SEAN PEEVER

Autumn’s Desire EP – Notes on the songs

Beautiful Melancholy – Written in the early 2000s after experimenting with a third-hand capo – a device that allows you to have certain guitar strings sound like a different note as opposed to a regular capo which has all six strings sounding like different notes – Beautiful Melancholy was written as a simple tribute to beautiful fall days, especially rainy ones when you’re sitting by your window gazing in rapturous bliss at the wonder of it all. It fell just short of making it onto my collection of demos, the Attic Anthology, as I had ceased making any more daily videos of myself singing and playing – though I always intended to include it someday. However, the idea for Autumn’s Desire came to me this year and I felt that this song would be as ideal a candidate as any due to its obviously pertinent subject matter. It now features two capos, a third-hand one and a regular one for changing the key up a step, which, as of this writing, is the only song in my repertoire that does so.

Autumn Rain (In Dufferin Grove) – Sung by two lovers who fell for each other on a rainy fall day in Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto’s west end, Autumn Rain was written in October 2021 and is the most recently written song on Autumn’s Desire. I can’t remember if I wrote it with a duet in mind, but it didn’t take long before I realized that’s how the song should go. One of those songs that just comes about when you fool around with different chord voicings. The lyrics and the vibe of the song may have been indirectly inspired by Rain On The Roof by The Lovin’ Spoonful, a particular favourite of mine which also has a theme of lovers seeking shelter from the rain – this time in a shed with the droplets pinging off the tin roof while they ponder what to do. The difference being that that song deals with summer showers as opposed to fall ones. There’s something about the imagery of two lovers finding momentary shelter from the rain and huddling together for warmth (and other) that I find enchanting.

Cover Of Clouds – Written around the mid to late 90s and barely played live except for a few shows around the time that I wrote it. Cover Of Clouds is a slightly jazzy love song (and a favourite of Canadian singer-songwriter extraordinaire Blake Walters) in which the song’s protagonist has a crush on a woman who looks like the self-portrait of Joni Mitchell on the cover of her 1968 album, Clouds. This came from my own experience at the time, as I too had a crush on a woman who looked similar to Joni on the cover of Clouds (thus the song title). As the opening lyrics state, I bought the CD of this album because it had the songs Chelsea Morning and I Don’t Know Where I Stand, a song I’d previously enjoyed in a version done by Fairport Convention, and because I was interested in hearing some of the odd open guitar tunings that Joni employed.

It’s inclusion on Autumn’s Desire is due to the fact that it was inspired by me falling for that woman during the autumn, even though the lyrics don’t explicitly state any seasonal connection (aside from her “green autumn jacket”). To be honest, the album didn’t captivate me all that much, and I sold it at some point. Besides, the crush didn’t amount to anything. However, I got a worthwhile song out of the experience, and, in my book, that’s just the bees’ knees.

Luminous – Written around Christmas in 2006 while I was back in Ottawa staying with family during the Christmas holidays and feeling an intense longing for a certain someone in Hamilton, Luminous was the product of me falling head over heels for that woman during that fall and having it continue into the winter. There I was, stuck with a guitar in the spare room of my Mum’s house and wishing I was back in the GTA and just feeling like I had to do something with these thoughts and my frustration. As I’ve stated elsewhere, the fingerstyle guitar picking in songs like Luminous is indirectly influenced by the British acoustic guitar masters like Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, and Bert Jansch, and not Canadian acoustic masters like Bruce Cockburn, who was never an influence on me but whose early work I do enjoy. Like Cover Of Clouds, there’s no overt seasonal connection in the lyrics but Luminous was also inspired by me falling for someone during the autumn – thus its inclusion on the EP.

Coastline – Notes on the songs

1. Trans-Canada Highway Dream – A song about an ill-fated journey to hitchhike across the Trans-Canada Highway, a federal-provincial highway system which runs through all of Canada’s provinces from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic and is one of the longest routes in the world. Thankfully, the song is fictional and not autobiographical.

2. Coastline – A love song of devotion and gratitude to a significant other from someone who was lost and had hit rock bottom before their serendipitous arrival. Simple as that.

3. In Due Time – A painful breakup of two lovers that was inspired by one of the worst days of my life in February 2009. Losing my job in the morning and my girlfriend breaking up with me later that night. I don’t think that I got out of bed for a week after that.

4. Kingston Bound – Many times when people are about to move to a new city, there’s a sense of discovery and enthusiasm about one’s new home, and, to some extent, maybe we tend to make it out to be a more wondrous place than it is. This song is really about that, and technically could’ve been written about any number of places, but I chose Kingston, Ontario. However, the song also works as a straightforward love letter to that town and to its surrounding communities – like the Town of Napanee.

5. Honest Ed’s Away – A tribute to the dearly departed iconic Toronto institution, Honest Ed’s, a massive bargain store that stood for generations at Bloor and Bathurst Streets before being bulldozed in 2017 to make way for condos. The song is written from the standpoint of an older Torontonian who grew up next to Honest Ed’s and who’s seeing the city he knew and loved disappearing every day. More than anything, the song is a comment on how gentrification sucks the heart and soul out of once-great cities.

6. Sweet Oblivion (Says The Somnambulist) – Dedicated to all of those really talented musicians and other artists who can’t make a living doing what they were put on this Earth to do and have to spend most of their time at a soul-crushing day job. This also means that they don’t have the time to get out there and make a name for themselves through touring et al. so they toil in oblivion. I liken their situation to being somnambulant – which is a term for sleepwalking – so, thus the title.

7. All The Things That I’ll Miss – A song about knowing that you’re about to die and wondering what are the simple pleasures in life that you’ll miss. The idea for the song came from my friend Christine Gaidies’ ordeal with her cancer (in fact, it was written right after she told me that it had returned), though the song isn’t about her. I think about death fairly often (and I imagine a lot of people do – though they’d probably be loath to admit it), especially when I now belong to the “more days behind me than ahead” club. That doesn’t mean that I’m morbid or wallow in misery about the subject. It just means that it’s a very big deal and hard not to ponder sometimes, though whether there’s an afterlife or not doesn’t concern me at all, as I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell. I only care about what happens to me on this mortal coil.

8. Gerry Barber Of The Chaudiere – During the 1990s, the Ottawa Sun newspaper took a readers poll as to who was the toughest guy in Ottawa’s history. Despite its image as a dull civil service town, Ottawa’s history is littered with many rough-hewn characters that harken back to its roots as a logging town in the 19th Century full of rough and tough English, Irish and French labourers who liked a drink and a fight as much as anything. Well, long story short, Gerry Barber, the legendary no-nonsense bouncer at the Chaudiere Club just across the Ottawa River in Aylmer, Quebec from the 60s to the 80s, was voted number one. The number of stories about his prowess from people who are actually proud of being tossed physically by him from the Chaud is endless, and there was just no way I could resist writing a song about such a genuine modern-day folk hero. I was also inspired by Stompin’ Tom Connors’ song, Big Joe Mufferaw, which also celebrates another tough Ottawa folk hero legend, the 19th Century French logger, Joseph Montferrand.

9. Redemption Lake – A man is in a great relationship with a woman who he loves – until he hears that the former love of his life has left the man that she picked over him. No good can come from that, and you know that this isn’t going to end well. But, classic cheating songs make some of the greatest soul and country music, and who the hell am I to resist writing one?

10. The Urban Raccoons – Toronto has been called the home of the largest raccoon population in the world, or at least North America (is there an accurate figure proving any of this?) which is mostly due to the ravines that run through the city. So, it was only natural that I write a begrudging tribute to the hearty little bastards who seem to be everywhere and are hard to get rid of.

11. A Trail Of Clues – Written in the late 90s and barely ever performed in public until the last few years. This is due to the odd nature of the song and because it demands close listening from an audience – something that hasn’t usually been possible in the kinds of venues that i’ve played at over the course of the last twenty years. However, i’ve always felt that it’s one of my better works.

It’s about a woman who leaves her husband after forty years because of the neglect that she feels from him, as he has developed over the years an obsession with mystery novels and spends his retirement poring over them. In her farewell letter, she informs him that she’s left a trail of clues so that he can figure out why she’s just left for good. The clues are given in the second verse, and the significance of the clues is revealed right near the end. As I said, it’s a song that demands close attention and not for everyone, but I regret that I sat on it for so long.

In a sense, it’s a companion piece to another song of mine, Puppeteer. Both songs deal with women in bad relationships who long to break free. An armchair psychiatrist could probably suggest that I was subconsciously channeling my mother’s experience of finally getting away from my abusive father, and I wouldn’t necessarily argue with that.

12. Lost And Found – Written in 2011, Lost And Found is about someone who, being alone for a long time, finally meets a special someone, and finds that they have to adjust to thinking of someone else’s needs besides their own, which is likened metaphorically to someone sailing distant seas for uncharted territory and discovering their New World. I suppose one could say that this sounds somewhat Bruce Cockburn-esque, but he’s never been an influence on me. The British acoustic folk players like Richard Thompson, Bert Jansch, Nick Drake et al. definitely were, though.

13. The Ache Of His Falsetto – A simple tribute to Curtis Mayfield, the late singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, label head, and civil rights icon, who was a towering presence in soul and pop music until a lighting tower fell on him during a live outdoor show in 1989, rendering him a quadriplegic. However, he didn’t let being paralyzed from the neck down keep him from making one last album (where he had to lay on the ground to record his vocals) before his death ten years after his accident in 1999. Many people know him for writing and singing the civil rights soul anthem, People Get Ready and the 70s funk soundtrack to the film, Superfly, but he had so much great stuff with his group The Impressions and solo that Curtis should be considered in the upper echelon of America’s musical geniuses.

This song is the only song of mine to go through FOUR musical incarnations. At one point, I even had it as an up-tempo rock song with a completely different chord progression that I used to play live with my back-up band in Ottawa before moving to Toronto in 2005. However, I brought it back closer to the feel that it had when I originally wrote it in the 90s – albeit with a different chord progression and key – and it finally felt right.

14. Chip Wagon Lament – A humorous commentary about the appalling lack of chip wagons in Toronto – which is anathema to this native Ottawan, whose hometown never seemed to lack them. The song was inspired by Frenchy’s Chip Wagon, which was (and maybe still is) across the street from Grace Manor, my Mum’s care home on Wellington St. in Ottawa. Before her passing in 2017, I’d go and get some fries from Frenchy’s for her (to her delight) and I before playing an epic game of Scrabble.

