Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Doug McClement: Toronto Mike'd #1167
Episode Date: December 8, 2022In this 1167th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike is joined by Doug McClement who has been a fixture on Toronto's live music scene recording thousands of artists, from Blue Rodeo to Neil Young. Toronto M...ike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Yes, We Are Open, The Advantaged Investor, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.
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Welcome to episode 1167 of Toronto Mic'd.
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Joining me today, making his Toronto mic debut, is Doug McClement.
Welcome, Doug.
Hi.
Nice to meet you.
Your name comes up quite a bit on this program.
Have your ears been burning?
Oh, that's interesting to hear.
I guess it's just because I've been around for a long time.
Well, here.
Here's the word I think you're looking for.
This comes from Tommy Boy. I want to give the right credit.
Tommy Boy TP Tom.
That's quite the handle.
Legend.
That's his word for you.
Yeah, my wife hears that and says,
yeah, yeah, yeah, take out the garbage.
She's sort of had it with all that.
It's good to remain humble.
Shout out to Humble Howard Glassman.
Robbie J., a man who worked with Humble Howard at CFNY.
We're going to talk about CFNY in this episode,
but Robbie J. writes in,
Doug is an encyclopedia of awesomeness.
Well, that's very flattering.
Do you know Robbie J., Rob Johnston from Chorus now,
but CFNY?
I think so. It's all a blur for you now. Yeah, Rob Johnston from Chorus now, but CFNY? I think so.
It's all a blur for you now.
Yeah, it's all a blur.
Okay.
Well, now no pressure, but he's promised me some great stories.
So I will tell you this just to get it started and tell people,
who is this Doug McClemon?
I personally, I absolutely love throwing my studio in a bike trailer.
So I tear it down, you know, and you know, I know you're used to much bigger studios,
but I throw my studio in a bike trailer and I set up remotely.
I've been doing this more and more.
Like I did it recently at the Glenn Gould studio and I talked to Barney Bentall.
I've done it at the opera house at the party for Marty.
I have, I might be doing it Friday at the Horseshoe Tavern.
Talked to the guys from 5440.
We're still working that out.
But I love going remote.
I'll do it for corporate clients or whatever.
But you, my friend, you had the mobile studio first.
Where do we begin with you?
How did you get into audio?
Maybe give me the origin story, and then we'll talk about all these recording highlights.
Okay, well, I'm originally from Kingston, Ontario.
I grew up there and started playing in bands.
Well, I started playing guitar when I was 11,
the day after the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show.
That's sort of like a cosmic lever moment
for so many people my age.
And I played in bar bands all through uh college and worked in a
stereo store and so i bought a reel-to-reel tape deck at some point to tape our little band set up
in my parents basement and uh then some of the other kingston bands said well can you come out
and record our band we're playing at the queen's pub and they give me 50 bucks and i'd buy another
microphone and it just sort of grew it's a hobby that sort of turned into a business for me so
um then it became evident after a while that i was never going to be a good enough player to
sort of make a living on that side of the glass so i thought well maybe i can help other people
realize their dreams and and you know i found the tech side really fascinating so
i guess um in university i had a friend um who had gone to high school with who
worked for the university radio station at queens and he would go out and do live recordings
of folk singers at coffee houses
because you didn't need a lot of gear to do that.
Right.
And back then it was people like Bruce Coburn
and Murray McLachlan and Jesse Winchester
and you know,
you guys that were just starting out
doing their first albums
and so I kind of caught the bug at that time,
early 70s
and found the live recording thing to be a exciting,
a little more exciting studio.
It is exciting, right?
Yeah. Like it's, there's something about the live recording thing to be a exciting, a little more exciting studio. It is exciting, right? Yeah.
Like it's, there's something about the live recording
that's pretty, pretty, pretty awesome.
Well, it's kind of that, in that bridge world
between doing live sound and doing studio sound
where you, it's not like, I mean,
I ran a recording studio for 25 years
and then towards the end of that,
you'd be sitting there working on a 30 second
beer commercial for 12 hours.
And it was just like, kill me now. And there's clients on the couch going, oh, we can't hear the that, you'd be sitting there working on a 30-second beer commercial for 12 hours. And it was just like,
kill me now.
And there's clients on the couch going,
oh, we can't hear the word,
you know,
the name of the brewery loud enough.
And I think,
I didn't get into this for this.
This is a job.
Whereas with a live recording,
you go out and you record 30 songs and you go home.
And so it's still musical.
It's still challenging.
And the challenge is capturing it
and bringing it back alive.
I find I enjoy the setup almost
as much as doing the actual show. I totally
relate to all of this. That's why I've been really
excited when I see old Doug McClements
in the calendar, like we get to dive into this.
But here, for
the younger folks, like
myself, for those of us
who sort of come of age with
much music, Aaron, like
videos like 24-7,
can you help us understand the scene pre-much music?
In America, they had MTV, we had much music here in Canada.
But before the music video was sort of the way you got the music, these live recordings were key, right?
Well, what happened was if you were a record company and wanted to
promote a new band um again no mtv no much music how do i get my band out in front of people well
starting around i guess 78 or so 77 um the local rock radio stations would would do a one hour live
broadcast from a club downtown quite often the elma combo but there were other places the diamond
club in the pho Phoenix and places like that.
And so they'd need the ability to do some kind of a mix,
independent of what the front of house, the PA mix was,
because you have audience mics and you have stereo,
of course, on the radio.
Right.
So that became a popular thing in the late 70s,
was to do a live broadcast.
And sometimes it was sponsored by a brewery or something.
But more often than not, it also won those stations
a lot of brownie points with the CRTC
because if they were able to play an hour
of Canadian content with some Canadian band,
that meant they could play more American and British stuff
over the rest of the day.
It was called foreground programming, I think.
And it won them actually.
It counted more than one.
There was a requirement, like a mandate.
Scott Turner came over and was filling me in
on all this foreground programming requirements,
which resulted in-
That's the word, foreground.
Right.
It was like a CRTC mandate,
and it explains why you had all these cool shows.
I'm thinking of live in Toronto.
I'm thinking of CFLY right now,
but you had all these kind of neat shows
that existed to satisfy this mandate.
Well, I moved to Toronto in 75 from Kingston
after graduating from Queen,
so I sort of arrived just at the right time.
And again, most in the Toronto recording studio market,
first of all, I didn't start a studio.
