Crossing The Finish Line

I checked this morning, and Gravedigging For Two has hit Spotify, Apple Music, and iTunes.  Downloads and physical CDs are also available at CDBaby.com.

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/gravedigging-for-two/1321697501

This is a milestone – it’s done.  There’s nothing more I can do on Gravedigging.  The songs have been written, arranged, recorded, mixed, overdubbed, and mastered.  The artwork has been designed.  The thank-you’s said (mostly).

I hope you listen to it.  I hope you like it.

I don’t do this for commercial interests (although a bit of cash is nice once in a while), but I think it’s a good thing.  I write music that I want to hear, combined with what my inner demon wants to say to the world.  With no concession made for what others want.  And that’s what you’ve got in Gravedigging For Two.  Ten songs, ten stories that I needed to tell.  Ten songs that get my groove on.   I wrote this album for me, but I hope you like it too.

The Grave Has Been Dug, Now It's Time For The Headstone.

This weekend I’m back in the studio.  John and I will be tweaking the final mixes for the album, and mastering it.  After that, it's just a matter of sending it out for distribution.

I’ve also finished the cover art.  By which I mean “I took an amazing painting by Jonathan Barrie, and added my name and album title to it.”

The tough part now will be to decide which to release as the “publicity single,” that gets pushed on the free sites.  I’ve got ten children on this album and have to pick one.  Do I pick the most commercial?  Do I pick the one that seems to reflect the album best as a whole?  Or do I pick the weirdest one?  I’m blessed with having too much – whenever I’m listening to a song, that’s the one I want to tell everyone about!

Gravedigging At The Finish Line

We’re almost there…

All ten songs have been mixed for ‘Gravedigging For Two’, and I’m booked back in Soundhouse Studio on November 11 and 12 to close out the project.  One day for a handful of tweaks – lower the bass guitar in Your Loving Song, push the rhythm guitar in My Clown, etc…, and then one day to master the tracks.

After that, it’s just a matter of getting the album artwork from Jonathan Barrie (I’m desperate to use one of his pictures, it actually inspired the album name), and send the songs out for distribution.

So hopefully it’ll be spreading the world in time for Christmas!

Six years in the making, and the finish line is an arm’s reach away.

Recalling the Recall

Wow, what a show!  Total Recall 2017

We played around 35 of my favourite songs from the 80s, and raised a good chunk of change for Ovarian Cancer Canada.

Lots of great musicians, and there were a lot of great moments.  “Copperhead Road” with Brad Searl, “Let’s Dance” with Tommy Blacknine, and getting to pound out that amazing “Under Pressure” bass riff while Tommy Blacknine and Darren James Smith covered the Bowie/Mercury vocals…  Of course I couldn’t help but do that ‘Billy Idol snarl’ as we burned through “Rebel Yell.”

Lots of rehearsals, I lost most of August learning all those tracks, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.  I hope I held down the groove well enough to be invited back next time. 

The house band, Karl Anderson (drums), John Jamieson (keys), Aimee O’Connor (guitar), Stephen Varga (guitar), Shaylynn Anderson (sax), and Eric Meloche (stage tech), did a fantastic job.  A dream band for sure!

Total Recall - update

Total Recall is coming up, this Friday night at DSTRCT in Guelph.

So far, we’ve rehearsed with Brad Searl, Darren James Smith, Joe Vilardo, Cyndi Richards, Keegan Chambers, Kevin Reid, Gene Scarpelli, and Tommy Blacknine.  Tonight we’re rehearsing with Anna Cyzon, the final singer and the final rehearsal.

This has been a LOT of fun! 

Last week, before the singers arrived, we ran through a couple of songs.  I was in heaven, especially during Under Pressure.  Along with playing that iconic bass riff, it was a thrill to hear everyone singing (shouting) along with all the words!  And once we had the singers... WOW.  We all love this music, and it shows.