15. Summer Promises So Much – At one point during the early 2000s, I was at an extremely low point in my life, and summers in particular always seemed to turn out lousy. This was especially galling because summers always seemed to be harbingers of promise. You’d always look forward to them thinking that they’re going to be great and magical (e.g. camping, good times with friends, outdoor gigs/jams, maybe a new romance?) and they never were. I’d be working a contract job and then after it’s done I’d be out of work by spring/summer and nobody would be hiring until late August/September – meaning you’d be low on money for the summer at a time when you’d want to go out and do a bunch of things. Maybe my expectations were always being fed by the celebrations of summer in so many pop songs? No way reality can compete with that.

THE EYES OF SARAH MILES – NOTES ON THE SONGS

CD 1

1. Call Display Blues – A soul shuffle about how either call display is one of the greatest or worst inventions – depending on your situation. The song betrays an unintentional Graham Parker influence borne out of repeat listenings to his debut album, Howlin’ Wind.
   
   
2. Pay Your Way – The frustration of knowing that you have to live under a friend’s roof because of your precarious financial situation, and always dreaming of a day when you won’t have to.
   
   
3. The World Is A Crowded Bus – The inspiration for this song came from being on a crowded route 95 bus in Ottawa. It occured to me that the world itself was a crowded bus, and the rich get to sit down in comfort while the rest have to stand and endure.
   
   
4. Ahead Of The Game – The song’s protagonist just can’t seem to ever get ahead. Everytime things start to look promising, it’s two steps forward and three steps back, and only in his dreams does he finally succeed. The kind of honky-tonk country song that can only come from a childhood with a steady diet of classic country music, courtesy of my parents. In this case, Conway Twitty.
   
   
5. Not Anymore (Mon Amour) – The joys of not being in love anymore, or, more specifically, not being enslaved anymore by something that was holding you back – be it a bad relationship or addiction. Dame Fortune truly is a whore, and she’s turning tricks on your hopes and dreams.
   
   
6. Missed The Boat – Many of us feel that at certain periods of our lives we’ve missed the boat on certain things, and, as I get nearer to fifty, i’m certainly no exception. Regrets, i’ve had more than a few.
   
   
7. Sleight Of Hand – It is my contention that, even though we largely make our own luck through perseverence and hard work etc., we also need to have at least a few moments in our lives where something inexplicably magical happens, so that, if nothing else, our faith in humankind is strengthened. Or, at least to give us a sunnier disposition. A little sleight of hand, to use a term beloved of magicians, if you will.
   
   
8. You’re My Bloor-Danforth Line – I seem to have a knack, or maybe an unhealthy fixation, on writing songs that involve transit systems as the subject. Even more specifically, songs about transit systems and love. I have an Ottawa song about falling in love on that city’s Transitway, and this song uses Toronto’s Bloor-Danforth Subway Line as a metaphor for that most crucial of subjects.

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CD 2

1. Bad Joe Hall – In the early 20th Century, there was a hockey player in the NHA/NHL named Bad Joe Hall. The curious thing about Joe is that, despite the fact that he was a big, bruising defenseman who had a stellar career and is in the Hockey Hall Of Fame, he is more known today for how he died than how he lived. In 1919, when Joe was playing for the Montreal Canadiens against the Seattle Metropolitans in the Stanley Cup Finals, The Spanish Flu Epidemic that killed millions in 1918-19 struck various players on both teams. This resulted in the cancellation of the Finals after the series was tied after five games, and no Cup was awarded that year. A week after, Joe was the only player to succumb to the virus. I felt he needed a song, and was especially inspired to do so due to the fact that I proudly possess a Joe Hall hockey card from 1912 that was bought from an Ottawa card shop when I was 13.
   
   
2. Beechwood Cemetery – A man’s wife passes away, and he wants to bury her in the finest cemetery in town, but cannot do so due to the financial cost. Especially when the one in question is Ottawa’s venerable Beechwood Cemetery, which is our national military cemetery and the final resting place of prominent Canadians Tommy Douglas and Sir Robert Borden. Even more important, it is the final resting place of my mother, aunt, grandfather, and my great-grandmother. So, what is the aforementioned gentleman to do? We soon find out.
   
   
3. The Eyes Of Sarah Miles – A “where are they now” song that focuses on the 1960s/70s British actress Sarah Miles, who this gentleman found enchanting from such 70s films as Ryan’s Daughter and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. I’d like to think that the beauty of the song, along with Mark Slater’s luminous string arrangement on keyboards, can transport the listener even if they care not a whit about the subject matter.
   
   
4. Green Everything – A World War I veteran relates his thoughts and memories of his experiences to an eager young reporter. The song itself is a period piece set in the 90s, as, of course, there are no WWI veterans left.
   
   
5. Hank Snow At The Mall – In Ottawa, I used to live near a Quickie convenience store in a small mini-mall in Nepean. One day, as I was walking out of the store I noticed on an outdoor speaker above the entrance that they were playing country music from the 1940s and 50s. Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Lefty Frizzell etc. As I love that music a great deal, I was pleasantly surprised. Until I realized that they were only playing that music to keep the skater kids from loitering outside the store, which I found unbelievably sad. However, I thought what would happen if just one of those skater kids stayed behind because they found that they really liked those songs – not that he would ever admit that to his hip-hop-besotted compadres. I also started to think about what kind of place does older pre-1950 or even pre-1960 recorded music have in today’s high tech modern 21st Century, but was heartened by a friend who worked in a high-tech company listening to 1920s acoustic blues music on his .mp3 player while he was on his computer. That beautiful juxtaposition of images, earthy old blues music from the dirt being played in a cold, modern antiseptic environment, was too good to ignore.
   
   
6. Royal Commission – Historically, whenever the Canadian federal government wants to look like they’re really doing something about an issue, they inevitably call a Royal Commission to study it. Most of the time these go on forever, much like the search for a better life, and that metaphor is at the heart of this song.
   
   
7. St. James Park – My favourite park in Toronto is St. James Park, next to St. James Cathedral at King and Church in the downtown. There’s something about the way the skyscrapers’ light illuminates the trees in the park at night, all while sitting on a bench in the park’s beautiful front garden, which also provided the backdrop for one particularly magical make-out session involving this lothario one night many moons ago.
   
   
8. Your Demons Are Your Own – A song about how one should take personal responsibility for the good and evil that we do and not put the credit or blame on God or Satan. Admittedly, a scathing comment on religion itself.
   
   
9. Napanee – A ukulele instrumental that was in search of a title, until I thought about things that give me joy. Seeing how i’ve always enjoyed my time spent in Napanee, Ontario (courtesy of my good friend, Napanee folk singer-songwriter Steve Medd), it seemed like a natural fit.

Two bonus tracks off of The Eyes Of Sarah Miles that were later released

1. Delta Sierra Juliet – This song tells the true story of Frederick Valentich, a young Australian pilot who in 1978 flew up one night over the Bass Strait near Tasmania in a Cessna aircraft, reported to the nearest flight operator that a UFO was hovering over his craft, and then disappeared without a trace. It’s an epic folk tale that’s kind of my “Edmund Fitzgerald” and features a brilliant string arrangement on keyboards, as well as some spooky sounds, by the multitalented (he produced and engineered all this stuff y’know) Mark Slater
   
   
2. Shake It Loose – A straight-up honky-tonk country song about washed up has-been stars appearing on reality TV shows and the sacrifices to one’s dignity one has to make in order to do so. Pedal steel by Dean Cavill

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The Attic Anthology, Vols. 1 & 2 – Liner Notes & Song Info

First of all, these two volumes aren’t “proper” albums.

That is, albums that were properly recorded in a studio with separate tracks for vocals and guitar and other instruments with proper mixing and mastering (although there was a basic mastering job by the wonderful Jason LaPrade to enhance the sound of these tracks) designed as showcases of 10 to 15 songs each to be distributed to an adoring public and college radio DJs et al.

No, these 59 songs were all recorded on a little Zoom Q2N portable audio/visual recorder between December 2018 and September 2020 until the mics starting crackling, which unfortunately can be heard on a few of these tracks and which, because the Q2N can’t be repaired, put an end to that endeavour. Fifteen of them were recorded as strictly audio files in 2018-19, and the rest recorded as performance videos of myself playing these tunes on Facebook every second day from April to September 2020, taking the audio from the videos for this collection.

To say that this collection was a long time coming is something of an understatement. One of these songs was first conceived in the early 1990s when I wasn’t even a proper songwriter yet (have I achieved the “proper” stage by now?), and many others date from the late 1990s all the way to August 2020. At the time of my writing this, i’ve written a total of 128 songs of which only 47 have been what I would consider officially recorded (that is, studio recordings with mixing and mastering). Ten songs off of my debut album, 2003’s Love On The Transitway, one song, What Frightens You, that was co-written for a 2008 play that I did the music for, Common Criminal, one song in 2009, My Annie Meenie, that was distributed only to my cousins and another that same year, May/December, that was never released, seventeen songs off of my 2016 album, The Eyes Of Sarah Miles, with two songs, Delta Sierra Juliet and Shake It Loose, off of those sessions later released separately on Bandcamp as singles, and fifteen songs off of my 2022 album, Coastline, comprise my officially recorded studio output.

Aside from roughly four songs recorded as demos with producer Chris Hess – which I’ll probably release someday – and seven songs that I wish to get demo recordings made of due to the fact that they need two guitar parts to sound their best, every other song that I’ve written has been laying dormant during the last twenty years, either unrecorded or not played or rarely played for a variety of reasons: too similar to other songs, esoteric subject matter that wouldn’t be suitable for live performances, some that require a third guitar to bring to gigs (such as the slide tunes), unworkable guitar tunings when only one guitar is brought to a gig, and the main reason being that one needs to prioritize songs in mainly two-hour setlists that have been recorded on albums in hopes of the audience buying a CD.

Although these songs have been dormant for so long, that doesn’t in any way reflect on their quality or that it means that I love them any less than the staples of my repertoire. Quite the contrary, I would go so far as to say that all of these songs are as good as anyone else’s, and you’d better believe that if it hadn’t been for the fact that I’ve been working poor my entire adult life and therefore unable to afford the cost of officially recording these songs with full production and backing, I definitely would’ve had a lot more than two official albums released already. In fact, if I do get to make any subsequent studio albums, they will definitely be featuring many of these songs fleshed out with full backing, and ones like On My Wedding Day and Sail My Sea would make great singles if I can get the right players. Ideally, it would be great to make these two volumes of the Attic Anthology redundant someday.

I think every great songwriter has to have at least some hubris when it comes to their creations. If you don’t stand up for your art, who will? But these really are great songs. I’m proud of the fact that they have a high standard in terms of melodies, hooks, lyrics, arrangements, eclecticism etc. Although many songwriters might be able to admit to having some throwaways in their catalogue, I don’t feel that way about any of these. Sure, some may be better suited as album tracks rather than singles, and some may be hookier than others, but they all have something wonderful to offer. My thinking is: why would I bother to put them out there if I didn’t think they were any good?

