe
SVEN GALI has released a cover of the classic “Lunatic Fringe”, originally by another Canadian band- RED RIDER.
Well, another list of new (or fairly new) tracks from recent weeks. Some cool Canadian rock, newer and old bands with some great new releases coming out.
Check out the songs, as well as links in video descriptions . If there’s anything you’d recommend (not here), drop it in the comments!
TRAPEZE – Homeland
The 2nd single from TRAPEZE’ Lost Tapes vol. 2 . Classic tune featuring Mel Galley and Glenn Hughes. Not sure when this one is from, but sounds very fresh and lively.
GODDO – Pretty Bad Boy
originally a hit for Canadian band GODDO in 1981. The band (along with guitarist Sean Kelly) have recorded a new version of the song for their new 50th anniversary compilation album Decades: The Best Of GODDO. http://www.rockpapermerch.com
KINGS OF MERCIA – Battle Scars
The title from KOM’s 2nd album . “That’s about post-war distress syndrome. It’s about a guy who comes back from fighting and can’t really deal with real life. He realizes that he can never be what he was before he went away and did this. But he really, really wants to, but he’s trying to get that across to everybody that loves him. But the problem isn’t him–it’s what he’s been through. I came up with the title ‘BattleScars,’ and I think that suggested the subject matter.” (Steve Overland)
LABYRINTH – ‘Welcome Twilight’ is the first single from this Italian metal band’s upcoming album – In The Vanishing Echoes Of Goodbye. Labyrinth features singer Roberto Tiranti of WONDERWORLD (and ex of Ken Hensley’s band Live Fire). Their new album is due out January 25, on Frontiers. Describing the single, the band declare: “After the absurd circus brought on by COVID-19, not only have we not emerged better, but we now find ourselves in a truly complicated historical period. Now more than ever, si vis pacem, para bellum — if we want peace, we must prepare for war. Our freedom, entirely illusory, is subordinate to those who decide the balance of this weary planet.”
BURNING WITCHES – The Spell Of The Skull Swiss female metal band BURNING WITCHES has a new 2 track single coming out (yes, on limited 12 inch vinyl, in red or gold colored, or CD), due out on December 10.
LOUISIANA CHILD – Cocaine Cowboys
Toronto’s LOUISIANA CHILD have just released their debut single. The band mixes up Southern rock, blues rock, country… Fairly Lynyrd Skynyrd influenced on this first track, Check it out.
STORACE – Screaming Demon
The first single from the upcoming album from STORACE (Marc STORACE of Krokus). A great heavy rocker, kinda like if Bon Scott era AC/ DC were a more metal sounding band.
ENVY OF NONE – Not Dead Yet
Brand new from ENVY OF NONE, the band featuring Alex Lifeson (RUSH) and Andy Curran (CONEY HATCH), plus singer Maiah Wynne. Very unlike what Lifeson or Curran have done in their known bands. Very cool, haunting track.
TEAZE – Reach Out (live)
Video from the TEAZE’s performance in Belgium. If you aren’t familiar with this Canadian band, you have missed out. Teaze has a brand-new live album – ‘Live In Liege‘ out now. This track, from that show was originally from the band’s 1979 album One Night Stands. Order Live In Liege at- http://www.rockpapermerch.com
SEVENTH CRYSTAL – Siren Song
Sweden’s SEVENTH CRYSTAL have released their 3rd album Entity. Full of heavy guitar driven rockers like “Siren Song” .
IMPELLITTERRI – Hell On Earth
The new single from IMPELLITTERRI’s new album War Machine, out now.
“I had this really fun addictive riff that just allowed everyone in the band to shine. It was amazing how powerful the song sounded when we first played it together…. The music really inspired an interesting lyric and amazing vocal performance from Rob Rock! – Chris Impellitterri.
Canadian band THE WRING, is lead by guitarist & songwriter Don Dewolf. The Wring’s 4th album is titled Nemesis, and now available on CD, and in digital form. A progressive -metal type of sound, The Wring will appeal to fans of Rush, Queensryche, and Dream Theater. A few weeks back I spoke with Don about The Wring, the newest album , as well as his his other gig – RUST (a Rush tribute). Check out our conversation below, as well as the clips, and the links below!
So, to start off, is The WRING a band or is it more your own project?
It started, it’s always been my project, but it did start as a band. I’m from Sudbury. The music scene there is like cover bands and tribute bands. Original music, especially, in the prog rock kind of thing, it just doesn’t exist. But I did manage to round up some guys and we did the first record as a band, and we did some shows and all. It was super fun, but it’s hard to get paid and, guys kind of lose interest. So, they went their own way, but the process was fascinating to me. I wrote everything all the way along, so I thought, I’ll just keep going.
And then COVID came, and the world shut down. So, the bass player from the original band said – ‘listen, there’s guys out there at home and you never know unless you ask’. So, he connected me with Thomas Lang – a world-famous drummer… Like cover of Modern Drummer Magazine kind of guy! And I sent him my stuff and he goes, ‘Yeah, I’m in! I’ll do it for free….Well for an incredibly reasonable price. (lol) So that sort of set the ball rolling. And I’ve done three more albums kind of that way because I can’t get players, so I just, I find them.