I worked at a bank during the day.
I was going to ask you,
you didn't go to school for audio.
No, I've got a Bachelor of Commerce degree, got an Honours of Commerce degree from Queen's, and I thought I was going to ask you that you didn't go to school for audio. No, I've got a bachelor of commerce degree,
got an honors of commerce degree from Queens
and I thought I was going to be an accountant,
you know, and, and, and I had the little
recording thing.
I mean, by the time I left Kingston, my dad had
cut a window in the basement between the room
where the washer and dryer was in the room where
the rec room was and the bands would be in the
rec room and I'd be in there with a washer and
dryer with my little mixers recording.
So I moved up to Toronto, rented a house in East York, set up a bands would be in the rec room and I'd be in there with a washer and dryer with my little mixers recording so I moved up to Toronto rented a house in East York set up a
four-track studio in the basement and I did the studio thing on the weekends and evenings but
during the day I was programming computers for TD Bank down at the head office so at first it was
you know 30 hours a week at the bank and 10 hours a week recording and then after about a year it
got to be 20 hours a week recording and then after by what three years it was 30 hours and i reached a point around 1978 where are you studio guy or are you bank guy you got to make a
decision so i quit the bank okay went full time so you made the right call so the thing about the
studio thing in toronto is that um such a large city nobody's really a general store you've got
some studios that just do reggae and some that just do jazz and some do children's music and some do death metal and you want to become the guy yeah and i sort of because of all this stuff i'd done
at queens i sort of became the live guy i was one of the few guys willing to take a bunch of gear
and throw it in a cab and drive down to the uh el macombo and set up an addressing room or a coat
check room and record a band nobody else you know wanted to do that so that became my little slice
of the toronto pie and it still is.
And okay, so your mid seventies when you moved
to Toronto and you talk about that, like that
home studio in East York.
And so what year was it when you quit the bank?
78, which is pretty much the year I think that
CFNY and Q107 came on the year, 77 or 78.
So he was definitely 77 because we just had an
anniversary.
And so the other, to remind people, yeah, the
other rock station in town, which will shock
the youngsters who think it's always been
playing like a top 40 stuff, but, but, but
Chum FM is the big rock station in town.
Yeah.
And they, at that time they were the big rock
station in town.
So they were the first guys to do the live
broadcast.
Now there have been stations in New York and
LA doing live radio broadcasts, but Toronto,
Warren Cosford was the head of special projects
at Chum, and he championed this idea.
So they actually did two series of live broadcasts
at that time.
They had a rock series and a folk series.
So since I had a little four-track studio
and I was doing primarily singer-songwriters
with acoustic guitars and pianos and stuff,
I was asked by some of those artists
when they would get a Chum FM live broadcast, there was a
restaurant called the Groening Board, a vegetarian
non-smoking restaurant, which in 1978 was
unappealing.
What do you mean we can't smoke in a restaurant?
You're crazy.
So they would have acoustic performers and I
would go out and I got hired to do the mix for
these acoustic shows.
And the rock shows for Chum were being done by a
company called Hammerhead Audio,
which was John Cordina and Mike Elder,
the late Mike Elder and Ed Weidman.
And tragically, in early 1979,
Ed Weidman died in a car crash.
And the company, Hammerhead,
decided not to carry on.
They didn't have the heart to go on.
So Warren Cosworth said,
gee, Doug, you're doing a good job on these folk shows.
Do you have enough equipment to come to the El Macombo and do these rock shows for us because these guys don't want
to do it anymore and i said sure you know and i really didn't but i was like can you ride a horse
yeah you know can you can you swim yeah so so in february of 1980 i started doing the uh the chum
fm live from the el macombo broadcasts and uh we, at that point I sort of had to get a little
more serious.
So,
um,
we,
we had been using a,
um,
I had been borrowing a truck from a company
called fantasy sound and they did institutional
recordings.
They would record,
uh,
school bands like high school bands and
public school bands and church choirs and the
RCMP band.
And they had a little Toyota pickup truck with a camper on the back.
And we rented that and did a bunch of shows for it with it.
Cause they weren't using it on the weekends.
They were just doing weekday stuff.
And then on New Year's Eve,
1978,
we were doing a gig at the groaning board restaurant.
And on the way back,
we flipped that truck over on,
uh,
Davenport and Bay.
We had a patch of black ice and totaled the truck.
And luckily, nobody was hurt.
So the guys that owned it, they were in Venezuela for Christmas or something.
So I had to phone them when they got back.
I said, guys, I'm sorry, but we were in an accident.
We totaled your little truck.
And the owner, I can still remember this phone call,
was agonized over making this phone call.
And the guy said, wow, did anybody get hurt?
And I said, no.
And he said, wow.
He said, that's great because we were going to sell that truck
and we'll get way more from the insurance.
But consequently, I had all these gigs lined up.
So what it did, what that accident did,
it forced me to go out and build my own truck.
So I bought a Dodge Cube van.
Okay.
And we couldn't afford a separate set of gear
from the studio and the truck.
So we put everything on wheels and road cases
so that we could wheel it up a ramp into the truck
and go down to the Elmo and do these shows
and then wheel it back that night
and set it back up in the studio
and do a gospel section the next morning.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Yeah.
So at that point, Q107 and CFNY also said,
well, gee, Chum's having good luck with these broadcasts.
We should do some live broadcasts
because we have a slightly different musical market.
So for a while there, probably between 81 and 84,
we were doing two or three of those a week
for all three of the stations.
We did 130 shows at the El Macombo
between 1980 and 1990,
plus all these other sort of one-off things.
And CFNY did a pile of them
at the concert hall.
You mentioned the Diamond Club.
Larry's Hideaway.
The legendary Larry's Hideaway.
Shout out to the Garys.
We did REM down there for them.
Like we did a pile of them.
The Garys,
okay,
tell me about this REM gig
because the Garys have been over here.
Yeah.
Tell me about this REM gig.
Well,
the Garys,
I, the first gig I did at a Garys venue
was the last gig when the Garys had the horseshoe.
They had a big blowout.
The last pogo.
The last pogo.
Yes.
And I did not have a truck at that point.
This is 1979, December 79.
Okay.
So we set up in the boiler room at the horseshoe
with my eight track reel to reel
and a little couple of 12-channel mixers
and recorded the last Pogo.
And it was fabulous.
Rough Trade and Teenage Head and the Mods.