There are so many great songs in the set, and it’s going to be amazing to be on a stage playing these iconic hits with such a great band.

Total Recall 2017

Great news!

On Sept 8, I'll be in the house band for the Total Recall 2017 benefit for Ovarian Cancer Canada.

Playing bass with some of my favourite musicians, some old friends and some new, and a bunch of great singers belting out our favourite hits of the 1980s.

At DSTRCT in Guelph ON, Sept 8 at 8pm.  Tickets are $10 at the door, includes a DJ and dancefloor upstairs, and more donation opportunities inside.

Come out and support a great cause.  Come out and enjoy some great music.​

Dig Your Grave, or Join The Fight.

On Saturday, John Jamieson and I were in Soundhouse Studios mixing 'Gravedigging', not aware of what was happening in Charlottesville.

I just realized how poignant it was for us to be working on that particular song about complacency and not standing up for what is right.

"Dig a grave and climb right in, Just give up and turn away.

Or tackle the spite, and start the fight, Drop your gloves and join the fray.

Gravedigging your heart away, you could be so much bolder.

Gravedigging your life away, it makes you so much older than you are."

I'm grateful that there were so many people at that rally, fighting against the Nazi hate that's brewing. Hopefully more of us can push this problem back down into the toilet, where it can be flushed like the shit that it is.

The Exorcism of Matthew

An acquaintance called me ‘Matthew’ the other day. It made me realize that it’s been exactly 30 years since I started calling myself ‘Matt’. 

 And 1987 hit me hard. In that year I recognized the fallacy of religion, first felt the bullying of authority figures (CDCI West administration), stopped giving a damn about impressing others, and felt the confidence of believing in my own opinions. It’s also the year I stopped writing ‘hew’ at the end of my name because it was 3 letters too many.

As importantly, 1987 was the year that I discovered The Rolling Stones (Paint It Black) and David Bowie (Rebel Rebel).  Keith Richards inspired me to play the guitar, Bowie inspired me to actually PRESENT myself in a somewhat (misguided at times) stylish manner.  This musical wake-up shouldn’t be dismissed.  These musicians inspired me to write my own music, to give a voice to my inner demon, and to perform.  It also connected me to other local musicians, which has given me 30 years of incredible friendship, comfort, entertainment, support, and drama.  In other words, A LIFE!

“Sweet little Matthew” was abducted by reality, and replaced with “Matt.” And damn, it happened quickly!  And I couldn’t be more thankful that it did.

Saxophones!

This weekend we were overdubbing the saxophone on 3 of the upcoming songs.  Kristen Prince did an AMAZING job!

I found her through my engineer, John Jamieson.  John and I had been listening to the demos I recorded for the album, and I had programmed a sampler to play the saxophone lines on Gravedigging, You’re A Star, and My Clown.  There was something ‘strange’ about those tracks, something we couldn’t put our finger on.  John works with Kristen pretty frequently, and recommended her.

She got the lead sheets and a rough-mix MP3 a week beforehand, and then on ‘recording’ day we just went over what worked best for the songs, and hit the RECORD button!  It wasn't quite a "1-take wonder," but she knew what we wanted and laid down some beautiful work.

Our next mixing session is booked for over a month from now, but I’m anxious to get these last songs finished.  I couldn’t be prouder of how this album is coming.  Having another musician play on it is a huge leap for me – even more so because she was a stranger!

Songwriting - Solo or Group?

For the last 15 years, my songwriting has been solo.  The songs (for the most part) have been cohesive, and exactly what I am trying to portray.  Or exactly what my inner demon wants to shout through me... 
Either way, I’m extremely proud of them.  I have written these songs myself.  I have recorded these songs myself.  The real boost has been in the mixing and pre-mixing stage, where the songs are shaped by fresh ears (belonging to John Jamieson) and become what you eventually hear.

Co-songwriting makes sense.  One person has an idea, the other builds on it, the first builds on that, and so forth.  You end up with new and exciting songs that evolved significantly from the basic chords or riff that started the whole thing.