So why now? Why put them out after all of these years? The answer is simple: I was afraid of something happening to me mortality-wise and this great body of work dying with me, unheard for the rest of time. I didn’t put these volumes out because I thought I could get commercial airplay or that it would get me noticed, and some may wonder why I didn’t just trim it down to a 25 or 30 song compilation of the catchiest or grabbiest sounding songs to get more interest. The answer would be because the whole point of these volumes is that these songs get out into the world in some fashion. Not to put too fine a point on it, but to be frank, this is my only real legacy. I haven’t accomplished much in my life, and don’t expect to any time soon. I don’t feel that I’ve had much to offer the world or will have left something meaningful behind when I go – except this.

It was the COVID pandemic that really spurred me on. In April, 2020, I found out that Adam Schlesinger of the rock band Fountains Of Wayne had just died of COVID at 52. Since I was turning 50 in 2020, it started to hit home that if I got COVID, I might not make it due to my type-2 diabetes making the complications tougher. This is something that I thought about doing for years anyway. In 2016, I started to record demos of all of my original unrecorded songs at the studio of Chris Hess that I called The Legacy Project. However, Chris moving out of Toronto scuttled that project, though, as i said, I got some nice demos of a bunch of those songs that I’ll release at some point.

I have no delusions that a huge audience will hear these tunes. Maybe only a relative handful will. But maybe a few of you will be touched by them. Most of you will undoubtedly like some songs more than others and hopefully you’ll give these volumes a good listen to determine your own playlists. Although a number of these work well as solo vocal and guitar recordings, there are many that obviously need full band arrangements. Some need electric guitars, bass, keyboards, and drums, and I would suggest listening to certain songs in this spirit (for example, The Day Of Days, Black And White And Grey, The Boys Of Major Street, and the aforementioned On My Wedding Day and Sail My Sea, to name just a few).

Why the title? Well, I live in a converted attic room in a rooming house, and I thought the title would be a fun tribute of sorts to the iconic Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan and The Band. Them being on the very bottom and me being on the very top (definitely NOT metaphorical in terms of musical brilliance). One similarity between my collection and theirs is that they were both recorded on simple, less sophisticated equipment, thereby giving the songs a “bootleg” feel. Beautiful sounding recordings these are not, and I feel that that just adds to their charm, especially when at least a few of these songs have some lyrical and musical mistakes that hopefully aren’t noticed by anyone but me.

There is lots of brilliant music that was recorded in less than stellar fidelity. Among many examples, old, scratchy sounding blues and folk recordings from the 1920s and 30s, audio cassette concert bootlegs from fifty years ago by your favourite band, etc. One of my favourite examples was buying a Velvet Underground bootleg on vinyl during the 90s and discovering two Lou Reed songs with just him and John Cale recorded on a wobbly old tape recorder in Lou’s apartment in 1965 and just being utterly entranced by how great these songs were and puzzled as to why they never saw the light of day on any official albums.

I hope that many of these songs on these two volumes provoke the same reaction.

Sean, November 19th, 2020 and July 27, 2021

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NOTES ON THE SONGS

Songs on Volume 1

1. On My Wedding Day – Written in 2015 and played live many times since then. A man who lives on the street gets through life by daydreaming about what his life would have been like – especially about how glorious his wedding day would have been. There’s more than a little of myself in the song’s protagonist. Toronto singer-songwriter Nadia Buckmire says this song should be on the radio. Sweet daydreams are made of this. Who am I to disagree?

2. I Want To Do The Dishes With You – A slide blues song that I wrote in the early 2000s that I used to play pretty frequently at my shows at one time, but have never recorded – although it was on my shortlist for the last few albums. The infrequency of any live performances of this song is due to the fact that it’s played with a slide in an open D guitar tuning with a high string action, and it’s not always practical to bring a third guitar to my shows when I usually only have space on transit to carry two guitars and a gig bag or amp – depending on if one of the two guitars is an open-tuned acoustic, then maybe. This is true for all of the slide tunes that I’ve written.

I Want To Do The Dishes With You is a love song that celebrates the simple joys of being together, whether doing the dishes or sitting by the window when it rains. It was influenced by Bukka White (1906-1977), one of the greatest Mississippi Delta slide guitar masters whose 1940 recordings of his tunes, Bukka’s Jitterbug Swing and Special Stream Line, knocked me out when I first heard them on The Slide Guitar: Bottles, Knives, & Steel, a 1990 CD compilation of such songs from the ’20s to the ’40s. A gentleman named Washboard Sam accompanied Bukka on these recordings, and if I ever get to record I Want To Do The Dishes With You, then I’ll have a washboard on that too.

3. Count The Stars – Written in 2019, with the final lyrics being written on my friend Christopher Crumb’s balcony while I was dog-sitting at his place that August. It’s a simple, unabashed love song. I imagined a setting where two lovers are laying down on the grass at a campground at night (OK, let’s say the Bon Echo Family Campground in Cloyne, ON) and looking up at all the millions of stars that one never sees in the urban areas and singing this song together. I’ve always thought that this would make a great male-female duet, and if I ever record it, I just might do it that way. It would also be nice to shop this around to get it featured in a romcom or TV show.

4. From First To Third – Written around 1999/2000 and played live relatively often in my live shows around that time. It has never been officially recorded except for one version that I did with my producer, Mark Slater, prior to the recording of my second album in 2013 that seems to have been lost. It gradually disappeared from my setlists because of the fact that the song is played in open G, a guitar tuning that I used frequently in my earlier years, but less so after I started writing songs in other tunings like open D, DADGAD, DADEAD, and EADEAD. Since I don’t like having to change my guitar tuning too often during my shows, the songs that I wrote in open G fell by the wayside, although I had every intention of eventually recording these songs that I had written in that tuning.

The song is an internal dialogue concerning a person who wishes to be thought of as someone who’s three-dimensional instead of one and who resists such pigeonholing – thus the title, which is also a sly baseball reference to a baserunner going from first base to third. It’s no secret that wanting to not be pigeonholed and expected to be funny all of the time is a major bone of contention with many comedians and other performers, so the person likens his plight to theirs’. I’ve experienced a bit of that myself.

5. All In Colour (For Four Dimes) – One of my earliest songs, written in the late 1990s, which I never got around to officially record for no other reason because it just slipped through the cracks. It’s a completely nostalgic song for the time when I was around 9 to 13 and comic books and my desire to someday become the next Neal Adams (one of the greatest comic artists in the biz and my biggest hero at the time) ruled my world. The title came from a book, All In Colour For A Dime, a 1970s book about the history of comic books. Since inflation dictated that the price of comics in 1979 was forty cents, I adjusted the title of the song accordingly.

The sights and smells of going into Arthur’s Place, my fave comic shop on Bank Street in Ottawa, in 1979-80 was nirvana for this chubby loser kid. Just stepping into the store was an experience. A cornucopia of colour and wonder that’s hard to put into words. Back then, comic shops were truly great places that not only sold current and back issues of your fave titles, but also old magazines and vinyl records and other things. Well, not all of them were that diverse in their selection, but Arthur’s certainly was anyway. And all the expensive back issues of comics from 20-30 years before that were real collectors’ items, were, of course, behind the counter on the wall.

One particularly wonderful memory stands out for me. My mother taking me to Arthur’s on my tenth birthday and buying some great comics and going out for pizza afterward. It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me by Billy Joel was playing in the background, and to this day, every time I hear that song, I think of that day. I still have the oversize Famous First Edition Batman comic that she bought me. Of course, not every time she took me to a comic shop was magical. When my family visited Toronto in ’81, she brought me to Silver Snail Comics on Queen St. and left me there for a bit while she and my sisters did some sightseeing. While I was reading some comics, I got a nosebleed and, long story short, my face and clothes were a bit of a mess by the time they came to collect me. For years, Mum would laugh thinking about the sight of me that day.

In the song, I meant it when I said that if I had won the lottery, I would’ve bought just about everything in the store – especially the ones behind the counter on the wall. The fact that a 10 year old wouldn’t be able to win a lottery was some piddling, immaterial detail that mattered not in the throes of pulp paper fantasy. But that bastard, reality, which should be terminated with extreme prejudice (thank you, Lester Bangs), intruded by the time I was 14, and, as the song says, I definitely didn’t want girls in my neighbourhood seeing me buy comics and baseball/hockey cards at the Le Quickie store at Ramsey & Dumaurier, so all of that stopped. I had a hard enough time attracting them, and I didn’t need THAT hassle. The next year, I took up guitar, and the rest is history. I always regret that I didn’t keep up with my drawing skills, as I was pretty good for my age, but c’est la vie.

6. The Boys Of Major Street – Written in a two-day stretch, along with the song The Day We Say Goodbye, in August of 2020. It tells the true story of the teenagers who lived on Major Street in downtown Toronto who enlisted in 1940 to fight for Canada in World War II – with ten of those young men never making it back. Four of those young men were the best friends of Joe Greenberg, who did survive the war and came back to become one of Toronto’s most beloved family doctors. For sixty years at his practice at Bathurst and Ulster Streets, Joe treated around 10,000 patients and delivered around 3,000 babies. He passed away at 94 in 2017.

The idea for this song came from seeing a Harbord Village historic storyboard in that neighbourhood on my dog walks that told the story of the Boys. These storyboards are placed in outdoor and some indoor areas around Harbord Village and give web links to audio interviews with long-time residents discussing events from that area from 60-80 years ago. Additionally, one of the small laneways off of Harbord near Major St. was named Boys Of Major Lane a few years ago. The story of the Boys of Major Street was largely forgotten until the late 2000s, when a series of newspaper articles in the Toronto Star interviewed Joe Greenberg about his poignant and heartbreaking story. In these articles, the grief that Joe felt for the loss of his friends was still real and palpable. I believe that he probably had quite a bit of survivor guilt as to why he got to live such a long and full life and they didn’t. The line in the song about the mother of one of his friends staring at him with anguish as to why her boy was taken and not him, prompting Joe to avoid that section of Major Street and taking nearby Brunswick Street to get home, really happened.

If I ever get to record this, it’ll definitely need a full band, especially on the chorus.

7. My Annie Meenie – A tribute song to my beloved Auntie Myrna that I wrote back in 2007 after her passing in August of that year. I later recorded an official version of this with Mitch Girio around 2009 that I distributed to my cousins as a tribute to their Mum but never released to the public, so I think that it still qualifies as a forgotten gem. I believe that I’ve only played the song live once or twice at The Renaissance Cafe, my main live venue during my early years in Toronto.