And I worked with a lot of those bands
that had been doing demos in my studio.
And so I'm familiar with quite a few of those bands.
That was the first gig we did for a major record label.
And that was thrilling.
But it was...
I love the name drops, by the way.
Keep it coming.
I want to shout out,
because I'll be shouting out
some FOTMs along the way,
but I want to shout out
David Quinton Steinberg.
Oh, yeah.
Because he was just here,
but he was also at TMLX11,
which was last Saturday
at Palmer's Kitchen.
So thank you, Palmer Pasta.
By the way, Doug,
before I forget,
you're not leaving here
without a large frozen lasagna,
a delicious frozen lasagna
from Palmer Pasta. That's fabulous. And since I'm giving gifts, where's my Santa hat? here without a large frozen lasagna, a delicious frozen lasagna from Palma
Pasta.
That's fabulous.
And since I'm giving gifts, where's my
Santa hat?
Oh, it's over here.
I have some fresh craft beer for you to
bring home too, courtesy of Great Lakes
Beer.
They brew it right here in Southern
Etobicoke and you can find it across this
fine province, but delicious.
So you got some beer, you got some pasta.
The two major engineering food groups.
It was worth the drive,
right?
Yes,
certainly.
So,
yeah,
so we're,
so,
yeah,
the mods with David
Quentin Steinberg,
I did their first EP,
the Step Out Tonight EP,
and ironically,
their lead singer,
Greg Trenere,
his dad ran an advertising
agency,
excuse me, and they ended up doing, Our lead singer, Greg Trenere, his dad ran an advertising agency. Excuse me.
And they ended up doing advertising
and flyers and promo brochures for us
through that gig.
But yeah, that was an exciting time.
That was a great scene going on there.
And since I only had an eight-track studio,
I couldn't do the big elaborate rock bands,
but the punk bands, eight tracks was fun.
So we were very plugged into that scene, and by this time
I'd moved out of the house in East York, and
because of a zoning problem, I got
a call from the city saying,
we understand you're running a business
on a residentially zoned street. Oh, don't tell
them about my home, okay? And you got
two weeks to shut it down. I don't think it was about the noise.
We had soundproofed it really well. They were, I think,
concerned about people loading drum kits into cars
at two in the morning and parking and
just general traffic on this quiet street.
So we had to find a place. So I ended up
finding an abandoned sign painting shop
at Dufferin and Rogers. Moved in there
in 78 and moved in as a
four-track studio and over the
subsequent six years we expanded up to
24 tracks.
It was a hopping studio studio we did a lot
of stuff up there what year was and by the way i can hear in your voice uh and i have it going on
too and i think uh 90 of the city right now has something going on like a cold or a sniffle or
something so yeah if you need more water i'm happy to sound like very white well i was just thinking
i did a hit on Humble and Fred this morning
because I produce their show
and I jump on every Thursday.
And I was on there and I hear myself in these headphones
and I'm like, oh, I finally have that deep voice
I've been looking for.
It's a five, five.
I go, oh, I sound good today.
But it's funny how that goes.
Okay.
And you know your audio.
So I want to ask you about the REM thing too.
And then I have a clip of another show
but what year was that rem show that's because i think 80 or 81 it was during the first murmur tour
and it was at larry's hideaway which was a bucket of blood but surprisingly like awful place but but
but great acoustics it was one of those fluky things like grossman's tavern which on paper
looks like it should not sound good.
It sounds fabulous.
And so we did the Vile Tones live album at Larry's.
We did Son of Stiff tour there.
We did Teenage Heads for Halloween several years.
It was a dingy, awful.
But it sounded great.
Somebody posted a picture of Larry's on Facebook the other day,
and somebody wrote under it,
I'm getting itchy just looking at that photograph
so the weirdest gig
we did there
we went to do a live album
for Colin Linden
in 1980
and we pull up
in front of the club
and they're tearing up
the street
to repave it
so we can't park
our mobile
I don't know if you're familiar
with their old place
it's now a dog park
but there's no place
else to park
so it's like where are we going to put the mobile and, but there's no place else to park. So it's like, where are we
going to put the mobile? And we said, there's no
place to park. So we had to take all the
gear out of the truck and take it up
and put it in a hotel room
on the second floor. We couldn't
get the console through the door, we had to take the frame
off the door. Oh my God. So we're up there, and
up on the second floor of Larry's, it's pretty much like
a Tom Waits song. Like it's just
hookers and pimps and drug addicts and stuff.
It was really awful.
But we did this great,
it was Colin Linden's first record,
you know, and of course now he's
a very successful Nashville producer now.
And we got the call
while we were mixing that record a week later.
Is your truck booked on Saturday? I said, no. Well, we got this call while we were mixing that record a week later. Is your truck booked on a Saturday?
I said,
no.
Well,
we got this heat wave festival out at the Molson park and Barry,
there's a film company called Ronan films.
Right.
And,
uh,
we had to ditch the mix for Colin to go and do that,
that show.
So I,
that's how I remember what year it was.
It's August,
1980.
No,
I just want to say Colin Linden is the only member of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings
I have not yet had on Toronto Mike.
So if Colin's listening,
it just hasn't come together yet.
But Stephen Fierian's been here
and Tom Wilson's been here multiple times.
Yes.
Colin was one of my very first clients.
I started recording him when he was 16.
Wow.
Back on Dufferin Street a long time ago.
Love it, man.
I love it.
I'm going to capture all of this.
This is like the ongoing definitive history
of Doug McClellan's here.
So when you,
all these gigs,
and we'll talk,
we'll shout out some memorable ones,
but like,
do you have the source audio
in your possession still?
Like,
do you have that REM audio?
I have that.
In fact,
they released that
when they re-released
Wormer 50,
whatever it was,
the 35th anniversary
or something, they included a CD of that live
CFNY broadcast as a bonus CD in that package.
And that was engineered by Blair Packham.
I was not available that day.
I helped set up, but there was something else
going on and I was not actually.
We did them twice.
We also did them at the concert hall a year later
for CFNY.
Okay,
don't go too quickly
past the name Blair Packham
because not only
is he listening right now
but he also was there
with David Quinton Steinberg
on Saturday
and they performed live
at TMLX11.
So,
shout out to Blair Packham
but he actually wrote me
a quick note
when he heard you
were coming on.