Having four or five songwriters seems to go too far from the original seed that started the entity.  I’ve had that happen once or twice in the past, and you could actually take that seed as it originally existed and it is an entirely different song.  This just seems disappointing.

Here's a BBC article writing about the average number of songwriters in today's hit songs. 

Progress on the Album

It's May 1st, and in the time since my last post, Gravedigging has been moving along well.
It's a pretty slow process, but is having some surprising results.
John Jamieson is mixing the album.  I've been listening to various incarnations of these songs for about 5 years, while he's hearing them for the first time.
This is a huge bonus, because he's not following the assumptions that I've always had about them.  For example, if I've added a trumpet line at the end of a verse that I'm using to help build into the chorus, I might assume that it'll be a subtle thing for texture.  The type of thing that the listener wouldn't focus on, but I'd feel that something was missing if it wasn't there.  John, on the other hand, sees it as a hook and puts it in a prominent place in the mix.
Suddenly it's a part that you're humming when the song is done!  It has changed from being "that acoustic guitar song" to "the one with that Bah-bah-BAAAAH trumpet!"

Gravedigging For Two has been a long time in the making.  I wrote the songs and realized that they should be combined into one project, an album.  But then I spent years trying to make them fit.  it wasn't easy, and I took time away to write and record The Scars That I've Earned as a way to distance myself from Gravedigging, to have a breather.  Not My Song, for example, went from being slow, dark blues, to klezmer, to reggae, to a faster blues...  And now it's a great rocker that disappears into a weird 70s spaced-out thing.  It's a totally different beast than when it first emerged from the black hole of inspiration.

My biggest surprise is how energized and fresh these songs are sounding.
So far we've mixed Little Rose Tattoo, Not My Song, Kill Me, You And Me, and Tonight.  Next up will be recording the saxophones on My Clown, Gravedigging, and You're A Star.  It's still a month away, but I'm really looking forward to that - I don't normally have another person play on my albums, but I'm sure she'll add another spark to it.

That's it for now, thanks for reading.  Thanks for listening.  Thanks for Supporting.
It's a long slog, but I couldn't be happier.

Matt

The Gravedigging Has Started!

Today is the day!

All ten songs for my upcoming album are recorded!  All tweaks have been done, all arrangements completed.

In 2 hours I'll be heading over to Soundhouse Studios and giving John Jamieson a USB key with 300ish individual tracks.  Then we'll start the sonic jigsaw puzzle of putting them together and mixing Gravedigging For Two.

I'm very excited.
This album started in 2012 when I wrote 6 or 7 solid songs within a month or so.  I added one song that I actually wrote in 1999 but was never truly happy with (until 2012), and another couple of songs showed up while I was working on the initial 6 or 7.
The project was pretty discombobulated - there was a country song, a punk rock song, and the sounds didn't seem to fit together well.  I wanted to keep them as one project, since the lyrics and melodies hinted that they should be one family.  So I tried, and tried, and tried a little more.
I took time out in 2014 to record The Scars That I've Earned, a collection of songs I had written since Gravedigging started, and were recorded over a span of 2 weekends.
Focusing on Scars let Gravedigging have some breathing room.  Slowly, through lots of edits, trial and error, and rearrangements, the true soul of the project came to light.
One song actually went from being a Depeche Mode-like electropop track, through slow blues, klezmer, reggae, and then to it's final form (which is none of the above)!  I loved every version, but the final cut is the one we'll keep.

John did a fantastic job mixing Scars, his creativity drew him into playing keys on about 1/2 the album, and totally re-shaped at least one of the songs.  He took the project from the "decent" level that I had it, and pushed it far above what I would have ever expected.
So he's got some tall expectations to fill today, as we start our second project.  But I'm sure he'll wow me again, he always does.

Alright, time for me to put on my Rock N Roll face and head over to the studio.  See you soon!