So, there’s been three previous albums. What did you do before this? Did you have anything else going on before the WRING, any other original stuff?
No.
Or is it just the Rush thing?
Yeah, I do the Rush tribute just to stand on the stage. I’ve always loved Rush. So, it almost feels legit to me, even though it’s still a tribute thing.
But yeah, I can’t get anybody to do The Wring. So, I just do the Rush tribute. Before that it was cover bands and whatever I could find.You know, it’s a tough scene, not only in (as you said) down your way too, but in Canada in general, it’s just tough.
(Brief discussion on local cover band scene here, there and Nashville!
Are all these songs on the latest album written specifically for this project? I know you’ve written over the years, so is there stuff that’s been hanging around, or is it kind of, when you decide to do a new album, you’re writing as of then?
I would say for this album…this would be number four …if there was anything hanging around, it probably got used in some way. I would say, when I’m starting, and (I suppose) I’m kind of in that cycle right now, I’m starting from zero and building out maybe record number five. So, everything was unique and fresh for this record. There were a couple of riffs that I had, but they’ve been turned around so many times, and twisted up that you wouldn’t recognize the original one anyway.
Now the album’s coming out, or is out on CD, correct?
The last two records, plus this one, are being released by Wormhole Death Records out of Italy. It’s a distribution deal, so it’s not that fancy, but they put it out there. They have a unit in Japan, a unit in the U.S., and then, of course, they’re a European business unit. So they insist on CDs; they still think it’s a thing, so they make CDs. They should be out probably within the next couple of weeks. So, yeah, I like a physical copy. I don’t think I have enough uptake to do vinyl, but I’d love to do that. But it’s expensive, very expensive.
So, let’s talk about some of the songs. “The Nail”, that intro had a bit of a Maiden feel going in it for a bit there.
A little bit, yeah, for sure. They were an influence. Everybody’s an influence. I’m sure if you sat down and listened to, or you picked apart, you’d hear somebody, everything’s been done. (haha) I try to make things a little bit original as much as I can, but it’s hard.
It’s funny, when I first got to listen to the first song off the album that came out a few months ago, I immediately thought of the Rush sound, just in the guitar and the bass, like that kind of feel.
Definitely, yeah.
And then I looked you up on Facebook, and ‘this guy plays in a Rush cover band’!
(haha) Yeah, it’s an influence that won’t go away. They were huge to me, So it’s always there somewhere.
Yeah, and there’s a lot of, you’ve got a few instrumentals on here. Are you familiar with a lot of the modern prog stuff, like Dream Theater, that sort of stuff?
Most definitely! And actually, I’m in Toronto right now, I’m going to see Opeth tonight, ne of my favorite bands. So, not all, because some of it is too much. Dream Theater I’ve kept up with over the years. I think they’ve got a formula now, and it’s hard to distinguish one record from the next, but I still like to go see them.
I saw them on their last tour here, and he (James LaBrie) did a great job, I gotta say. He’s over 60 years old, and he’s trying to bang this stuff out. Images And Words was 1992, that’s a long time to be doing this.
The one I am most familiar with is Scenes From A Memory. After that, I don’t know… I like to hear songs; I like to the songs to have an ending…
And that’s kind of what I go for with The Wring. There’s stuff in there, there’s some weird times, there’s some weird shit, there’s some interesting parts (I like to think they’re interesting). They go by, and the songs are five minutes or less, and it’s not agony to get through them.
Yeah, can you tell me a bit about a few of the songs, lyrically and musically, like ‘The Nail’; obviously, ‘The Sword’ stands out, and the last one, ‘Nemesis’ (?)
Well, lyrically, like, I do all the music first, all the songs start with a riff. I write everything on guitar; I’ll come up with something that I like, and then I’ll set it aside, I’ll come back to it, make sure that it’s not too much of a rip off of something else, and if it is, it goes in the garbage, and if it’s something else, I might spin it around a little bit, try and make it interesting that I’ve not done before, And then, you know, once I have all the songs written, then I do the lyrics. And all of my lyrics come, kind of, I seem to, my muse is anger, so, you watch the news, and it’s easy to get angry, like, there’s so many, just horrible, horrible things going on in the world at any given moment, you just almost can’t even believe it. And that’s the theme; it wasn’t intended as a concept. But the theme of Nemesis, which is kind of an unstoppable enemy, it takes many forms, and we’re all fighting that in some way every day, whether it’s a bad breakup with your girlfriend, or Donald Trump, or the war in Ukraine, … it’s easy to find material to write about, and you can trace pretty much every song back to that theme. So I thought ‘what a kind of a cool kind of thing to tie it together’, lyrically. And then the writing is just riffs, and I try and structure things that are interesting. I demo everything myself, and then I send it to the guys, and let them do their thing, and both players in this record are just off the charts, they’re so good.
The guys you have on this album, Reggie and Kyle, have they been on the other albums as well?