He said,
I had Martha and the Muffins
on the program
which was great
and then Blair said, he recorded Martha and the Muffins on the program, which was great. And then Blair said he recorded Martha and the Muffins
at the Ontario Place Forum in 1983.
He says Daniel Lanois was the producer,
Doug McClement the engineer,
and he says he was the assistant engineer.
That's true.
I hired Blair right out of high school.
He had been coming in with his band to do demos.
And I think what really happened,
if I remember correctly,
he owed me a bunch of money.
And he said, I'll work it off.
I'll come in and be an assistant engineer and work it off.
And I just liked the way he handled himself with the customers
and had a great musical aptitude, of course.
And we've become, I mean, he was an usher at my wedding.
We've become, we've known each other.
He's a good guy.
He's a great guy.
Great taste in podcasts.
But that show, yeah, I remember that show
because Jocelyn Lanois was playing bass for the Muffins.
And so the radio station says,
oh, the Muffins want to put somebody in the truck
to help supervise the mix.
So I'm okay.
So I show up and Daniel Lanois,
it's sort of like you're a video editor.
Oh, we got this guy who's going to come in
and sit in on your edit.
His name's Spielberg.
So Daniel Lano was sitting over my shoulder
while I'm mixing these guys.
It was a little, for me, it was.
And whatever became of him.
Yeah, exactly.
What a talented, talented man.
I love, love his stuff.
That's wild.
There's this world where, you know,
you got yourself and you got Blair Packham
and Daniel Land while working on this thing together.
Like that's a moment in Toronto history.
When I was still in Rivercourt,
when I first moved to Toronto,
I remember Daniel phoning me up
when he still had his studio
in his parents' basement in Hamilton
and was trying to sell me a reverb unit.
I mean, I'd known him for a long time.
So, yeah.
So that was, anyway, yeah, the R&M,
but it was just one,
like we did over 150 broadcasts for CFNY
and they were definitely doing
the most interesting bands at the time,
all those great English bands
and just all these overlapping stories. But a lot of those shows doing the most interesting bands at the time, all those great English bands and, um,
um,
just all these overlapping stories. But a lot of those shows were Gary's show,
shows promoted by the Gary's.
The Gary's,
when they moved from the horseshoe over to the
edge,
which was at Carlton,
sorry,
Gerard and church.
Um,
we would park right up in front of the club
there on the sidewalk and Gerard,
and we did the police there for them.
And that was the last show I did before I had a truck.
And so that was in March of 79.
And so we set up in a dressing room up on the second floor of the Edge.
And Gary Cormier took a hammer and punched a hole in the wall so we could feed our cables down to the stage to record the police.
And they showed up in a station wagon.
I mean, they were unknown.
Okay, so again,
I was a bit young to remember in real time,
but I've had all these conversations
with the Garys, et cetera.
But it sounds like there was, okay,
the first time the police come to Toronto,
the Garys book them in Horseshoe Tavern.
At the Horseshoe Tavern.
And like nine people come out or something?
It was like under 40 people.
I mean, there's thousands of people
who say they were there.
See how the time goes on,
now it's nine people, it's eight people.
But this is the show where Sting
is in his underwear at some point.
Possibly, yeah. I did not see that show.
You're not one of the nine. But then
Roxanne breaks, so that's pre-Roxanne.
Yeah, well, the week they played
The Edge,
Roxanne was just being released.
They were still pretty unknown. They showed up in a station wagon.
I can see them walking into the station wagon.
They came in from Cleveland or Detroit or somewhere.
And The Edge only sat about 85 people. I do have them walking into the station wagon. They came in from Cleveland or Detroit or somewhere. And The Edge only sat
about 85 people.
I do have some photographs
of that gig.
And they were just great.
And so we're set up
in a room next to their
dressing room up on
the second floor.
And my wife was assisting
me on that gig at that time.
We weren't married yet.
And when Sting came off
for the encore,
he went upstairs
and took a quick shower.
And then he runs into our dressing room
with his bathrobe and says to my wife,
can you dry my hair?
So her brush with fame is that she got to dry Sting's hair
just before he went back on stage for the encore.
Every dinner party she goes to for the rest of her life,
she can tell that story.
Sting.
But I mean, I still have that tape.
That was for Q107, um,
that recording.
And,
uh,
it was,
uh,
produced by Keith Elshaw,
who was a,
who was a,
he had been a DJ at CFNY,
but he was at Q107 at the time.
Okay.
And,
um,
in answer to your questions about the tapes,
I mean,
I've done well over 5,000 remotes since 1978.
And so for me to keep the tapes of everything would be impossible.
I'd need a gymnasium-sized room.
But I did donate my tape archive to the U of T
Media Commons about five years ago,
and it was 128 bankers' boxes of video and audio
to tape and documentation.
So maybe I had 5% of the stuff that I had recorded.
And some of the stuff is up on YouTube, of course,
because people tape these shows off the air
and they've posted them.
So I have collected a few of the shows I worked on
vicariously by fans who had taped them off FM radio
on cassettes or something and then put them up on YouTube.
But yeah, I have way less than 10% of the stuff I've recorded.
I mean, it's such a key,
like a rich part of Toronto's musical history
because not only, yeah, you're recording this, but by all accounts, and I've heard a bunch of it, I've recorded. I mean, it's such a key, like a rich part of Toronto's musical history because not only, yeah, you're recording this,
but by all accounts, and I've heard a bunch of it,
it sounds amazing.
Well, there was a real visceral excitement
of the fact that you could be driving around in town
and tune your radio into CHUM or CFNY
and that's happening in my town right now.
And they could track the next morning there would be a spike in record sales for that. And they could track, the next morning,
there would be a spike in record sales for that act.
If they were really impressive, people would go down to the Sam's,
because they couldn't download it on the internet.
So people would go down to Sam's or A&A the next day and buy the record.
So it was a benefit for everybody.
The club was happy because it was jam-packed because the station
had been promoting it all week.
The station was happy because they had an exclusive,
the police on Q107. The band was happy because they had an exclusive, The Police on Q107.
The band was happy because the place would be packed.
So it was a win-win for everybody.
It was very exciting radio at the time. guitar solo Doug, what can you share with us about recording Steamy Ray Vaughan at the El Macombo?
Well, I do remember it was about 100 degrees inside the club.
If you look at the video up on YouTube, the sweat is just dripping off his face.
One of the funny things I can remember,
and he was unknown.
We'd never heard of him when we got the gig.