I had just come back home to Toronto on the Sunday night that weekend feeling euphoric from playing the Saturday night main stage at the Eaglewood Folk Festival when I was greeted by a phone message from my brother to call my family in Ottawa. Fearing that something had happened to my Mum, I breathed a sigh of relief when she answered the phone – only to be told the news about Myrna. I stupidly forgot to include the song in the repertoire the last time that I played Ottawa with my cousins in attendance. If I get to play Ottawa again (with live venues’ survival in many cities being in question after this pandemic), it’ll be there for sure. Myrna was my Mum’s older sister, and those two together were irrepressible and thick as thieves to say the least. A beautiful image of the two of them as children graces the cover of Vol. 2 of The Attic Anthology. My mother, Ferne, joined her sister in 2017. All eleven of their children miss them terribly.

8. Moments – Written in 2011, this song speculates that moments and the memory of such are ultimately what we leave behind when we’re gone. Certain people leave much more of a legacy than mere moments when they depart, of course, but still, I thought that the premise was an interesting one. By the second verse, it becomes clear that the protagonist is on his deathbed, reliving various moments of joy before he slips away and passes on. One of my more complex songs, melodically and lyrically, I consider it one of my more perfect combinations of both.

9. Cold To The Touch – Written in 2006 and never recorded and only played a live a few times here and there. It just fell short of making the final cut on my The Eyes Of Sarah Miles album, and it didn’t make it on to my upcoming one because said album has a more spare folk sound (partly out of economic necessity), and Cold To The Touch needs a full band treatment with keyboards et al. Sometimes, songs like Cold… reveal the influence of British Rock/Soul singer-songwriter Graham Parker, whose 70s albums knocked me out and made me daydream about having a back-up band as perfect as Graham’s The Rumour, who could play Rock, Soul, and Reggae effortlessly and powerfully.

The song details the breakup of a 15 year marriage, with the realization that perhaps no one person is to blame for something that may have been inevitable from the start.

10. Flip A Coin – A ska/rocksteady song that I wrote sometime around 2001-2002 and that has never been recorded – though I did play it fairly often in live performances around that time. It was definitely influenced by repeated listenings to ska/rocksteady compilations like Duke Reid’s Treasure Chest and Kingston Town from Heartbeat, a CD label that specialized in reissuing rare recordings of obscure or forgotten Jamaican music from the 60s/early 70s.

Sometime after I wrote Flip A Coin, a love angst song about the frustration of wondering if someone is going to commit to you or not, I noticed that it sounded a bit, though not intentionally, like Why Must I Cry by Carlton Wedderburn, an obscure singer and song that appeared on the aforementioned 1993 Kingston Town comp. I discovered later that it also sounds a bit like the 60s rocksteady song, Rocksteady – pretty apro pos title! – by Alton Ellis. Not enough to try me in court though, your honour!

11. To Be Revered – One of my earliest songs that was written in the mid-to-late 90s, To Be Revered was never officially recorded – save for some lo-fi cassette tape demos recorded at that time. It was played a fair amount at my very first live performances during the late 90s at Rasputin’s Folk Club’s Open Stage in Ottawa. This is the venue where I cut my teeth playing live at the open stage every week, despite the owner not liking my voice or songs or me personally. Which was OK, as I found him to be a pompous ass, so it was a mutual admiration society. Despite that, I do admit that Rasputin’s had many great things about it, and I did meet five of my closest friends there during those years.

To Be Revered is about a young musical prodigy who longs for fame and to be thought of as a genius – with his name spoken of in hushed tones. I don’t think it’s about me, as I was never naturally musically gifted and had to acquire my skills through years of practice and trial and error, but perhaps my yearning to break free from my lousy existence at the time and to be thought of as a great songwriter is reflected in the song’s lyrics. There was somewhat of a Nick Drake influence in my songs at that time, which explains the slightly sophisticated chord progressions and melodies found in many of my early songs like To Be Revered, Old Regrets, and All In Colour et al.

12. The Way Of The Dodo – Written in 2009 and never officially recorded or played live. It’s a slightly comical look at our immediate future and the fear and angst that accompanies it. The song also makes it clear that so far, the 21st Century is leaving a lot to be desired and that the wondrous predictions for this era have proven to be a bust. The first verse which talks about a dying record store has become an all-too depressing sight, so the song also mentions how beloved things are now going extinct (and now it’s live music venues) like the dodo, a bird that was one of the first to go extinct in the Americas hundreds of years ago. One might also infer a double meaning to the title, as we seem to be led by idiots more and more. The lyric about finding Elvis Presley in the easy listening section of the CD store really happened, and I remember how much that saddened me at the time.

Although The Way Of The Dodo works fine in a solo performance, it’s a hooky pop song that definitely needs a full rock band treatment it if was going to be recorded, and that’s the best way to hear it in your head.

13. The Great War Of The 21st Century – Written in 2004 and played live only once that I can recall and never since, this song has never been officially recorded. It started off as The Great War Of 2018 and then The Great War of 2038 and then I eventually decided to not set it in a specific year. It’s a totally tongue-in-cheek look at a fictional but literal war between vegans and carnivores (referred to in the song as “The Carnies”). I’m glad that the song doesn’t take itself too seriously.

If it ever got officially recorded, it would need a full band arrangement with prominent keyboards on the chorus. The idea for the furiously strummed opening acoustic guitar passage did not come, strangely enough, from The Who, where Pete Townshend is the king of furious energetic acoustic strumming and is one of my favourites, but from The Moody Blues’ song, Question.

14. Nostalgia – Written around 1999/2000 and played live only a few times in those years that I can recall and never since, Nostalgia has never been officially recorded. It failed to gain a foothold in my live setlist because of the fact that the song is played in open G, a guitar tuning that I used frequently in my earlier years, but less so after I started writing songs in other tunings like open D, DADGAD, DADEAD, and EADEAD. Since I don’t like having to change my guitar tuning too often during my shows, all of the songs that I wrote in open G fell by the wayside, although I had every intention of eventually recording these songs that I had written in that tuning.

It’s simply about the sometimes dangerous allure of nostalgia and how one should keep it in its place, which is advice that I admittedly haven’t always followed. The opening image of a man gazing at a photo of a high school sweetheart in a yearbook and putting his hand over her prom date so that she stands alone in the photo was taken from an episode of the brilliant 1990s U.S. TV series, Homicide: Life On The Street, where a police detective, whose investigating the murder of his high school crush, does the same gesture. It also speaks of going back to the street that you grew up on, and noticing how small everything looks now as an adult – a line that was taken from my personal experience of visiting Grady Crescent in Nepean many years after the fact.

15. Out Of Storage – Written in March of 2020 as the COVID quarantine was getting in full swing, so it hasn’t had much chance to be played live or officially recorded in a studio. It’s about a man who’s a bit of a screw-up but trying to show his boy and his ex-wife that he can be a good dad. It’s not easy, as he’s only got part-time minimum wage work while living in a room with most of his stuff in storage. But he dreams of getting a better place and of better days ahead, and soon he realizes that it’s not just his worldly possessions he needs to get out of storage, but, metaphorically speaking, himself as well.

16. The Ways And Means – Written in 2013. The idea for the song’s protagonist came from Toronto’s late, infamous mayor, Rob Ford, but the song isn’t really about him, as it could be talking about any arrogant, pompous blowhard and the scared little child that I suspect lives inside.

17. The Politician’s Saucy Wife – Written around 2002/2003, though I first wrote the lyrics in the mid 90s with a different tune that was changed to the present version, and never officially recorded and barely played live – save for a few shows around the time that I wrote it. I love the song, but a possible reason for it not being played live is its rather esoteric subject matter that I felt wouldn’t translate well to audiences at most live venues. A bit of social commentary that owes more than a bit of thanks to the style of The Kinks’ Ray Davies, The Politician’s Saucy Wife is, of course, about the wife of a politician who, because of her good looks, is a favourite obsession of a rabid news media that also completely ignores the fact that she’s an accomplished and intelligent woman with insightful opinions.

It was inspired, for some reason, by Michele Dionne, who is the wife of the then federal Progressive Conservative leader, Jean Charest. I remember looking at a photo of her at the time and thinking how beautiful she was, which got me thinking as to whether there was possibly more to her than we might think, and that’s how the idea for the song got rolling. The woman in the song is fictional.

If I recorded it, it might only need a minimal backing of an acoustic guitar, bass, and snare and brushes, although the choruses could use some harmonies. A fiddle and accordion could be in order as well.

18. Bully’s Lament – Written around twenty years ago and played live fairly often for a number of years. It was recorded for my 2016 album, The Eyes Of Sarah Miles, and would have been on it if not for the fact that the final version had some technical issues on the recording that made it unable to be included. Any hopes of re-recording it were dashed when my producer/engineer moved away to another city.

Bully’s Lament came from a certain guilt that I felt as an adult for being a prick that made fun of a classmate for a while around Grade 7 or 8. When I became an adult that was floundering at just about everything in my life at the time, I wondered if that kid, knowing about my situation, would’ve considered it a proper comeuppance and smiled. I felt that he certainly would’ve had the right to feel that way, and put it in a song. Since I’m not Catholic, and not religious in any way, I felt that it was a more therapeutic way of confessing past sins.

19. Gilles Roy – One of my earliest songs, written in the mid-90s, and played (I believe) once or possibly twice at Rasputin’s Folk Cafe during 1997-99, Gillies Roy was never officially recorded. A cry of anguish from a man who’s best friend (the aforementioned Gilles) was gunned down in a fictional mass shooting in Montreal, the song pulls no punches about the unnamed best friend’s feelings about what he’d like to do to the gunman, who sits in custody awaiting his trial. It’s not that I was advocating vigilante or mob justice (as I am a staunch opponent of capital punishment), but that one should at least acknowledge that those feelings are perfectly understandable and valid, and that who’s to say how one of us would feel or act in this situation?

The obvious inspiration for Gillies Roy was the Montreal Massacre of Dec. 6, 1989 where Marc Lepine gunned down 14 women at L’Ecole Polytechnique. My intent was not to marginalize the women’s tragic story. I just didn’t want to write directly about that particular horror because I felt at the time that that would be too obvious and I wanted to make it more personal to my own situation because it would be easier to write about. So, I thought about any close long-term male friends of mine and how I would feel deep down if they had been gunned down, and the lyrics wrote themself. The name Gilles Roy came from two Montreal Canadiens hockey players, Gilles Thibaudeau and Patrick Roy.

20. Not Anymore Mon Amour – Written in 2009 and a staple of my live shows for many years, this is only one of three songs (October Skies and My Annie Meenie being the others) on this collection that have previously recorded official versions. The reason for including this on The Attic Anthology is that the previous version released on 2016’s The Eyes Of Sarah Miles is more of a full band recording with a mandolin solo by Mark Slater in the middle and a flatpicked guitar solo by me at the end. However, when I play it live now, my arrangement is completely fingerpicked and has a different feel than the original, and I thought that this version, unless I had the money and equipment to do a live album, should show up somewhere. It technically goes against my rationale for this album, which is about shining a light on the forgotten and unheralded gems of my catalogue, but there are always exceptions to every rule.

