A Canadian Songbook

The story behind the album

SKIN DEEP

Music and lyrics by SAYDE BLACK

We wanted to make Sayde Black’s “Skin Deep” the first track on the record because we are Sayde’s #1 fan. We think all her music is the absolute greatest and everyone should (and will!) be covering it, listening to it, dancing to it, driving to it….

Coincidentally, Sayde is also our #1 fan, in the sense that we have one (1) fan and she is it. Lol.

Seriously, listen to this track until 1:23 and thank me later. That turnaround, that line! “It’s all just black and white without your colour in my soul”. What a song.

This recording is what it sounds like when you book a session at Rainy Day Recording Co. and you show up without a plan or a band, and producer Matt Stinn says “So, what are we doing today?” and you just reach for one of your favorite songs by your favorite songwriter and hope for the best. Then it turns out to be so much fun and sounds so good that you never want to stop.

Zach Strelioff played drums on this track, as he did on all the tracks except #2 on the record, which was Christian Douglas of the SoundCastle studio.

DON’T KNOW HOW TO LOVE – HAPPY LOVE SONG - GASOLINE – LOVE YOU BABY – BOYFRIEND

Music and lyrics by COLLEEN BROWN

As well as the great songwriter herself, we have to thank Rich Terfry for these, because he played Colleen Brown’s songs on his radio show heavily when they came out and talked them up. A man of impeccable taste.

These five selections all come from her second and third albums, 2007’s “Foot in Heart” and 2011’s “Dirt”. And this is just scratching the surface. There are so many more, not just on those two albums, but many other great albums besides. Listen to them all and don’t stop.

To us, this is Western music. But it is also music of everywhere. It is both modern and timeless.

If you are like us, you have wondered whether music can be more serious but also more fun; more challenging but also catchier; more relatable but also more mysterious; nobler but less pretentious. Well, it can, and this is it.

This music represents a way forward for the art form because it is complex, interesting and rewarding but also malleable and so adaptable, like gold. You can do anything you want with this. Make “This Love is Growing” into an Ennio Morricone score. Record “Now that I’ve Found You” as an Argentinian tango. “Direction” as a Van Halen ballad. Let your imagination run wild. Do you know how many versions there are of a song like “Try a Little Tenderness”? Very many! And that’s how it should be.

P.S. Music people, listen to “Love You Baby” and see what you think of those chord changes. Starting with variations on I, then a half-step up, then two full for the bass but only one at first for the rest of the chord. Then another half-step, then two full steps. Think about all the other songs that have used those changes, right? You know what I mean? Exactly! You can’t! You can’t think of a single one, can you? Now just keep listening, there’s more.

P.P.S. Psychoanalysts and quacks, read this part in a funny East-European voice:

Ze song “Boyfriend”, eet ees eenteresting, because eet sounds so seemple at first, no? A song about ze cold feet. Ze blushing young bride-to-be presenting at her betrothed’s room with ze nervousness.

Oh boyfriend, I hope you aren’t fooling

The papers are ready, it’s Saturday morning.

But why would zis boyfriend be fooleeng? He is zere, is he not? If he were fooleeng, he vould be long gone, no? He vould have drunk up all ze Jager-bombs and ze fuzzy neeples at ze bachelor bacchanal and vould have, how you say, scrammed, maybe over ze border, maybe with ze cocktail vaitress. No, zis boyfriend, he is not fooleeng, not in ze usual sense of ze vord. Ze boyfriend, he ees ready. Ze girlfriend, she is maybe not.

Oh, boyfriend, I want you to hold me

But only if you think you can show me

That you aren’t fooling.

“Show me zat you aren’t fooleeng”? How ees ze boyfriend to show zat now? And what more can he be doing now? He has presyumably bought ze ring, rented ze tuxedo, wrote ze pitiable jokes for ze tedious speeches, borrowed all ze khoneymoon money from ze mom and dad…. And remember, ze papers are ready! It is Saturday morneeng, so in a few hours only, ze boyfriend vill be declaring his eeternal fidelity before ze whole vorld. Vat more can he do, here and now, it ze wee hours of ze morning, alone with hees Verlobte – hees beloved – vith no one around? Zere is really only one theeng he could do, and vhile eet may eenvolve holding her, it is not only eenvovling zat, if you see vat I mean.

Boyfriend, write me off if you don’t own the pen

That circles all my doubts and won’t let them in

Ze seembolism ees so clear. Boyfriend, use your pen to be dispelling all of my doubts. Circle zem, and do not let zem in. And vat is a circle? Vat letter of ze alphabet is ze circle? Zat is right, an O. “Boyfriend, use your pen to be giving me an O.” An O so powerful zat it vanquishes all ze doubt. And if you are not owning zis pen, zen write me off. One does not vish to be crude, but, ze seembolism eet ees vat eet ees.

So zere we have it, “Boyfriend” ees a song not so much about ze cold feet, but rather about ze hot, well, something else.

BIRD AS PROPHET

Music and Lyrics by CHRISTINE FELLOWS

We don’t know what this song means, but we like it. Here is Christine Fellows saying, “I write pretty much exclusively about old people, and most of my characters are women, and that is no accident.” Well, this song is apparently about a bird and the narrator. Maybe the narrator is old, who knows.

The song is not in chronological order, so let’s try to simplify the sequence of events.

First, Bird flies into the narrator’s kitchen accidentally and does not want to be there but does not know how to get out. It flies around “drunk and wild” before begging to be let back outside. Some time later, Bird lands on the narrator’s windowsill in front of the (apparently?) closed window and now wants in. Bird is indignant that the window is (apparently?) closed. Then, Bird flies inside and triumphantly announces it has “come through [the] glass unscathed.” The narrator replies the window was not closed. (Events two and three may or may not be the same time.)

We know that the first time, the bird did not want to be there: “Fevered was the night you first appeared.” The bird reacted wildly at first, but then landed docilely on the narrator’s outstretched arm and pleaded to be let out.

Later, the bird wants very much to be there, even feels entitled to enter: “You let me in there once, now what the hell?” The bird must have realized it likes being inside.

Then the bird flies at what it thinks is a closed window and comes in.

Does the bird know it could have died from hitting the glass if the window had been closed, as it supposed? It surely knew at least that it would not be fun to hit the glass, so the bird was either very determined to get in, or delusional about the consequences of flying at a closed window.

The bird thinks it has done the impossible by coming through the glass like magic, but learns it was mistaken and the window was wide open, whereupon it stares through the narrator “in the strangest way.” Stares through the narrator, perhaps as one would stare through a window.

Makes us think of Nabokov:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate

Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:

Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass

Hang all the furniture above the grass,

And how delightful when a fall of snow

Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so

As to make chair and bed exactly stand

Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

During recording sessions, producer Matt Stinn referred to this as the “sad bird song.” Is it sad?