83, right?
Yep, July 83.
And he had gotten a really bad shock the night before
in Ottawa or wherever they were playing the night before.
And his road guy said,
he had touched his guitar string on the mic stand.
Right.
And it was a shock
just how it knocked him out.
The guy says,
we can't have that happen
tonight on this broadcast.
So I said,
so I went down
to Jacob's Hardware
at Queen and Spadina.
Yeah.
And picked up
some of that black tubing,
rubber tubing
that you put around pipes.
Yes.
And we covered
his mic stand. If you look at the video on YouTube
and you say, why are those mic stands
so big? And that's rubber
piping covers around
those mic stands so he couldn't possibly touch his
strings on the stand. I do remember that.
And yeah,
that was a magical evening.
That's probably the single most best-known thing
I've worked on,
because I remember we took our truck down to New York City
about 10 years ago to an exhibit
at the Audio Engineering Convention,
and I had a whole bunch of CDs and DVDs
up on the wall that I'd done,
and I think every third person that walked into the truck
said, oh, Steve Ray Vaughan, I've got that CD.
It's amazing.
So how often was the material you recorded,
the live material, released as an album?
Not that frequently,
but there's 40 or 50 live albums
from those various recordings
and certainly some live DVDs as well.
Sure.
There was an overlap around 1981,
82, MTV came on the air.
And then about a year later, Canadians, of course,
hey, where's our music television?
Well, you know the story there, right?
Moses was going to license it,
going to bring MTV to Canada.
Yeah.
And then at the last minute,
they asked for another million dollars in licensing fees,
and then Moses just said, screw it, we'll make our own.
Yeah, well the story, the way I heard it was... Okay, tell me how
you heard it. CRTC sent out
requests for
applications for licenses. Oh, that's for sure, yeah.
And sort of to backtrack,
so I'm doing all these shows in
79, 80 for
Chum FM, then Chum FM
buys City TV around
1980. Right.
And they say, okay, we own a TV station,
we own a radio station,
and sound on television is crap.
Everybody's got a little tiny mono speaker.
They said, let's do these stereo simulcasts where you tune in your radio to Chum FM.
Big ticket specials.
Yeah, well, even before that.
Oh, before that.
These were called simulcast were called stereo simulcasts
and so you tuned your radio to Chum FM
and you tuned your TV to channel 79
you put your speakers on either side of your TV
and this was event television
this was FM quality sound
and stereo with color picture
so they started doing those
and
I didn't do them right off the top
the City TV's own camera guys and sound guys did
the things off the top and they did about a year of those shows and they weren't very good sonically
because those guys bless their hearts they're good guys but they they do news and they do sports and
they they're not really music guys and so what got us the gig was they went up to kingston ontario my
hometown to do the boomtown rats and um they got the tape back to Mixit,
and they brought the 16-track truck up that they own,
the Hutcham Mobile.
They got back to Toronto to Mixit,
and there's no guitars on the tape.
Oh, my goodness.
There's only 14 of the 16 tracks.
Right.
So they had to, where's the band tomorrow night?
Oh, they're in Winnipeg.
So they had to fly the tapes out to Winnipeg,
book a studio there, bring the two guitar players in in and overdub all the guitars oh my god show so warren costard from
chum phones me up says doug says i was the one who had to phone bob geldof and tell him about this
he says i never want to do that to a guy in a band again he says you've been doing a good job on the
radio shows for us the audio is ultimately being broadcast on our radio station. Right.
I'm going to set up a meeting with you
and Marcy Martin,
the executive producer of these simulcasts,
and say that you should start doing the audio
for these shows,
because the guys that are doing them
are obviously, you know,
not ready for primetime.
So two days later,
I have a meeting with Marcy Martin.
She says, are you booked next week?
We're doing Todd Rundgren at the O'Keeffe Center.
I said, oh my God, okay.
And so that was the first one.
That was in April 81.
So we started doing the simulcast.
And then, of course, two years later,
MTV comes on the air.
Canada wants MTV.
And Chum and City say,
well, we're doing this already.
Like music television.
We've got this new music show.
We've got a bunch of these shows in the can.
Give us the license.
So they changed the letters for Chum around to Much,
and that's Much Music.
And that's the rest of the story.
And since I was Chum's guy,
I sort of, by default,
became the Much Music multi-track audio recordist,
because they didn't have a studio in the building
at 99 Queen East,
which was where they were in the original.
Sure, the original, yeah.
So they would bring our truck in
to do these big ticket specials,
and that Much became my biggest client from about 1984 to 2000.
They were like 65% of my business was either recording stuff or much.
And all their snow jobs and all their much music video awards and all their...
Shout out to FOTM David Kynes.
Yeah, Kynes.
Yeah, Mr. Television.
And what was the other thing?
Going down to Daytona Beach in Jamaica.
So in addition to the truck,
we had a second system in flight cases
that I could air pack and fly anywhere in the world.
And we did some pretty exotic locales
with Mutch doing those things.
But that was a great time to be in television.
And we became, even though I wasn't on the payroll at Mutch,
I was there so much.
I had a key.
I had a pass.
I mean, I was there twice a week twice a week. So it was almost like
I worked there. And those guys are still great
friends. And it opened up a lot of doors, because
they were doing such big profile bands
that people would say,
who have you done? And I'd say, well, I'd list off some of the bands
we did for much. I'd steer you on, and blah, blah, blah.
Oh, I guess you can do our band.
Right. Okay, I'm going to ask you about a few more.
So much you've covered here, but I'm to ask you about a few more. So much you've covered here,
but I'm going to ask you about a few more.
Rolling Stones at the El Macombo.
I did not do that show.
Oh, just take credit for it.
That was in 79.
It was a year before I started doing those shows.
What we did do with the Stones, though,
we did Keith Richards at Massey Hall
with the expensive winos.
And that was a blazing show.
Okay. And that was for Q107. So now
I feel bad I'm going to ask you about all these things you did not do
but did you record Elvis Costello?
No, I did not. That was a year before.
Where am I getting this information from, Doug?
I got something. Because we started in 1980
and those shows were all done. Like 78,
that was all Hammerhead Audio, Mike Elder and all those
guys. Alright, let's shout out a couple
of FOTMs.
Captain Phil Evans and Brother Bill,
because they came on my program to do sort of a history
of CFNY, Canada Day Festivals,
and they kind of morphed into these Edge Fests.