Not Anymore Mon Amour is about the joys of not being in love anymore, or, more specifically, not being enslaved anymore by something that was holding you back – be it a bad relationship or addiction. Dame Fortune truly is a whore, and she’s turning tricks on your hopes and dreams.

21. Suburban Woman Blues – A slide blues song that I wrote in the early 2000s and have only played live a bunch of times in Ottawa before moving to Toronto, and it’s also never been officially recorded. The reason being is that the song is played with a slide in an open guitar tuning with a high string action, and it’s not always practical to bring such a guitar to my shows when I usually only have space on transit to carry two guitars and a gig bag or amp, depending on if one of the guitars is an open-tuned acoustic, then maybe. This is true for all of the slide tunes that I’ve written – thus their infrequency at my shows.

Suburban Woman Blues has been considered for inclusion on my last album and forthcoming one, but it just fell short, as I didn’t want to have many songs on them that weren’t playable live. It’s a saucy, tongue-in-cheek tribute to suburban, minivan-driving soccer moms. I always thought that with many blues songs, it gets kind of weary to hear the same old cliched lyrics about fast and loose party women, or some idealized notion of such. I thought, what about the kind of women that I see everyday like soccer moms? Aren’t they sexy and lustful too? Aren’t they worthy of such an homage? Besides, there’s a wonderful tradition of blues that goes back to its earliest beginnings that featured songs that were lusty and playful. “Bawdy songs” even go back hundreds of years in various genres of British folk music and the folk music of many other cultures as well.

One great songwriter of lusty blues songs that helped inspire Suburban Woman Blues was a gentleman by the name of Bo Carter (1893-1964), who was most active in the 1930s and early ’40s. Bo was the absolute master of the humorous double-entendre, and some of them only barely qualified as such. He wrote acoustic blues songs with titles like Let Me Roll Your Lemon, Banana In Your Fruit Basket, Pin In Your Cushion, Don’t Mash My Digger So Deep, Your Biscuits Are Big Enough For Me, Please Warm My Weiner, and the classic and possibly first tune ever written about male impotence, My Pencil Won’t Write No More. All the more incredible is that these songs came about in a far more conservative time than today, although part of the reason why these weren’t figured out is the sexual cluelessness of many people back then. Once the cat was out of the bag in the Postwar Era, these kinds of songs fell out of favour, which is a shame.

22. Phantoms – Written in 2014 and never played live or officially recorded, I nevertheless consider Phantoms to be one of my best songs from the last decade. My reluctance to play it live is because it was written in a guitar tuning that I love but that has been played by few people – EADEAD – and that it can be tricky to keep it in tune if you’re switching the tuning from Open D or DADGAD, which I use fairly often if I can bring a second guitar to my shows.

In the song, a man who died from a car crash brought on by his drinking and driving watches over his widow and daughter from the afterlife and tries to do whatever he can to offer comfort to them through good times and bad. I’m not suggesting that ghosts and the afterlife are something that I personally believe in, but that they do make excellent story devices.

23. Children Of The 80s – Written in 2004 and never officially recorded or played live. It’s about a fortysomething woman (who would now be in her 50s) who was a rebellious new wave/punk teen in the 1980s and clings to the belief that she’s still cutting edge – but who has now become everything that she sneered at back then. The underlying message to the song is that everything that was once dangerous and subversive eventually becomes nostalgia in time.

I have to admit that it’s an unusual song in my repertoire, as I usually write more roots music-oriented material, which is likely the reason it was kept under wraps for so long. Musically, I dream of recording this song with a full rock band and an 80s keyboard sound highly reminiscent of In Between Days by The Cure, a band that I was never really into – save for that one song, which evokes that decade as much as any other. However, the biggest musical influence on the song, though not intentionally, was the band XTC, who had an uncanny ability to write great Beatlesque pop using sometimes unorthodox chord progressions – which Children Of The 80s has in abundance.

24. Gaze Upon Yorkville And Weep – Written in 2006 and only occasionally performed live for no other reason accept that it just fell through the cracks. It was on a shortlist of songs that would’ve appeared on my last album and forthcoming one, and it just fell short. I’d like to think that it’s just because of an embarrassment of riches, song-wise.

It was inspired by a visit to Toronto that I made in January or February of 2005, before moving here that September. I was fascinated by Toronto’s musical history, especially the downtown neighbourhood of Yorkville and the amazing and essential role it played as the incubator of so much great Canadian music starting in the late 1960s (e.g. Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn etc.). Back then, it was full of music venues, coffee shops etc. and hippies living in the Victorian houses above them, and this didn’t sit well with the mayor and other civic leaders, especially when they felt that Yorkville had become the epicentre of the Hippie Movement in Canada. Additionally, biker gangs had come to the area selling drugs, there was an outbreak of Hepatitis among the young people in the area, and the Hippie community wanted Yorkville Ave. to become a pedestrian-only zone.

The turmoil that resulted made city council more determined to get rid of them, and, long story short, by 1970 the flourishing cultural jewel that Yorkville had been was no more, replaced by the ultra-swanky boutiques et al. that have plagued it ever since, with venues like The Riverboat as one of the few survivors until it closed in 1978. The arrival of the Bloor-Danforth Subway in 1966 also shot property values through the roof, and that would’ve hastened its demise as an affordable place for artists to live anyway.

During my visit to the area that winter weekend, and keenly aware of what it had become, I wanted to see if there was still some last vestiges of soul left over from its late-60s heyday. And even though some features of the old Victorian structures still remained, it was supremely depressing to see what an ultra chi-chi, rich, antiseptic, soulless, shithole that it had become – a sad harbinger of the Toronto that has come to fruition in the 21st Century. I mean, I know that it wouldn’t have lasted as the cultural epicentre that it was. Neighbourhoods change over time, and nothing stays the same, but Yorkville never had that chance to evolve and change. To see a city so thoroughly and thoughtlessly stamp out a flower growing out of a concrete sidewalk and not at least try to retain some of its character (as Greenwich Village and other former countercultural hubs have done) is indicative of a sad mindset.

Dedicated to David DePoe, who just might know a thing or two about such things.

25. This Is Bliss – Written in the mid-to-late 90s and never officially recorded, This Is Bliss, as best as I can recall, was never played live – although I might’ve tried it out at the open stage at Rasputin’s in Ottawa at that time and felt that I didn’t do the song justice and relegated it to the back closet of my song catalogue. It’s a sweet soul love song with a bit of a sense of humour and a slightly jazzy chord progression that owes it’s inspiration to Curtis Mayfield and possibly Van Morrison’s song, Gypsy Queen. I was really big on sophisticated chord progressions in my 90s songs. I think that This is Bliss has a lot going for it and should dust it off for the odd live performance now and again. And DEFINITELY record it.

26. Deaf and Blind – Written sometime around 1999-2000 and never recorded and barely played live. Another song of mine that I love that fell through the cracks, possibly because I felt that it needed a full band and that it didn’t lend itself to solo performance as well. Nothing complex about the lyrics. A standard love-angst song about a guy who’s going out with someone who takes him for granted and everyone knows it but him and gets dumped anyway. The funky rhythms, like my other song, Daddy’s Weird Shows, come from around the time (ca. 2000-01) when I was influenced by the funky and percussive acoustic guitar playing of a local Ottawa musician named Mike Easton. At the time, he was hosting an open mic at an Ottawa venue on Elgin Street called The Elbow Room, and I felt that since many popular songs seemed to be more and more groove-based, it wouldn’t hurt to have some funky songs in my repertoire.

If I hadn’t been among the working poor for my entire adult life, rest assured that I would’ve had this and so many other songs that slipped through the cracks properly recorded years ago with full bands and production and all of the bells and whistles. I sure as hell would’ve had more than two albums (with a third on the way) under my belt. It’s occurred to me that, over the last 20 odd years, I haven’t been writing songs so much as stockpiling them. Likely because I knew somehow that someday there’d be a pandemic and that these songs, many of them never played in years, would need to be played for the bemusement and cheap thrills of masses of people over that new-fangled Internet thingie that everyone’s been talking about.

27. Six Numbers – Written about twenty years ago and rarely played live and never recorded. It’s just your everyday run-of-the-mill story song that you’ve probably heard a thousand times about a man on his deathbed whose final cryptic words aren’t words at all, but a series of numbers – which ends up confusing his loved ones. He narrates the song from the afterlife, and, fear not, reveals the significance of the numbers near the end.

I have to tilt my guitar upwards to play the song, as those fingerings are a bit tough when holding it in my usual position. It almost makes me look like a classical guitar player – without the nylon strings and haughty attitude of course.

28. You And I Know – Written in 2011 and never recorded, You And I Know has only been played live once at an open stage at The Free Times Cafe in Toronto. It’s about one of those seemingly perfect families that actually hides a host of dysfunction underneath…with a poppy, singable chorus. The best way to hear the song is to picture it with a full band and background harmonies on the chorus, which is how I intend to record it…if I ever get the chance…and money…and musicians…(SOB).

29. Gatineau – Literally, the first song that I ever wrote way before I even became an active songwriter or even knew how to sing decently, Gatineau was written around 1990-91 while I was heavily under the spell of Van Morrison’s 1968 album Astral Weeks, which is reflected in the music and in the jazzy 3/4 time signature. If I ever properly recorded it, it would need a full band arrangement with as large and majestic a sound as my budget would allow. The verse and pre-chorus chord progressions were the result of just experimenting with different unorthodox chord shapes that I couldn’t possibly know the names of until years later. I never felt that I did the song justice vocally-speaking until years later, I put a capo on the third fret of my guitar, which fit my range better. Despite this improvement, I’ve never played the song live or recorded it officially for unknown reasons. Perhaps I felt that it was too ambitious a song to play solo?

Gatineau is about two young lovers, Marie and Jean, living in the Gatineau Hills of rural Western Quebec in 1930 and how his love for her may not be reciprocal on her end. He wants marriage and babies and the whole nine yards, and she, betraying an independence not always seen in women of her time and place, longs for a certain freedom she can’t necessarily articulate. I have no idea why I chose a somewhat complex storyline like this as my first song, although reading a Canadian history book at the time about The Great Depression, The Hungry Thirties, probably gave me some germ of an idea. I guess it’s just one of those things that one can’t explain, which is not unlike Marie’s situation in the song.

