I haven’t recorded anything properly in almost 20 years.  About 8 years ago I did some recording on my own.  But I am definitely not a pro.  And although the songs were good 8 years ago,  I felt it didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped.  So since then I had always thought I would record something again, but the opportunity had never come – until now…

Earlier this year, my family and I were visiting my mom in Clearwater, Florida.  At the beginning of our vacation a good friend of my late father’s visited us and brought along an acoustic guitar.  Over the course of the evening I played several songs, mostly requests, songs like “My Way”, “Ring of Fire”, etc.  At one point I played him a song that I had written several years earlier.

After hearing the song he told me he had an electric Fender Stratocaster guitar (he actually didn’t play guitar but owned this beautiful strat) that he wanted me to have.  But he would only give it to me on one condition, that I record the song for him.

When I returned home I immediately enlisted some help from Nick (Nixon) Boyd, my first cousin Geoff’s son, who along with his brother Jake, also happen to be in the band Hollerado.  Nick was starting to record/produce bands and I had wondered if he could help.

We put aside some time in May of 2017 to try to record the song.  At this point it had a working title of “Caught the Sun” which was based off of the first line of the song.  It’s a very simple, with 4 chords repeating over and over, pretty much the same progression as countless other songs. It has a somewhat country feel to it.

At the time Nick didn’t have his own studio (he has one now but hasn’t given it a name yet!), so we recorded it all at the Royal Mountain Records HQ, which has a rehearsal space in the building they own near the Junction in Toronto.  Jake played the drums, throwing in a few different takes, and Nick kept to the bass guitar.  The first song took maybe 3 sessions to complete.

Once we finished I realized this wasn’t enough for me.  And after a few email exchanges, Jake & I joked that I should do a Country Album, about a guy who can’t stop writing Country songs.  We ‘jokingly’ said it could be called “The Bane of my Existence”.

Inspired by this I was piqued to write another country song and to possibly do some more recordings. So while Hollerado were on tour in June, I wrote “The Bane of My Existence”, totally inspired by Johnny Cash.  And also during this time I went through my snippets of songs, to see if I had anything that was worthy of being recorded.  I found a handful.

When Hollerado’s June tour was over, Nick & I went over the songs, and worked out some arrangements and lyrics and we scheduled more time later in the summer to record.

And after months of mixing/mastering and final tweaks we finished.  I could go on but for the sake of space and your time, let’s get to the music. Thanks for listening!