Kyle was new for this one, I seem to change drummers every record. Reggie played bass on the last record on Spectra, and he’s such a good bass player, so I wanted him back for that. And then I sort of discovered that he’s also a singer, so he’s a great guy to work with. He’s malleable, if you hire a guy like Marco Minivan, who played drums on the last record, and of course, you’re not going to tell Marco what to do – you’re going to say ‘here are the songs, Marco, please play drums.’ And he’s going to say ‘sure’, and he’s going to hit it out of the park, but he’s not going to take suggestions, whereas Kyle did, and Reggie does. So this one… because these guys are excellent, but they’re not famous; when you’re dealing with famous guys, they’re just going to do a great job, but you’re not gonna have a lot of input in it, whereas with these guys, it felt more collaborative, So it was much more satisfying to me in that regard, that if I heard a lyric, or a melodic phrasing in the vocals that I didn’t like or whatever, I could say ‘Reggie, could you please – don’t do that, and he would’, And it was all good. So, I like that part of it, and they’re great, great players, and the performances were killer.
Have you played any of this stuff live at all, or do you foresee yourself doing any live shows?
You know, I keep hoping. The original Wring band did play live, and it was, it was so much fun. And, I layer so many guitars into it, and it’s like… (and I don’t want to compare myself), but Jimmy Page – all the Led Zeppelin records have, layers and layers and layers of guitar, but then live, you see him sort of aggregating those into one, because he’s not overdubbing anything on stage. And it was always fascinating to me how he would interpret his own songs to make them into one guitar part. And The Wring is kind of the same, there’s lots of stuff going over the guitar, it’s just me, so on stage it was it was great fun to do that very thing, so I keep hoping, and Reggie, Reggie was living in Vancouver when he did these records, but now he’s moved back to Montreal, which is, you know, six hours from me, not a plane ride, so, you know, and drummers are drummers, so, you know, I’m hoping, you know, now that he’s a little closer, we actually might be able to put something together and stand on a stage together and play some of these things.
Do you get much of a response from Europe and elsewhere?
Yeah It’s amazing because, with Spotify and Apple Music and all these services, like, they drill down, like, so far, right, like I could tell you a city where people are listening to this stuff, and it’s amazing, it’s like Helsinki, Finland, Stockholm, Sweden, London, England, you know, around London, a couple of different cities in Germany, and then throughout the United States, it’s pretty good, there’s pockets in the U.S. that are very supportive of this. There’s very little in Canada, it’s all Canada is, name a metal band called ‘Canada’. Ancients, I guess, I don’t really know anybody who’s doing too much, in the genre here.
Would you ever be, if the opportunity arose, be open to going to Europe and doing festival shows, that sort of thing?
I’d love to play live, for sure, it’s special to do that, especially with your own material, So, absolutely, yes!
Can you tell me a little bit on the cover design for the album, the artwork, do you get involved in that?
Well, it’s always funny, because obviously, I write all the words and the music, and I’ve got a vision in my head of what that looks like. So, I always sit down, and I go through graphics sites and find images, and this is what Nemesis looks like. And I’ve got a friend here in Toronto, actually, who’s a graphic designer, so what I do is I put a whole bunch of ideas together, and I send it over and say, ‘this is the concept, this is what I want to do, can you make it proper?’ And so, he did Spectra as well, and it was funny, the process for that, he went, ‘yeah, okay’. He takes my ideas, and he maps them all out, and does some mock-ups, and then at the very bottom of the page, I did a couple of my own too, so you can have a look at what my vision would be, and of course, he’s always right. So, the end version of both Spectra and now Nemesis was all him, and he came up with the jellyfish, and the red color, and I thought, ‘wow, it’s so simple, and so cool’. And thematically, it kind of speaks to Nemesis as well, so it’s cool.
You don’t have any new, any special guests on this album, correct? I know you had Marc Bonilla on the previous album.
Yeah, he was on Project Cipher, which was two albums ago. He did all the vocals then, but no, no famous people on this one, it’s just me, Reggie, and Kyle. Wow, that’s an interesting connection with him.
He (Marc) came from Thomas Lang, actually. It’s funny, because I got connected to Thomas, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it for sure.’ and I said, ‘Since you’re being so nice, do you know a vocalist?’ And he goes, ‘I do.’ So, he connected me with Marc, and Marc’s a super pro; he’s got Grammy awards, and I think he was out with Asia, maybe…But what a talented guy.
Like, wow! It was, when you’re dealing with a guy who’s that professional, it’s great fun. And to have him be interested in my stuff was pretty gratifying, and humbling, I guess.
I’m just going to ask you for a few short lists. A few albums, favorite albums growing up.
I would say, best album of all time, which would be my favorite album, would be Moving Pictures, Rush. Another very influential record on me was Megadeth’s Peace Sells. Ozzy – Diary of a Madman, Randy Rhoads, lhe changed the world. In my view, he made it possible for a lot of these things to happen And then I think the next step for me was Opeth, Blackwater Park was a huge influence in terms of how I approach, and what’s possible. Just an amazing record! And then, I don’t know… Voivod’s always been there, Nothingface, I still listen to Nothingface and think about what they were doing back then. So, yeah, that’s another huge one for me.
You said Moving Pictures, I’m kind of into that whole era from Hemispheres up to Signals. You play all the Rush stuff, can you give a few favorite Rush songs – playing-wise, or as a fan?