30. Black And White And Grey – Written in 2005 and never played live or officially recorded. It failed to gain a foothold in my live setlist because of the fact that the song is played in open G, a guitar tuning that I used frequently in my earlier years, but less so after I started writing songs in other tunings like open D, DADGAD, DADEAD, and EADEAD. Since I don’t like having to change my guitar tuning too often during my shows, all of the songs that I wrote in open G fell by the wayside, although I had every intention of eventually recording these songs that I had written in that tuning. I had a backup band in my last few years in Ottawa, and it’s possible that I could’ve put the song in the setlist, as a full band would’ve done it justice, but it seems to have just slipped through the cracks.

It’s a protest song about people who always think in terms of black and white and absolutes, and who fail to realize that, more often than not, they should paint their canvas in shades of grey. I believe that it was a response to the climate of fear that emerged after 9/11 and to the polarizing and divisive actions of Bush and his administration. Sadly, the song is more topical than ever before and I should probably try to get it in the setlist (assuming I’ll have that chance in the near future after COVID) or on the next album (definitely with a full band backing me up!) after my current one is completed.

Songs on Volume 2

1. Sail My Sea – Written in December, 2019, but never officially recorded. It wasn’t played live until a show I did in late 2020 in Peterborough, Ontario (the COVID lockdown didn’t extend to that region at the time), as I wasn’t completely satisfied with my vocal in the key that it was in until, midway through 2020, I moved the capo to the fifth fret and bingo…success.

It’s a song about growing old and not wanting to lose the sense of wonder and discovery that one had when they were younger, which, now that I’m fifty, I can certainly relate to. It also talks about wishing that there was some kind of medical procedure that could allow one to bring forth the memories of one’s youth from the recesses of the brain. I can’t deny that there’s a certain amount of nostalgia and yearning for days past in more than a few of my songs, which probably speaks to a certain sadness on my part about growing old and feeling somewhat lost in this century. But, as they say about novels and songwriting, write what you know.

2. The Day Of Days – Written around the early 2000s and never officially recorded and barely played live – save for a few shows around the time that I wrote it. It’s no more than a straightforward love song where a boyfriend reflects on how much his girlfriend means to him before he proposes to her. Although most of my songs have slightly more complex storylines or poetic lyrics, sometimes one just has to have a song that gets to the point and doesn’t mess around, and that’s The Day Of Days in a nutshell.

It’s a great song that I might’ve kept in my set, but it just fell through the cracks over the years when other songs of mine were coming out. One possible reason for its omission from my setlist is that I’ve mainly been a solo performer over my career, and, to me, The Days Of Days is a big, anthemic rock song that’s suited to a full band with electric guitars, keyboards, etc. (which is how it would be recorded if I was able to), and so I probably thought it wasn’t suitable for a solo acoustic show. Maybe that was a dumb decision on my part, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

3. 4 AM – Written in 2009 and never played live or recorded. The song is a conversation with one’s conscience about not letting poverty and a dearth of spirit lead you down a darker path. Another song of mine that’s never been performed in public because of being overshadowed by other originals. If it ever got formally recorded, it would definitely need a full-band arrangement on the chorus at least. I can see 4 AM appearing on the next album after my current one gets finished.

4. Meet The New Guy – Written in 2002. Although I’ve never officially recorded it, I used to play it fairly often in Ottawa in the early 2000s at venues like The Parliament Pub, and should’ve kept playing it well into my Toronto days, as it’s a fairly universal song about always being the new person at the office due to the prevalence of contract jobs, and the demeaning aspects of such positions, which I had to go through many times before dog-walking for fun and profit (wait…profit?) saved my life in more ways than one.

It was on the shortlist for my last album in 2015, but just missed inclusion, as I had twenty songs picked for it already. Since my upcoming album is mostly a folk-based one with spare instrumentation, it wasn’t on the list, as Meet The New Guy needs a full band arrangement, ESPECIALLY with a funky piano part playing the main verse melody and funky drumming in the pocket.

5. I Wanna Run My Hands Through Your Hair – Written around 1999/2000 and played live only a few times over the years and never officially recorded. I recall playing it at one of my Renaissance Cafe shows in Toronto around 2007/08, and I must admit that a snicker that came from a former friend of mine in the audience towards the song bummed me out a bit and kept me from playing it again.

I’ve always really liked I Wanna Run My Hands Through Your Hair because of its Van Morrison-esque sound, but it also didn’t come back in my setlist because it’s a passionate, romantic song with a touch of playfulness to it that’s played with bare fingers, which made it less conducive to playing in loud non-listening venues. I can’t recall it being inspired by any woman in particular. Probably just Van’s influence washing over me, as it frequently did in those days. I like the fact that it’s not just about being in love with her and all of its carnal aspects, but to also be there for her when she gets home to rub her feet and listen to her vent about her boss. I mean, if that isn’t love I don’t know what is!

6. October Skies – Written around the late 90s/2000 and played live many times over the years, though not so much in the last decade because of the prominence of newer songs in my repertoire that appeared on 2016’s The Eyes Of Sarah Miles. October Skies is one of only three songs (the others being Not Anymore Mon Amour and My Annie Meenie) on this anthology that was previously officially recorded (on my 2003 debut album, Love On The Transitway) and the only song of mine to appear in a film – 2005’s Upgraded, an independent feature made in Ottawa. Its inclusion technically goes against my rationale for this album, which is about shining a light on the forgotten and unheralded gems of my catalogue, but I felt that my latter-day version of this song has a slightly better and more soulful feel than the recorded version (putting the key down a half-step helped). I could’ve still left it off the Anthology, but thought, what the hell?

The song deals with the aftermath of a breakup, with the guy realizing that he’s been adrift ever since because of the impact that she made on him, and the little things that one notices – like the sudden coldness towards you from friends of your ex when you meet them on the street.

7. The Day We Say Goodbye – Written in a two-day period along with another song, The Boys Of Major Street, in late August of 2020 – although I had the picking patterns/chords, ideas and titles of these songs for a few years and just needed to set the lyrics down. It is a document of my mother’s passing in April of 2017, and the heartbreak of having to say goodbye to her, which is probably why it took so long to motivate myself to write the lyrics. The line in the last verse about Morning Has Broken refers to the Cat Stevens rendition of the song (which is an old Christian hymn) being played as we led her casket to the ceremony. However, I’d like to think that the song isn’t so specific that others can’t be moved by it in reference to the passing of their own loved ones.

Dedicated to my family, but also to my cousins who lost their beloved Myrna years ago, and to all of you who’ve lost their mothers.

8. Don Jail Blues 1966 – A slide blues song that I wrote in 2011 and have never played live or recorded. Though I love it, I suppose I thought that the quiet nature of the song hardly made it a candidate for my live shows, though I thought that it could make a great album track someday. Added to that is the difficulty of transporting more than two guitars to my shows, and I couldn’t justify bringing a third guitar in an open guitar tuning with a high string action that I’d only be using on one or two slide tunes at best.

Don Jail Blues 1966, is, as the title says, set at The Don Jail, Toronto’s most notorious prison, in 1966, where a father has come to visit his inmate son, whose plight had only just come to his dad’s attention – as he had run away from home with no word. A tearful reunion ensues, and the father later walks down the street to Riverdale Park and reflects on the situation and possible new beginnings. Since the Don hasn’t been operational for years (it now serves as an administrative wing of a rehab hospital adjacent to it), I had to set the story in a time when it was quite active, thus the 1966 setting.

9. Your Hall Of Fame – Written in 1998/99 and never officially recorded and barely played live – except for a performance or two at Rasputin’s in Ottawa at the time it was written. Even though I’ve had it written for years, I was never totally happy with it until 2010, when I made a few revisions by tuning the third string down to F# and putting a capo on the fifth fret. It’s a love-angst song with bits of humour in it – not atypical judging by my situation at the time. I recall that when I wrote it, I was working at a federal government dept. library at Place Du Portage in Hull, Quebec, which was across the river from Ottawa. There was a girl working there that I kind of fancied, but she was about to move to Victoria, B.C. – thus the line in the song’s first verse.

Even though it’s not the hookiest song in my catalogue or the showiest, I’ve always loved the kind of sophisticated chord/melody construction in it which came out of just experimenting with different chord fingerings that I didn’t even know the names of until years later. Like some other songs that I wrote in this period, it was likely influenced by the British singer-songwriter Nick Drake, who was known for his unorthodox guitar tunings and chord voicings. I believe that Your Hall Of Fame would make a good album track as opposed to a single, and, if I ever got the chance to record it, would need only minimal backing. A bass and possibly some harmonies on the chorus, perhaps?

10. Earth 2 – Written around 2002/2003 and almost never played live, and never officially recorded. It failed to gain a foothold in my live setlist because of the fact that the song is played in open G, a guitar tuning that I used frequently in my earlier years, but less so after I started writing songs in other tunings like open D, DADGAD, DADEAD, and EADEAD. Since I don’t like having to change my guitar tuning too often during my shows, all of the songs that I wrote in open G fell by the wayside, although I had every intention of eventually recording these songs that I had written in that tuning.

This song is a bit of a departure for me, as it has a bit of a sci-fi/fantasy theme. In it, a man who has been a failure at much of his life wishes to journey to a parallel universe so that he can replace his far more successful counterpart and live his life instead. I’d like to be able to say that the concept of parallel universes, a popular but unproven hypothesis among physicists and sci-fi writers that posits that there may be an infinite number of parallel Earths where there are possibly infinite versions of yourself as well, came to me while I was reading some scholarly scientific text or from reading some highbrow sci-fi novel, but the truth is is that I learned about them from reading Justice League of America comic books as a kid. In these particular stories, the Justice League (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman et al.) discovered that there were alternate versions of themselves in a parallel universe in a group called The Justice Society of America, who had originally started in the 1940s and were now older crimefighters. They dubbed the JLA universe, Earth 1, and the JSA’s, Earth 2 – thus the song’s title (it was never stated why the JLA got bragging rights to being called “Earth 1”).

And, if I have to be truthful, the song’s protagonist is basically me, as I certainly felt like a complete failure in life at the time when I wrote it.

11. Help Me See – A ska/rocksteady song written around twenty years ago and rarely ever played by me for reasons I don’t fully understand, except for the fact that maybe I always thought it would sound better with a full band (which it would, especially with a fat Hammond B-3 organ on the chorus) than played solo – thus, it fell through the cracks. Hey, I’ve written 128 songs over the last twenty five odd-years, and there’s bound to be ones that even though I like them, just won’t make it into the setlists. Nevertheless, I should put it in once in a while at least, as it is pretty timely (ESPECIALLY now). It was written at the dawn of the new millenium, and I guess it spoke to my fears and concerns as to what was going to lie ahead in the 21st Century – wonders and horrors alike.

Thus far, as of the year 2021, this century has, needless to say, left much to be desired. However, the chorus does affirm that as long as the protagonist has a love by his side in the years ahead to “help him see” through this era, then things might turn out OK after all.