I'm afraid now to ask you,
did you have anything to do with any of these Canada Day festivals?
Okay, talk to me about those.
Did three or four of those.
Okay.
And one of them with the Tragically Hip, right?
Yeah, the Hip was at one of those.
I've recorded the Hip, I think, 30 times.
Again, I went to the same high school as those guys.
You know, like Paul Langlois' dad was my
phys ed teacher.
Wow.
Can I ask, was Mike Hogan there?
I feel like Mike Hogan, he might have been there too.
He's younger than me. But that high school, I feel like Mike Hogan, he might have been there too. He's younger than me,
but that high school, I mean that high school
as they said of the 200th
anniversary back in 92,
any high school that boasts
Robertson Davies, Don Cherry, and the Tragically
Hip has pretty well got the Canadian
pantheon covered. My parents
went there. It's a small town. Everybody went
to KCVI. So I'm
10 years older than the hip guys,
but their drummer
took lessons from our drummer.
So when I was...
Oh, Johnny Fay.
Johnny Fay took lessons
from Chris McCann.
So we'd finish our rehearsal
at Chris's house
and then we'd come upstairs
and there's this 10-year-old kid
there ready for his lesson.
It was Johnny Fay.
So that's when I met him.
There is an episode
in the Toronto Mic Feed where we play some audio that you recorded this was brought to me by
captain phil evans so uh there is some great doug mcclement recordings of canada day festivals
including the tragically hip yeah the the hip were always always great one of the funny things
i can remember the canada day show is a bank like there's only the one road up there right and and
and there'll be 30 000 and 40 000 people at those a Canada Day show is a band, like there's only the one road up there, right? And there'd be 30,000 to 40,000 people at those shows.
I remember there were a band called National Velvet had to go on stage without their drummer.
Somebody else had to sit in because the drummer was caught in traffic and couldn't make it.
Oh, and the 400.
Yeah, and somebody, like 5440s or somebody's drummer sat in with them because the guy didn't get there in time.
But yeah, there were some legendary shows up at Mol Park and Barrie for CFNY, for sure.
Okay, wow, wow.
Okay, so what I did is I went through,
I mean, again, you've recorded everybody,
but I thought I'd take a handful,
and we kind of talked about Stevie Ray Vaughan,
but he's not an FOTM.
Sadly, passed away in a plane crash in 89,
I think it was, but lost him for a tuition.
It's the 40th anniversary next year at the Elm.
I'm the sound guy, the recordist at the Elm of Combo.
And there's talk of them having,
finding a really, really good Stevie Ray Vaughan clone band.
Like there's a band in Texas called Texas Flood
and bringing them up on the 40th anniversary
so he can stand on the stage in the same spot
and play that whole set.
That would be a real magical.
I mean, people from the fan club in Texas,
people would fly up all over
North America for that, if they do it.
Okay, so before, we did
already referenced David Quinton
Steinberg with the mods, who you recorded, of course.
But here's what I'm going to do. I'm going
to just shout out a few more Toronto Mic
partners here, and then I'm going to run down a list
of FOTMs that you've produced in your
illustrious career here. So this is going to be fun.
But I would like to thank sticker you.com.
Go to sticker you.com,
upload your image.
You get your decals,
your,
your stickers,
your temporary tattoos.
They've been wonderful partners of the program.
Canna Cabana will not be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories.
Andy Palalas is going to come back early in 2023 for the Edibles
episode. And we would love to
we love Canna Cabana here. There's over
140 locations across
the country. And
thank you for your support
Canna Cabana. Hey,
you're an audio guy, but
you've probably got the coolest
hi-fi system in the
galaxy.
But here, you never know when you need a... You mentioned Roxanne, the great police song.
This one's from Boxan, but it's courtesy of Moneris.
This is a wireless speaker for you.
Oh, thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
You're going to take that home with you,
and the first thing you're going to do is
you are going to go to yesweareopenpodcast.com.
You're going to subscribe to Yes We Are Open.
That's a Moneris podcast production.
Al Grego has been telling the stories
of Canadian small businesses
and their perseverance
in the face of overwhelming adversity.
It was awesome to see Al Grego at TMLX11
at Palma's Kitchen the other day.
Then once you're listening to Yes We Are Open,
which is an inspiring podcast,
you're going to educate yourself
with regards to investments
by subscribing to the Advantage Investor Podcast
from Raymond James Canada.
Chris Cooksey hosts this show
and it offers a valuable perspective
for Canadian investors
who want to remain knowledgeable,
informed, and focused on long-term success. Speaking of great
podcasts, Ridley Funeral Home
has one. It's called Life's
Undertaking. And they have, let me pull
out the tab here.
This is a flashlight for you,
Doug, courtesy of Ridley
Funeral Home. There you go.
You won't be tripping in the
dark there. No, I saw the light.
Hey, shout out to Jeff Healy.
Did you ever record Jeff Healy?
Yes, many times.
I first recorded Jeff when he was in high school,
and I remember his dad bringing him up to the studio
to do the mix.
We recorded Albert's Half as part of a Q107 Blues thing.
I recorded Jeff.
He was a real much music darling.
I think I recorded Jeff about 30 times,
and he was a wonderful, wonderful man.
Such a talented guy, but just a sweetheart of a guy.
And he never changed.
He never went to his head.
I did one of his very final recordings with his jazz group,
the Jazz Wizards, the Dixieland band that he had.
Not Dixieland, but a traditional ragtime band
where he played cornet mostly.
He didn't play guitar in that band.
And I miss Jeff a lot. He was't play guitar in that band. I miss Jeff
a lot. He was a wonderful guy.
Lost him far too soon.
His final resting place
is actually Park Lawn Cemetery.
I sometimes
bike in Park Lawn Cemetery.
The reason
we're starting with Jeff Healy is not that
Jeff Healy was ever on this program,
but the drummer for the Jeff Healy band,
a gentleman named Tom Stephen,
is an FOTM.
So that's why we're,
you said See the Light too,
which by the way,
holds up.
What a great jam See the Light is.
Yeah, Tom's quite a character.
We always used to joke during soundcheck,
he'd have the drumstick in one hand
and the cell phone in the other
because he was managing the band
while he was drumming.