Yeah, I’m the same. Hemispheres is a close second in Rush for me; I absolutely love every inch of that record, right through, I went to Grace Under Pressure, I found Grace to be a very good record, like, guitar-wise, after that, Alex, he really stopped playing, he didn’t really do anything after that. So, playing live – really the whole Moving Pictures thing, because we do everything except “Witch Hunt”. “Limelight” is a fun song, with “Tom Sawyer”, it’s always amazing to play that; “YYZ”, of course. We do a little chunk of “Natural Science”, off Permanent Waves, we do a chunk of ” La Villa Strangiato”. I do “Broons Bane” on a nylon string. We don’t go past Grace Under Pressure, our set is almost two and a half hours, and it’s all Grace or older. So, it’s all fun stuff to play.
Do you guys ever play down this way, or is it all up in Northern Ontario, that way?
Oh, gosh, we’re trying to make some headway down there. I think it would actually serve better, because it’s interesting, there’s so many Rush Tribute bands out there, and the most famous ones are at least four members. They’ll always have…most often have a girl singer, and stuff like that, they have original albums and all that, I think, okay, that’s cool. And they do a good job, but they have a girl singer, like, the whole mystique of Rush is that three guys were able to pull that stuff off. So that’s our approach, and it’s hard – the guitar player has the easiest job, drums are obviously ridiculously difficult, and then trying to play the Geddy thing – sing, and we do everything legit, there’s no backing track, so we’re playing the, you know, the keyboards on the floor, the pedals, and then he’s got a full set of keyboards. It’s pretty authentic, it’s not perfect, but it’s certainly authentic, and it’s fun. So I think it would be something that we could catch on down there, Our first show was actually just in April past, so we’re hoping, in early 2025 to be doing some stuff down there, for sure.
One last thing, if you can give me a favorite underrated Canadian album, or a couple?
I mentioned Ancients earlier, and I don’t know if anybody knows who Ancients are, but they’re fantastic, and they just put a new record out, and, and their previous one Voice of the Void, is incredible! I would say it’s a combination of Opeth, Tool and Mastodon, it’s like – put all those three things together, there’s clean vocals, there’s growls, it’s amazing! I love those guys, so I would say that.
Three big names in Canadian rock will tour coast to coast in the spring. BTO – featuring Randy Bachman headlines the Back In Overdrive tour, along with APRIL WINE and The HEADPINS.
Canada’s ANDY CURRAN may have been best known for his days and 3 album run in the early 80s CONEY HATCH, but following the breakup of the band, Andy would go on to record a few albums throughout the 90s. Albums released under such names as SOHO 69, CARAMEL, DRUG PLAN and LEISURE WORLD came later in the decade, but in 1990 his first ‘solo’ project was released simply as ‘Andy Curran’. A few songs received massive radio play across the country, and he was nominated for 2 Juno Awards in 1991, winning ‘Most Promising Male Vocalist’. That album was re-issued last year (in expanded box set form) for it’s 30th anniversary as ‘Whiskey & The Devil 30th’, as well as a 2LP colored issue. The extra LP included previously unreleased studio and live recordings. In this interview Andy recalls a lot from making that album, its success, and what came after, as well as detailing the bonus material. We also discuss SOHO 69, reissues, updates on ENVY OF NONE (w/Alex Lifeson) and CONEY HATCH, including the band’s plan to play the entire ‘Friction’ album (which they did) on a recent trip to the UK & France. And lastly, Andy gives us some great Canadian listening recommendations to check out.
I want to talk about the Whiskey and the Devil album. I know the box that came out last year, and I picked up the vinyl when I saw you guys in Oakville. So, a couple things right off the bat, obviously, is the title and the new artwork, because that wasn’t the original of either.
That’s correct. You know, I could be guilty of confusing people, but what I thought I’d like to do, Kevin, is all these years later, because it was a celebration or an anniversary issue, was to change it up a little bit. So I changed the artwork. That artwork was originally done by a very good buddy of mine named Bill Baker, and Bill is a tattoo artist. He has a tattoo shop in Toronto called Pearl Harbor Gift Shop, and he did that artwork for me back in the day, and it was on a t-shirt, and I just really loved it and thought, ‘man, I’m going to use it this time around’. And if I was to be really honest, when the record was released originally back in 91, I had a disagreement. It wasn’t anything hostile, but I never wanted to call the record Andy Curran. I wanted to call it ‘Soho 69’, and I had a title for the record called ‘Every Dog Has Its Day’, and they were adamant that it had to be called Andy Curran. And I was just like – I’ve always been part of the band; I always felt weird about calling the record after my name and everything, so I got a chance to finally get my way, and I changed everything.
The original seems to be a safe title and a safe cover, which is just the photo.
Yeah, I know. It’s weird because I literally had discussions with the label back then. I don’t want to use my photo. I don’t want to use my name. And they were like ‘Yes, guess what? We’re the record company, and this is the way it’s going to go.’ So, I wanted to change it afterwards, Kevin, and I got my way. Working with the guys at SING has been really great, and they were totally cool to just give me full artistic control on it, and so that’s the story behind the artwork.