12. It’s Up, Up, And Away – Written in 2004 and never officially recorded and barely played live, save for a live recording in 2005 at my show at Zeke’s Gallery in Montreal. It’s about the pain of losing the Montreal Expos, who were that city’s Major League Baseball team for 35 seasons from 1969 to 2004 (which is why it was no coincidence that I wrote it that summer), and who were my team as a fan in Ottawa for a few decades. It is also a lament for our youth and the sad resignation of adulthood.

The title refers to the line that the legendary Expos radio and TV broadcaster Dave Van Horne would utter whenever the Expos would hit a home run, and the song also references the Expos’ Hall of Fame outfielders Andre Dawson (nicknamed The Hawk) and Tim Raines (nicknamed The Rock), and fellow Expos broadcaster, Hall Of Famer, and Brooklyn Dodger, Duke Snider, who I was thrilled to meet and get an autograph from at a mall in Nepean, Ontario at an Expos caravan in 1984. The song also references some heartbreaking events in the team’s history (their playoff loss in 1981 and the strike which cancelled their amazing season in 1994) and gives an affectionate nod to their less than stellar ballpark, Olympic Stadium, which I loved anyway in all of its cavernous glory. I can vividly remember seeing the field in person for the first time in 1984 and being enthralled – despite the Expos losing both games of a double-header to The St. Louis Cardinals.

It also references a woman named Katie Hines, who I saw in a documentary about the team’s final days. She was a diehard fan for decades who was unbelievably saddened about the team’s imminent demise, and wondered what she was going to do with her summers with no Expos around, and I found her story quite poignant. A reminder that sports teams and their players can have a much bigger impact on a society than many would think. Being an Expos fan during the 1980s remains among my most cherished memories, so it would’ve been weirdly unnatural not to write a song about them.

13. Return My Calls – A blues song that I wrote around 1998-99 and have only played live a bunch of times in Ottawa (a live camcorder performance of such at The Manx in 2005 is on YouTube) before moving to Toronto, and have also never recorded. The reason being is that the song is played with a slide in an open guitar tuning with a high string action, and it’s not always practical to bring a third guitar to my shows when I usually only have space on transit to carry two guitars and a gig bag or amp, depending on if one of the two guitars is an open-tuned acoustic, then maybe. This is true for all of the slide tunes that I’ve written – thus their infrequency at my shows.

Return My Calls is a plea from the song’s protagonist to his sweetheart to please return his calls so that they can continue on their path to happiness. However, the song’s lyrics make it clear that the reason why that she’s not returning his calls is that he got a little too ahead of himself in his “grand plans” for the couple (bringing him home to meet her folks, getting married etc.), and this scared her off. The funny thing is is that I didn’t realize the underlying meaning of the lyrics until after I’d written them. You gotta love unintentional complexity!

And a shout-out once again to my sister Lori for giving me her old 1981 Fender acoustic to me years ago, which is featured on all my slide tunes. The high action makes it unplayable for regular use, but perfect for slide.

14. Magic And Light – Written around 2003-04 and never officially recorded or played live (at least that I can remember). It’s a love song to the power of cinema and how it can captivate and inspire you, by using three examples of films that were (and are) favourites of mine – the 2001 film, Amélie, and the 1998 films Rushmore and The Big Lebowski. Amélie, in particular, came at a time right after 9/11 when the world seemed like a darker place, and its tale of epiphany, love, and kindness shone on the screen like a hopeful beacon of a lighthouse in the distance. In one particular scene, the titular character reveals that, while watching a movie in a theatre, she sometimes likes to look at the luminous faces of people as they gaze at the screen, and that inspired the lyric in this song about “shimmering light is what you’ve seen, from their faces to the screen, and magic’s what you’ve kept”. All of these films exuded an undeniable warmth and made me walk out of the theatre just utterly entranced and inspired and so I used them as examples in the song.

It’s not a big, showy tune (which is why it’s never made it into my live setlists), and it makes a better album track than single, but I’ve always really liked it and think that it’s one of my nicer combinations of lyric and melody. The subject matter probably won’t resonate with everyone, especially if one doesn’t like those films, but hopefully, the overall message of Magic And Light would captivate enough people if given a chance when properly recorded.

15. The Macabre Confession – Written around 1998-99 and never officially recorded and barely played live – save for a few shows (The Dunvegan Pub in Ottawa, for example) around the time that I wrote it. It’s about a Newfoundlander who witnesses a killing from afar and only confesses to it years later, as he lives in a small village and fears reprisal from the killer if he went to the police. It was my attempt at writing The Great Canadian Murder Ballad, as such songs have a long tradition in the folk music of much of Great Britain (though not the Gaels or Welsh) and Scandinavia going back hundreds of years. I couldn’t name any Canadian-made murder ballads off of the top of my head (save for an album of murder ballads done by Ottawa singer-songwriter Lynne Hanson), but I’m sure that they’re out there.

16. 12 Hours – A blues song that thankfully didn’t take that long to write. I wrote it back in 2011 when I was a security guard and was called in by my company to do a twelve hour overnight shift at a CIBC bank in Liberty Village in Toronto. It was still under construction, so they usually have guards posted for the overnight hours so that no one burgles the place of construction equipment etc.

It was dead quiet, of course, so I brought a ukulele in my duffel bag and wrote this song on that. Obviously, it’s a slightly different arrangement on guitar, but essentially the same. The lyrics come directly from the experience of being a security guard and doing a lot of overnight shifts (“I eat my lunch in the middle of the night” indeed). Not that you’re allowed to bring an instrument with you on these shifts, but screw it, I knew that it was going to be a long one with not much to do except read a book or magazine, and reading gets you sleepy after a while. Singing and playing keeps you awake a lot easier and stimulates your brain and spirit. There’s a reason why so many manual labourers for generations around the world have sung while they work. Besides, a job is fleeting, but a song is forever.

17. May/December – Written sometime around (I believe) 2002/2003 and officially recorded in 2009 with my producer Mitch Girio but never released – as I was eyeing it as part of a forthcoming album that never got made due to other life circumstances (attending Centennial College) getting in the way. Since my degree in Pensions and Benefits Management from Centennial amounted to jack shit employment-wise, in 2010, I went into security in order to get working again and didn’t get out of that until 2013. From 2009 to 2013, I was barely playing music as school and work were taking all of my time, and, figuratively speaking, was lost in the wilderness. It was only until I got my life back after the start of my dog walking career that I was able to start thinking about music again and getting an album off of the ground.

May/December, as the title suggests, is indeed about May/December relationships (a sexual relationship between two adults with a very wide gap in age). In the song, a younger man pays tribute to an older woman that he once had such a relationship with, and the difference that it made in his life. It was inspired by the 1971 cult classic film, Harold And Maude, a dark romantic comedy about a young misanthropic man (his age isn’t stated) falling in love with a 79-year old free-spirited woman. I also reference the Rod Stewart classic song about a young man and an older woman, Maggie May, in the lyrics as well.

One thing that I’ve always found amusing – and bemusing – about the adoration of so many towards Harold And Maude (as it is routinely cited as the favourite movie of a number of people) is the hypocrisy on the part of many of its fans, who, if confronted with a couple having such a relationship in real life, would be the first to denounce said people as sick and perverted. Indeed, even people with a mere 20 year age gap get denounced as such, and, if I have to state my position on such matters, then I’m firmly on the side that argues whatever consenting adults want to do is their business. But, if you have a great comedic script, a scene-stealing performance by Ruth Gordon and a kicking soundtrack by Cat Stevens, then it’s a beautiful and life-affirming classic on the importance of preserving one’s youthful spirit and fighting conformity (and yes, I do think that it is all of those things). Like I said, amusing and bemusing.

18. Gilded – Written in the mid to late 90s and never officially recorded or played live. Gilded is a stinging satire of Hollywood and all of its egos and pretensions. It was likely influenced by repeated viewings of the classic 90s TV show, The Larry Sanders Show, in which Garry Shandling played a neurotic late night TV talk show host with real-life celebrities as his guests. It was a devastating and hilarious satire that shone a light on a Hollywood that one never got to see when watching Entertainment Tonight or Jay Leno, and, in a decade that had me hopelessly adrift and miserable, it was one of the few things that gave me something to look forward to. I suppose the song was also influenced by Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, a legendary tell-all book from the 60s that was one of the first to peel back the layers on the more nefarious secret goings-on, scandals, and tragic deaths from Tinseltown during its Golden Period from the 1910s to the 1960s.

Its omission from my live setlists over the years is likely due to its esoteric subject matter and not its quality, as I love the chord progression and melodies. If I was ever able to record it, Gilded would need a full rock band treatment with maybe some harmonies on the chorus. It does have a sound and lyrics slightly reminiscent of singer-songwriter-producer Nick Lowe’s late 70s power-pop – or XTC’s 70s/80s output – and that’s the direction where the song should go.

19. Nothing To Say – Written in the late 1990s and, to the best of my knowledge, never played in public or officially recorded since that time. The reason being that it’s one of my more personal songs, as it’s pretty unsparing towards my father, who, since my parents’ separation in 1980 and subsequent divorce, has never made much of an attempt to be a father to me, and, as much as my life has been perfectly fine without him – as my Mother was always there and made all six of her kids feel loved – I couldn’t help but feel a little bitter towards the old man, thus Nothing To Say.

Although I said in the song that I will have nothing to say to him even when he’s old and grey, that’s not actually true. After my Mum passed away in 2017, I was at her visitation at Beechwood Cemetary and went outside to get some air. I spied my Auntie Jackie sitting in her car. As I hadn’t seen her since 1982 (long story short, his side of the family basically ostricized my Mother and the rest of us after the separation. Yep, they were real sweethearts), and because I was curious, I went over to say hi to her just for the hell of it. Of course, Jackie being at my Mother’s visitation and funeral was pretty ironic, as my Mum, who was close to her for years, grew to hate her with every fibre of her being. One of my sisters remarked that she was half expecting her to get out of the casket to punch Jackie in the throat. But I digress…

So, we made some small talk and she told me that Carl, my father, wasn’t able to make it to the visitation that night but would be coming to the funeral tomorrow, which wasn’t a surprise, as my sister Kim had already informed us all of this. Just as she said that, a truck pulled up next to her in the parking lot, and, even though I hadn’t seen the old man in roughly 23 years (back when he was helping my sister Lori move) and that he was looking a little more gaunt at 79, I could tell that it was him. So, he gets out of the truck and starts making small talk to his sister, Jackie, and I noticed that my sister Lori was walking out of the chapel and I motioned to her to come over, as I figured she’d want to greet him. Three of my siblings, Lori being one of them, still have a relationship with him, and three of us, like myself, don’t.