But we had a lot of adventures with Tom,
particularly on the Much Music Train, which which was a whole that would be a
whole podcast okay that's we're gonna have to get you back for that sequel all right so uh who am i
going to next i'm going to uh fotm jim cuddy who's with a little band you might know called blue rodeo
yeah go way back with those guys. They went to Queens,
Greg and Jim,
and after I,
just a couple years after I was there,
but they had a band
as part of the punk explosion
called the High Fives,
and they cut their first single
at our studio on Dufferin Street,
Comfort Sound.
Right.
And then we did the demo
that got them the record deal.
They had to deal with
the legendary Terry Brown,
who produced the first 10 Rush albums.
They wanted to get him to produce their first record.
And everybody was saying,
you're never going to get Terry Brown.
He's a million-selling producer,
Max Webster and the Stampeders.
And they said, no, no, we want to get him.
So they convinced Terry to come down to the horseshoe
with our truck and record a set.
And his deal was, I will do the demo for free.
And if you get a record deal off this demo,
I get to do the album at my full rate.
And so that's exactly what happened.
We went down to the horseshoe, recorded the set.
They took it to Warner Brothers.
Bob Roper, excuse me, Bob Roper signed them
to Warner Brothers.
Okay.
And Terry did the first record on a spec deal, basically.
And then try breaks and the rest is history.
Yep.
And I've recorded them at least 35 times.
We just did Jim Cuddy's last record at his barn.
Well, the most interesting Blue Rodeo recording for us
was an album they did called Five Days in July.
Great album.
They brought our truck up to Greg Keeler's farmhouse
near Peterborough.
Right.
And we sat there for a week and ran cables into the farmhouse.
And they set up in a circle with no headphones, no ISO booths.
I remember Sarah McLachlan singing back up in the kitchen.
If you put headphones on, you can hear the fridge coming on and off.
Oh, my goodness.
But that was a magical, magical record.
And there's almost no overdubs in that record whatsoever.
It's live off the floor, five guys.
They wanted it to be as close to a rehearsal situation as possible because they didn't want to be looking through the glass and seeing tapes turning and stuff like that so it
was it was very very organic and that's five days in july yes that whole album why did they name
the album five days in july when the song is called five days in may because it was recorded
in five days in july we went up there for five days and nothing rhymes of july so they had to change that was it but i remember one of
those vocals we greg wanted to sing out by the fish pond about 50 or 60 yards from his house
we had to run cables and headphones out there and we just got out there and got set up and started
to pour rain and bring it all back but that was a that was an amazing i'm very proud of that record
that's still their best-selling record,
I think.
Yeah, there's a lot of big jams on that one.
That's a great album.
And it's funny,
I mentioned off the top
that I got this bug
to do remote recordings.
I did one Saturday at Palmer's Kitchen.
I just set up,
I just like getting out there
and capturing whatever's happening in the city.
When I had Jim Cuddy on Toronto Mic'd,
I biked my gear to the woodshed in Riverdale
and set up in their studio there
and recorded Jim in the woodshed.
Yeah.
He's one of those rare singers.
Again, I've recorded him over 30 times.
I have never heard Jim sing one note out of tune.
It's like Anne Murray and who's the other one?
Lee Aaron.
They have this incredible innate sense of tuning.
And no matter how crappy the monitor system is,
Jim never sings out of tune.
It's robotic.
So you've recorded Lee Aaron?
Yep.
Okay, she's also an FOTM.
So what can you tell me?
Did you know Lee Aaron's really a Karen?
Yes.
Yeah, I knew that.
We recorded her.
She did one of the very first City tv simulcasts at a place called
the adelaide court theater which is no longer there adelaide and jarvis with frank soda and
the imps and she was just 19 or so oh this would be like the metal queen era yeah almost yeah
around that time and she emerged she had this there's a stick where they had a screen and she
changed behind the screen and it was backlit. So you sort of saw her silhouette and they were trying to kind of do this
cheesecake thing with her.
She is a fantastic singer.
She was just at the Elmo last year and did a live,
a live stream.
And she's just as good,
like she's a fantastic singer and a lovely,
lovely woman.
But,
but,
uh,
she hasn't lost a note.
Like she,
she's still got,
she does like jazz stuff now. Like she's really expanded her, but this was a tour of a rock. She's still got it. She does jazz stuff now.
She's really expanded her...
This was a tour of rock.
She was doing her old rock stuff.
Yeah, she was doing her...
Because she does the summer festival.
She was huge in Europe.
I remember going...
My wife's Dutch
and I remember going over to Holland
in the late 80s
and she was like,
oh, who have you recorded?
I said, well, I've done this guy
and this guy
and we've done Lear
and they go,
you have recorded the metal queen?
Yeah.
You're like,
she's massive in Germany
and Holland.
So yeah,
she's,
she's bigger than
David Hasselhoff in Germany.
Hey,
is your wife a World Cup fan?
Not so much.
Okay,
because the Netherlands
are still alive
in the final eight.
Oh,
that's good.
Yeah,
I do have the Netherlands.
This is the first year
that I haven't been
wearing the Netherlands shirt.
Okay,
well,
it's not too late.
You're still alive.
Well, I can do it now.
Only eight countries remain.
I can do it now without, you know, getting...
Right.
Looking down at Canada.
It was so rare for Canada to be in it.
Yeah, it's fun cheering for the Dutch.
They're a great bunch.
Absolutely.
The orange.
Now, okay, after Jim Cuddy, we talked about Lee Aaron here.
How about Gato?
Gato did their live album in Barrie in 1980
at the Roxy Theatre.
And we set up and Greg said,
well, we're going to all this expense
to get the recording done.
We don't really want to have a warm-up act
that has the drums and stuff.
We're going to have to move all the mics
because once we got everything planted
from the soundcheck,
we don't want to move anything.
Can the promoter find us a folky
or a comedian or somebody to open the show?
And so the local guy in Barrie said,
yeah, there's this kid,
this high school kid who does impressions
and does a comedy stick.
So we'll get,
I said, fine,
because it's one mic.
Do I get to guess?
Yeah.
Jim Carrey.
You got it.
And he comes out
and they just hate him.
You know, because it's a metal band. It's like opening for ZZ Top. They don't want to see this kid doing, Jim Carrey. You got it. And he comes out and they just hate him. Oh.
You know, because it's a metal band.
It's like opening for ZZ Top.
They don't want to see this kid doing
Sammy Davis Jr. impressions and stuff.
And so we ran it on a cassette
and we gave him the cassette
and I wish I'd kept,
that's when I wish I had a copy of it.