On the original album, you have that emblem on the back there of that kind of eagle thing. Did you ever use that for anything?
Yes, the eagle logo we used quite a bit, and again, it was sort of a play on this whole ‘no tattoos’ thing. So going to my friend Bill Baker, he did the illustration for the eagle with the banner, and that was on our merch back then. I think we even had a backdrop with the eagle in the background. So, yeah, so we used that quite a bit back in the day.
You had quite a bit of success with this album. You had the Juno and everything, and you had like, the first three songs, I think, were all radio hits and singles!?
Yeah, that was a nice run for me. I mean, those songs, like “License To Love”, “No Tattoos”, and “Let Go” – they were all top ten songs at Rock Radio in Canada, and they were getting a load of airplay on MuchMusic with “No Tattoos” and “License To Love”. And I think that really propped up the visibility of the release of the project and helped me get a couple Juno nominations. The record was also nominated for, I think, Best Hard Rock Album of The Year, and I lost to some band called Rush or something. Yeah, that’s alright, I guess.
Did you tour a lot with this album?
We did. We were out on the road, Kev, for – when all things were said and done, we were out for approximately 18 months that year. The touring cycle was really, really quite long. Lots of solo dates, if I recall. Now you’re really stretching my memory here. We went out on the road with Glass Tiger and Haywire was one tour. We did a bunch of shows with my buddy Kim Mitchell. We did a bunch of shows with Rick Emmett after Rick had left Triumph and was out playing solo shows. And, I think probably the highlight for me was doing some dates with Rush, opening up for them on the Roll The Bones tour.
So, again, having the visibility of the Juno awards and all that airplay, it just fueled the touring cycle. So that might have been. It wasn’t a steady 18 months, but that’s how long we were out for on and off. Yeah.
You have live stuff on this new reissue. Do you have a full show of that or did you just kind of handpick some of the songs?
Well, there was a couple of live shows floating around that various people had recorded. And, with the live stuff that made the Whiskey And The Devil anniversary, I worked very closely with my buddy, and lead singer of Harem Scarem, Harry Hess. And Harry is a renowned mastering engineer and he and I were talking, and he said ‘man, your live band was so good back then. It’s too bad you don’t have any recordings’. And I said, I do, but they’re all on cassettes. And he said ‘well, I’ve done some pretty cool stuff with audio from cassettes. Why don’t you give it to me, and I’ll see if we can rescue it from the dead’. So, Harry’s got some really great technology, that works with basically upgrading audio from that format. So believe it or not, that was taken from a live recording that was handed to me on a cassette and Harry did some wonderful stuff with it. But, to answer your question, yeah, I cherry picked it because there were some songs that just didn’t really sound any good quality wise. So, we sort of focused on the ones that we thought sounded great.
I see you did a couple of covers. You didn’t just really stick to your own stuff there.
We had so much fun doing covers, man. Over the years, there was something about wanting to put my stamp on a few different songs that I really, really loved, you know? So, I’ve been a huge fan of the band WAR for a very, very long time. And I think I gravitate a lot to some of that old *funk just because of the baselines on it. But those two songs “Cisco Kid” and “Low Rider”, we always had a lot of fun with.
But we used to do a version of “Highway Star”. I wish I had a version of that Deep Purple one that we did. We did the Beatles “She’s So Heavy”. We used to do “Schools Out”. And I think we even did a version of Stan Ridgway’s “Mexican Radio”. I mean, these are songs that I grew up with and people are like ‘what are you doing? A hard rock version of “Mexican Radio”!?’ And I was ‘I love those songs’. But those two songs by WAR have just been old favorites of mine and I wanted to put them on there just to let people hear what we did, and best with those cover versions.
I like things that are different, and they sound different. They’re kind of out of their genre, you know!? And then you have the two songs that weren’t on the album that!?
As a lot of artists do, you go into the recording sessions with some extra material, just in case some of the songs don’t really pan out or, you never know how they’re going to go regardless of getting bed tracks done. You never know if they’re actually going to sound great or not sound great. So, “One Woman Man” and “Walk The Other Way” were recorded at the same time as I recorded all of the other songs, and I kind of had forgotten about them, to be honest with you. It was just such a distant memory that we had gone in and recorded those songs. And when Tom Berry from Alert Records gave me access to all of the original tapes, multi-track tapes, I was surprised to see two extra songs. I opened them up and I was like ‘Oh my God. I remember these two songs!’ The story behind them. If I recall is you’re always challenged with the amount of music that you can put on a side of vinyl and vinyl was still around. And so, we figured out that there was no way to get those two songs on vinyl. And if I recall, there was some business stuff going on about lawyers going back and forth about ‘Hey, you know, we’re, we’re only going to pay Andy up to 10 songs and we’re not going to put up 12 songs’. So, they just for no bad reason, just got shuffled off to the side. I just thought it would be cool to resurrect those ones. And I worked with my buddy, Vic Florencia, who is also a Juno award winner. And we thought ‘well why don’t we just those songs were finished. I was surprised that I had done everything on it. There was no extra overdubs required. They were finished and, but just never brought to life. So, it was a pretty easy thing just to get those tracks and remix them and kind of get them pulled out of the vault for people to hear. Because we used to play one of them live – “Walk The Other Way” – we played live for a long time.