So, the three of them start making small talk, and at one point, I shit you not, the old man glances over at me and asks “Who’s this?”. Lori, barely containing her laughter, says to him “Dad! It’s Sean!” It finally registers with him and he says something like “Oh yeah, how’s it goin?”. To be honest, I wasn’t really that offended, as it was more humorous than anything, and, to be fair, it HAD been a while. Inside the chapel, we were able to make small talk, with him showing me pictures of his five million step-kids from his late wife that he remarried after my parents’ divorce. It was all very civil and everything, but there wasn’t going to be any revelation and some promise of a new start or some such horseshit. As my song states, “He’ll go his way and I’ll go mine, that’s the way it was meant to be”.

20. Memories That Can’t Be Bought – Written in 2010 and only played once by me in 2019 at the Toronto venue, Relish. It has never been officially recorded. I wrote the song in the hopes that it might be recorded by a Toronto-based Celtic-Rock band called The Seasick Sailors, who I was friendly with and later joined as a guitarist and sometime bassist. It never came to pass, but I still liked it enough to eventually debut it at the aforementioned Relish gig, and I think it went over well.

Memories That Can’t Be Bought needs a full band with a prominent fiddle and maybe a pennywhistle on any official recording, as it was very much written in an Irish/Maritimes drinking song style to suit the Sailors’ sound. The band eventually ran their course, though their leader, Mark Slater, who is a good friend of mine, was my producer/engineer/drummer/sometime bassist on my 2016 album, The Eyes Of Sarah Miles. The song is about an old man looking back fondly at his life with no regrets, with the realization that he has far more days behind him than ahead and that he needs to concentrate on living in the present. If any song of mine would be suitable to raise a glass to, it would certainly be this one.

21. Reflection In The Water – Written in 2010 and only played once by me a few years ago at an open mike at the Toronto venue, The Free Times Cafe. It has never been officially recorded. I wrote the song in the hopes that it might be recorded by a Toronto-based Celtic-Rock band called The Seasick Sailors, who I was friendly with and later joined as a guitarist and sometime bassist. It never came to pass. However, I developed a nice fingerpicked arrangement using Drop-D tuning on the guitar that works well for solo performances.

Reflection In The Water is a simple declaration of love from a sailor who’s recently returned from being away at sea for months to his darling Peggy. It doesn’t get much simpler than that, with the protagonist declaring that “I’ll tip my tankard in the bay and drink your reflection”.

22. Genevieve – Written in 2010 and never officially recorded and only played live once at a Toronto venue, Relish, simply because I don’t always feel like bringing my ukulele to my gigs because of the hassle of bringing extra instruments on transit. It’s just an old-fashioned lustful blues homage to a fictional woman named Genevieve, and it’s just cool to be able to play blues riffs and solos on an instrument that too often is seen as non-serious and, well, twee. Which is too bad, because there are some seriously great uke players in the world who treat it as a serious instrument. I play it with a pick and, as seen on Genevieve, I like to rock out a bit on it, which is ironic, because most uke players play it with bare fingers and most of my guitar work is fingerstyle so you’d think I’d naturally gravitate toward that technique on uke as well, but to me, ukulele sounds louder and a bit more aggressive with a flatpick, so, there ya go.

23. Cover Of Clouds – Written around the mid to late 90s and never officially recorded and barely played live – save for a few shows around the time that I wrote it. It’s a slightly jazzy love song (and a favourite of Canadian singer-songwriter extraordinaire Blake Walters) in which the song’s protagonist has a crush on a woman who looks like the self-portrait of Joni Mitchell on the cover of her 1968 album, Clouds. This came from my own experience at the time, as I too had a crush on a woman at that time who looked similar to Joni on the cover of Clouds (thus the song title). As the opening lyrics state, I bought the CD of this album because it had the songs Chelsea Morning and I Don’t Know Where I Stand, a song I’d previously enjoyed in a version done by Fairport Convention, and because I was interested in hearing some of the odd open guitar tunings that Joni employed.

To be honest, the album didn’t captivate me all that much, and I sold it at some point. Besides, the crush didn’t amount to anything. However, I got a worthwhile song out of the experience, and, in my book, that’s just the bees’ knees.

24. Let’s Drink To The Strand – Written around 2002 and never officially recorded or played live. My reluctance to play it live is because it was written in a guitar tuning that I love but that has been played by few people – DADEAD – and that it can be tricky to keep it in tune if you’re switching the tuning from Open D or DADGAD, which I use fairly often if I can bring a second guitar to my shows. It’s the only song that I’ve written in DADEAD, though there’s an unfinished one in that tuning that might join it someday.

The song is a commentary on the loss of old structures that once had character and the replacement of such with modern eyesores. In this case, the Strand, which opened as a movie theatre on Bank Street in the south of Ottawa in 1949, and which became a Bingo hall in 1954, staying as such for the rest of its life until it was bulldozed to make way for a Tim Hortons in the early 2000s. I remember going by there every so often and thinking that the old girl still had its charm and that I wish someone could step in and do something creative with it (for example, restoring it to its theatrical glory like so many have done with old movie houses around the world) while keeping its architectural character. Alas, it wasn’t to be. In a town where so many people live in the suburbs, Ottawa has a poor track record in regards to preserving it’s urban heritage buildings.

25. Old Regrets – One of my earliest songs that was written in the mid-to-late 90s, Old Regrets was never officially recorded – save for some lo-fi cassette tape demos recorded at that time. It was played a fair amount at my very first live performances during the late 90s at Rasputin’s Folk Club’s Open Stage in Ottawa. Another one of my early songs that had some fairly sophisticated chord progressions and melodies in it.

The spark for this song came when I saw an old high school crush a few years later in a bank lineup in Ottawa and wanted desperately to say hi to her but couldn’t because she was with a guy who she seemed chummy with, and that would’ve been awkward. Years later, in Toronto, we became friends again, as she was living here. Because of that, I changed the name in the song to another high school crush that I had so that this person who I had become friends with didn’t discover that I felt that way about her back then. We were good as just friends and I didn’t want to make things weird. Since then, we’ve fallen out of each other’s orbit and haven’t talked since.

Ah yes, the days when I was a failure with women and pathetically mooned over old crushes as some kind of beacon of hope. Fortunately, the tongue-in-cheek third verse of the song puts me in my place. Hopefully, the second high school crush never finds out that she’s named in this song. Then I’ll have nowhere left to hide!

26. Please Turn Out The Lights – Written around 1999/2000. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve possibly only performed this song once or twice in public around the time it was written and have never recorded it. This is probably due to it being a song with lyrics that demand close listening and therefore not being suitable for venues that are not quiet listening environments – which happen to be most of them. As with many of my obscure gems (at least I’d like to think that they are), if my finances had been decent in the last twenty years, I would’ve been able to properly record this and many others and put them on one of many albums that I would’ve liked to have recorded, but alas, the opposite was true, and I’ve only been able to record two albums thus far – with a third on the way (someday?).

The song tells a story about a town who’s main industry is moving elsewhere, with the resulting loss of most of the town’s workforce and the subsequent exodus for greener pastures by its residents. It focuses on the plant manager having to give out the pink slips, who for years was liked and respected, but has now become a lightning rod for worker frustrations and bitterness, little realizing that he’s just as much a victim of the whims of beancounters as they are.

27. Whispered Lies (Come To Light) – Written in 2009 and, to the best of my knowledge, never played live (possibly once or twice?) or recorded. Just another song of mine that fell through the cracks that deserves to be above ground. Preferably recorded with a full band and a pedal steel.

It’s about how lies and innuendo can cause great damage to one’s reputation or career – especially if you’re female. Some may feel that lines like “Lies upon your canvas, by your masterstroke, your currency of ambition would make Machiavelli broke” don’t belong in a country song, but that’s kind of assuming a certain ignorance on your audience’s part, which is never a smart idea. Besides, I’m sure country songwriters like Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson (a bonafide Rhodes Scholar who taught English literature at West Point), Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell, Jason Isbell etc. would probably tell those naysayers to go suck a lemon.

28. Sasquatch Sounds Off – Written in 2004 and never officially recorded and, to the best of my knowledge, only played live once at The Free Times Cafe in Toronto. It’s just one of those songs of mine that I love but that have also fallen through the cracks over the years due to there being more showier or hookier tunes in my catalogue that got more attention. I don’t think the subject matter is too esoteric, but maybe that was a factor also. I don’t know. But I definitely think that it would make a great album track – especially with a keyboard classical strings sound.

Sasquatch Sounds Off is a partly tongue-in-cheek and partly poignant song where a Sasquatch, a possibly real or mythical ape-like creature (depending on what you believe) that walks like a human that has mainly been sighted in the Great Northwestern regions of North America for centuries, gets to give his thoughts on his situation. He talks about how long ago there were many of his kind and how the Indigenous Peoples learned to respect their privacy and left them alone. But then, after “the pale ones” came, everything changed and the loss of their habitat over the last century due to clear cutting has been keenly felt.

29. It’s My Time – A country tune that I wrote in the summer of 2005 as I was planning my September move to Toronto that year. I’ve never officially recorded this song, but have played it a few times live, and should do it more regularly, as it makes a great show closer. I think it’s also got some of my better lines in it as well, with “Feasting on the fruits of labour will spit out the seeds of shame”, “A streetcar of desire over love on the transitway”, “My standing in the community doesn’t sit very well”, and “I’ll take a smokey old Heaven over a clean-living Hell”. It needs a full band (with pedal steel) to be officially recorded, though.

Although my Ottawa friends and family would be loathe to hear this, the lyrics speak of my joy of leaving my hometown for what seemed were the greener pastures of Toronto. To understand why, it’s important to realize just how much I was floundering in Ottawa by 2005. Chronically single, chronically unemployed (not being bilingual was killing any decent job prospects in my field as a Library Tech/Records Clerk and even the employment agencies had nothing left for me), and living in my mother’s basement, I had very little self-esteem at that point. Having very few decent live venues left in Ottawa to play gigs was also a big factor in my depression, and when one adds all of these things up, I was quite suicidal, and would look on the Internet for methods that were the least painless with the highest success rate.

To me, I felt that the only other solution was to move to another city and see what I could find there, and Toronto, with its size and larger job base, relative proximity to Ottawa to visit my family and friends, and non-bilingual job requirements (which gave it the edge over Montreal, though I do love that city), was the best choice. It was a bit of a Hail Mary, but what did I have to lose at that point?

Things didn’t work out spectacularly here (I’m still chronically single and poor), but, fifteen years later, I’m still surviving, and that’s a better deal than what I was facing back in the hometown. Mind you, if I don’t get a subsidized bachelor apt. within the next five years or so (I’m on the list), I may have to start writing a kiss-off to Toronto song!