There was no issue of what tracks you were going to put aside; was it was an easy choice, the first 10?
It was. I think when everybody sort of threw that through the list of titles into a hat and we picked them all, everybody was fine to leave those ones off and, full transparency with “One Woman Man”, that has a bit of a Southern rock-blues vibe to it. (And) we thought, we thought ‘does this even fit?’ And I’m a huge Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, and I just thought, ‘okay, well, guilty as charged’. That was me trying to add a little bit of Southern rock into the mix. Did it work? Did it fit? Maybe not. But all these years later, I really don’t care. I just was like, let’s put these in.
You also had a new single out “Looking For Love”, that came out a couple of months ago. And that’s a new recording!?
That is a brand-new recording. I’ll tell you how that came to fruition. *When I was talking to Geoff Osler, he is the CEO of SING. And he’s the guy that basically championed all of this and said ‘go ahead, Andy,.. I’m happy to work on this with you’. And he said, ‘but it’s really too bad you don’t have a new song’. And I said ‘that’s a stretch, man. I’d have to really put the band back together and go and write some stuff.’ I probably could get in touch with Glen and Simon, the original players. But I said, ‘what I do have is a demo of this song called “Looking For Love”. And we actually never got around to recording it’. And the premise of the song itself is based on a personal ad page in the back where people were. It’s almost like a version of a dating app. Now dating apps are so popular that the song topic might actually be relevant, even more so now with people on Tinder and all these different apps where they’re swiping to find mates. So, he said ‘well, we’ll go ahead and do it, pull it out and record it with the band’. So that song was originally written for my solo record. But I think one of the reasons we didn’t do it, it kind of starts off with bass, drums, guitar, almost a bit like “No Tattoos”. We thought ‘okay, we have these, but we can’t put both of them on the record. They are similar sounding’. So, we ended up shelving “Looking For Love”. And many years later, got back in the studio with Glen Milchem on drums and Simon Brierley, who both who played on the original record. And then I’ve obviously got a new friendship with Sean Kelly, who plays in Coney Hatch. I asked Sean Kelly to come in and do it. And all these years later, we resurrected “Looking For Love”.
Is ‘Whiskey And The Devil’ on CD as well?
We did not make this record available on CD. There’s been some discussion about doing that. I forgot if people still like to listen to CDs. I’ve got a huge collection. I’ve got a CD player in my studio. But a few people have been vocal about it. I don’t know. You’d have to tell me whether you think I should reissue it on CD as well.
I found over the last year, I’ve been buying more CDs, just because the way the price of vinyl has gone up. Plus, I play CDs in my car.
Yeah, well, it’s interesting that you mentioned it, because my friend Harry Hess, told me a lot of his fans still buy CDs. So maybe I got to put that on the to-do list and get a CD version of it.
With the success of that album when it came out, you then went with the band name SOHO 69 for the next album. Was there any pressure to follow up?
I don’t think there was any pressure, but it was a really, really odd chapter. Because you think about, I look back on it now, and it’s really just indicative of the music industry and life as a musician – just when you think things are going great, or you think you got the world by the short and curlies, the bottom drops out on it, right? So, when I was at the Juno Awards, and had won that Juno that night, I spoke to the record company, and they said, ‘By the way, we have to tell you congratulations, but we’re actually not going to be a full-fledged label anymore. So …you don’t have a record deal anymore.’ And I’m like ‘in what world does this happen?’ And you’re arguably celebrating something very successful, only to find out that you don’t have a record deal anymore.
I immediately had to scramble to just even find a home for the ‘Scatterbrain’ record, which I had already started working on. And there was all of this groundwork and all of this, great airplay that happens. So it did feel like there was momentum on this thing, and that I had to follow up on it really quickly. But because I didn’t have a record deal, it took some time. By the time ‘Kiss My Boots’ came out, off the SOHO 69 record, I had lost some *serious momentum on there, just trying to put everything together. And that deal with Hypnotic Records did not go well, like the honeymoon was over.
And when we released the record, we did very little touring on it. So, I look back on that chapter and thought, well, that was a tough punch in the chin, because everything went from super high to super low. And, after Scatterbrain, I sort of took this break to start working on the Caramel record.
*So, really a wheel fell off immediately after the Junos. And it really affected the lack of progress on it, to the point now where even if I was to go out and do some dates on this, and support this record, I wonder how many people would even remember ‘Licensed To Love’ or ‘No Tattoos’!? But it was a really tough chapter. It was mixed with highs and lows.
Yeah, I had Scatterbrain in the car this morning. The first like the lead off song starts and I was listening to this new Trapeze release the other day. It’s kind of got that same funky kind of heavy vibe to it. I thought the singles were great. So my next question is, would you ever like, between these albums and some of the other stuff you did in the 90s, would you ever contemplate taking a solo band or SOHO 69 on the road now and do a few shows?
Well, I have to tell you that my beautiful wife Monica is one of my best supporters. And she keeps saying to me ‘Andy how come you’re not going out and doing any shows with your No Tattoos band? And how come you’re not playing any Caramel or how come you’re not playing Drug Plan or Leisure World?’ So, I honestly have been talking to Sean and Glen Milchem about maybe doing some shows. Simon is a world-class pyro tech engineer that travels with all of these amazing bands and does pyro. So, his schedule probably wouldn’t permit Simon coming out, but I’ve entertained it.
But at the moment, I’ve been kind of focused on finishing off the year with Coney Hatch and the dates that we have in Europe and then also working on Envy of None. So there’s only enough time in the day. I gotta figure out how I can pull this off, you.
(talk of seeing Coney Hatch on Helloween 1994 at LuLus, which is now on YouTube)
I took my CDs with me that night and you signed mine. And so, I’ve got my Scatterbrain here and you wrote in it ‘if you’re not the lead dog, the view is always the same’.
Well, and listen, that’s a little bit of a play on the words. Like I had this artwork done for the record and it was ‘every dog has its day’. And there’s a really cool Toronto graphic artist by the name of Runt, and he did all the artwork at Lee’s Palace on the outside of the building. I got him to do this almost like an assembly line conveyor belt of dogs,. And they were all behind each other. And it just occurred to me that if you’re not the lead dog, you’re always looking up somebody’s ass, right!? So, you better get yourself in the first place. Yeah. I still want to use that artwork one day. And there is a song that I wrote called ‘Every Dog Has Its Day’ that was finished, and I might try to release that one too.
Who did the artwork for Solo69?
The Soho69, the Scatterbrain was done by my brother, Mike, and that was a bit of a play on an exploding brain and particles. We used to love Monty Python and some of their artwork was just like very, almost childlike where they would take things and cut it up. But the Scatterbrain record was also when the grunge thing started to happen. We thought we’d do a little joke and have everything in the tartan plaid grunge stuff. And by the time that record came out, when Nirvana came on the scene, anything remotely connected to hard rock or long hair was dead in the water. I remember hearing that track in Montreal going ‘this is amazing. My career might be over.’
It was really weird, because there’s lots of kinds of what I would call discrimination in the music industry. And there’s certainly age discrimination in North America that doesn’t exist in Europe. If you go to Europe, you could still see Status Quo playing or you could still see Rose Tattoo or Sweet or all these bands and nobody cares that these guys are in their 70s and they still go out. And then Coney Hatch falls into that category too. When we go over there, we have loyal fans that love us, and they still continue to see us. Not that we don’t in Canada, but in Canada, in North America, if you’re not young and if you’re not 20 years old or the next best thing, you easily get shuffled off into the side. And people forget about you. But in terms of styles changing, we can look over time, whether it was when our parents’ parents were listening to classical music and then Buddy Holly came on the scene and The Beatles that had just obliterated all of that kind of stuff. And then you think about disco and all of that stuff. It’s one of those things that changes all the time. And grunge really, really changed things. And it was a tough go for all of us at that point.
SOHO 69 got reissued back in 2004. Would you ever consider any kind of limited run reissue, including vinyl with it?
It’s interesting that you said that, because I’ve had a few people talking about trying to put that out on vinyl, because it was never out on vinyl before. But it’s always interesting when you get in touch with the old record company and ask them if they’re interested in doing it. But I remain friendly with them. But that would be fun; I’d like to see that on vinyl. I’d like to see the Caramel record on vinyl. I’d like to see the Leisure World record on vinyl. Those are things that, like the Leisure World and Caramel, I can control those. So I can get them out. And I’ve been thinking about doing that for quite some time now.
Now I’m assuming there wasn’t a lot of leftovers from that album?
There was a track that I had mentioned to you earlier on called ‘Every Dog Has Its Day’. I would probably add that to it and see what else is kicking around. I’ve got a lot of old demos that maybe I need to just get my buddy Harry Hess to resurrect them from the dead.
You’re playing the Friction album (with Coney Hatch) fully.
Yes, we are going to Manchester and to France, and our goal is on both of those nights to play ‘Friction’ in it’s entirety. We did, at the El Macombo, we played the first record for the 40th anniversary of that album. And then when we were in Oakville, we did the ‘Out of Hand’ record. We had a lot of fun doing that, just revisiting the old songs. So we haven’t played some of those, a few of them, we’ve never even played them. I don’t think we played ‘Burning’ Love’ – ever.! ‘Coming to Get You’ and ‘Champion’ haven’t been in our setlist in a long time, and ‘Stateline’. So, we’re going to dust them off, and do the entire record.
I did like the way they (Friction tracks) turned out on the Live in Germany album. I thought it was kind of minus the keyboards and it made it a little bit heavier than that.
Well, we’re thinking about recording one of those nights and maybe, you know, jokingly said, what about ‘Friction in France’? And we quietly went and recorded a couple of new tracks this year in Hamilton. At the beginning of the year, after we did the Oakville show. We kept Dave Ketchum in town and convinced Dave to go in the studio and hang out with us a little bit longer. So, our goal would be maybe to finish off those two songs, kind of like what we did with ‘Postcard’, where we had ‘It’s About a Girl’ and ‘Heaven’s on the Other Side’. Do the same thing and feed a couple of new tracks now that Sean Kelly is officially a Coney Hatch member. He’s been in our band for 10 years now, so we made it official with him the other day. We just thought it was time to let the new guy in on some stuff, so he’s been co-writing with me, and it’s been a lot of fun.
Do you foresee yourself doing just singles or do you foresee yourself ever doing a full album again?
I think the goal is to see what we come back from Europe with. If we’ve got some good recordings of those two shows, we might take a page out of the ‘Postcard from Germany’ and maybe do another live Friction record with some extra tracks on it. So, the goal would be to put out a full record.
I didn’t want to ask, but I wondered, because I was at those previous two shows, if anybody was actually recording them for future saving.
No, we didn’t record the Oakville show. It was a good night and I think the previous show at the El Macombo, we did record that. We just haven’t gotten around to listening to it just because we’re kind of focused on the Friction stuff, you know?
Did any of the songs that originated from you on that album (Friction) ever have a vocal put down by you?
That’s a well-documented difficult chapter for Coney Hatch with Friction, with the changing of drummers and me sort of stepping aside in the vocal department, but you know, ‘Coming To Get You’ and ‘Burning Love’, those two songs in particular were originally written by me and were supposed to be vocals by me. It’s funny you said that. I don’t know if we have old demo versions of those kicking around with me singing on them, but I think it would be so early that they might just be really bad rehearsal recordings of them. Carl’s a bit of a pack master, so next time you talk to Carl, ask him if he’s got a version of it shoved away in a closet somewhere, because he’s constantly surprising me with demos. He sent me some demos the other day, and there was a song that we had, I think it was called ‘Don’t I Know You’, and it was just dreadful. I said, ‘we’ve got to make sure that the world never hears this song’. He was laughing his head off! There were a couple others that didn’t make it to the A-list, so hopefully Carl doesn’t sneak them out and put them up online, because some of them I’d be pretty embarrassed for the general public to hear. it wasn’t our finest hour. (laughs)
What else do you have on the go? Is there a second Envy of None album on the go?
Yes, We’ve been working really hard for the good part of this year on the second Envy of None record, and we had so much fun recording that first record that we just thought, why not? Let’s just continue. If all the stars align, there will be a new Envy of None record coming out sometime next year. But we’ve been chipping away at the stone on that one for quite some time and making some good progress.
Can you give me any underrated Canadian albums?Things that you would recommend to somebody that isn’t too familiar with Canadian rock.
I was a big fan of Queen City Kids back in the day from Winnipeg. They were a really cool band, and I don’t know if a lot of people know them. Obviously out West they know those guys. I thought Queen City Kids were a very, very cool band. There’s a very good friend of mine who’s a super talented graphic artist named Paulo Rizzo, and Paulo has a band called ‘Puddy’. Paulo has released some stuff recently that I think is absolutely crushing. That kid is super talented, so if you’re into really grungy mayhem rock, Puddy’s a good one. Obviously, my friends in Sven Gali, I really enjoyed working with them on their new record. There was this band that came out, and they kind of just came and went – ‘Priestess’! They were from Montreal, and they had some Queens of the Stone Age isms. Their first record (ed- ‘Hello Master’) was released back in 2005. What a great band! I would encourage anybody who hasn’t heard that record to really give it a listen.
And although they’re doing mostly covers, I really think my buddies in ‘Toque’ are doing a great job out there. They’re all super talented guys. I went to the induction of the Songwriters Hall of Fame on the weekend, and Sam Roberts got up. I just thought that guy’s so underrated. He’s got so many great songs. I think Sam Roberts is so great, the early Sam Roberts especially. There is a band on Arts & Crafts (Canadian label), I’m going to give you one more…This isn’t really a heavy rock band, but I’m going to tell you they’re definitely one of my favorites. I’m going to see if I can find this for you on there. I don’t think they’re together anymore, but that shouldn’t stop people from trying to go out and find it Arts and Crafts have a lot of pretty hipster bands. It’s a home of Feist. and Hayden is on that label too. I might have to text it to you because I played the crap out of this band. They’re called The Stills. There’s an incredible song called ‘I’m With You’ that I think is really good.
(And) Let’s not forget my buddy in Harem Scarem, Mr. Harry Hess. I’ve got to give him a shout out. My buds in Teenage Head are still kicking. I think that’s such a cool band. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the Ramones of Canada. If you want to go back and get an early kick in the teeth with some great Canadian punk rock, you’ve got to listen to Teenage Head!
So I gave you a couple of well-known ones and a couple of obscure ones, but yeah, especially like Priestess. The Stills did really well at Radio. Speaking of The Stills, there’s another band called The Standstills, which is a two-man band. One man, one woman. I’ve met them through the Tea Party guys. They’re another great band. I think they’re based out near St. Catharines.
Well, I know she’s unfortunately passed away, but Care Failure and Die Mannequin. I thought Care Failure was destined to be a huge star. Unfortunately, she passed away. But if anybody has a chance to check out Die Mannequin, it doesn’t get any more legit than that.
Outsider Rock 