Yeah, you know, yeah.
But years later,
I saw him interviewed about two or three years ago
on some comedy channel thing
and there was five or six comedians,
and they were talking about what's the worst gig you ever did.
And he said, well, I opened for this metal band once in Barrie, Ontario.
They were called Godo.
I thought, oh my God, that gig.
It's the worst gig you ever did.
I love it.
That's a fun fact.
Absolutely.
Love that.
We had a second instance like that with a Gary's gig at the Edge.
There was a Toronto band called
The Drastic Measures.
Great sort of pop band,
sort of like Sparks,
like very, very quirky band
led by a guy named Tony Malone
who just passed away.
But they had a friend of theirs
open their set,
their live broadcast for CFNY,
a local comedian.
And he came out and did an impression
as if he was Don Kirshner,
the American promoter that promoted the Monkees and stuff. And so he came out and did an impression as if he was Don Kirshner, the American promoter that promoted the Monkees
and so he comes out
and did a little two-minute comedy shtick
introducing the band
and of course, years later,
it was Mike Myers.
Wow.
He was either a 16 or 17-year-old Mike Myers.
It might have been the first recording
of Mike Myers doing a comedy shtick.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah, speaking of Chum City,
he would jump on with Christopher Ward
on, not the new music,
which was, yeah,
City Lights.
City Lights, I think it was.
Right, it was City Lights.
And he would come on as Wayne Campbell
back in those early days.
I need to shout out,
Mike Myers, not on FOTM,
but Paul Myers of the Gravel Berries.
Good FOTM.
So shout out to Paul Myers.
You ever record the Gravel Berries? Yes, but not with-M. So shout out to Paul Myers. You ever record the Gravelberries?
Yes, but not with my truck.
I teach at the Harris Institute,
Audio Engineering,
and we always bring in the guinea pig bands
for the students to practice on.
And the Gravelberries came in
and did one of those back in the,
I'm going to say 93, 94 and around there.
Sounds about right.
So I've been friends with Paul ever since.
Paul's a great guy.
Yeah, he's a,
also if you ever want to talk, Kids in the Hall, he's your go-to resource. Or about right. Absolutely. So I've been friends with Paul ever since. Paul's a great guy. Yeah, he's a, also if you ever want to talk
Kids in the Hall,
he's your go-to resource.
Or Todd Rundgren.
He wrote the book on Todd Rundgren.
Yeah, he's a great guy.
I like Paul a lot.
But that, yeah,
Mike did that intro
which was pretty funny.
Todd,
he,
Todd Rundgren
produced Love Junk.
Did you ever,
Yes.
Yeah, for,
did you ever record
Pursuit of Happiness?
Yeah, probably about 20, 25 times.
Because again,
these bands that were much music darlings
when much was really happening,
those bands would be on every award show
and every snow job and every...
So yeah, and Chris Abbott,
the guitar player from Kingston,
I knew her before she was in TPOH.
And she was in a band called The Slam in Kingston.
And I love that band.
Yeah, I love them too.
I'm a song guy.
And Mo is such a wonderful songwriter.
He's a sweetheart too.
Yeah, but they're on top rotation in my CD player in my van all the time.
And your love junk holds up.
It still sounds fresh and it's great.
Great songs, well played.
And really simple parts played really well um lots of time for those guys i i enjoy that band a lot absolutely
so there's another fotm band look at this great list of fotms and there's a whole bunch i probably
don't even have but let's talk about the uh real statics next real statics um we used to have a
party every year at comfort sound my studio my studio. So that was the name,
but it's not called Comfort Sound anymore, is it?
No, no, the company's called Livewire.
I sold Comfort in 94, but the band,
it comes from, the band I played in in Kingston
was called Comfort.
And so I called the studio Comfort Sound
in Kingston in 73 when I established it.
So I kept the name when I moved up here.
And it was kind of a, you know,
the logo was kind of like hokey-dokey,
Woodstock-y kind of a hope you know the logo was kind of like hokey dokey woodstocky kind of logo you know and and uh but but um uh we would have a party every february to kind of
beat the february blahs and i'd find some band and i'd say why don't you come and play my party
and i'll give you you know 40 hours or i'll give you 15 hours of studio time later and so the
rheostatics came in um and played our party one year.
I don't know if this would be
I think in
85, 86 and around there.
And they had a horn section at the time. There was a Trans Canada
Soul Patrol at that single.
And so we taped them there. So I've known
Badini for a long time. That's an
atopical band. Yes. Right there.
And it's great. And then we later
more recently,
I recorded them in a very strange gig at the Ontario Art Gallery.
They played the music that they wrote
for the Group of Seven.
And so they were projecting paintings
of the Group of Seven up on the screen
and they were playing to this.
And I was set up in an adjacent room
and I've got photographs of it.
There's got to be $100 million of paintings around me in this control. It's up in an adjacent room and i've got photographs of it there's like there's got to be a hundred million dollars of paintings around me in this control it's
the most expensive control room ever and right and so we did we did that show for them that was
that was a fascinating gig i love those guys they're great guys so okay so comfort sound you
sold and then you set up live wire remote recorders yeah i walked with the truck basically
like i reached a point with a studio that at first
it was 90% studio, 10% mobile recording.
And then it was 80-20.
And once it got to about 50-50 and I was out of town
a lot with a truck and trying to manage the business
from a phone booth in Vancouver, I said,
okay, am I a truck guy or am I a studio guy?
And there's 200 recording studios in Toronto.
There's only a couple of trucks.
I sold the studio.
You went mobile, yeah. I went and changed the name. I sold the studio. You went mobile, yeah.
I went and changed the name.
I sold the name
so I had to change the name of the company
so I started Livewire in 94.
That's, you know, with almost 30 years.
Well, it's funny how you start with like four tracks
and what, you're at 96 tracks?
Is that where we're at?
Yeah, well, yeah, 128.
128, okay.
And we use them, man.
Like you do some of these big shows now
and it's not unusual.
We did Canada's Got Talent the last two weeks ago and it was 110 tracks or
something.
It was nuts.
So that it gets very busy.
These live shows.
All right.
How about,
uh,
I'm thinking Billy Newton Davis is an FOTM.
So can we talk about the nylons?
Yes.
Uh,
recorded a live album for the nylons of the Markham theater.
Uh,
and Billy was in the band, I think.
Also recorded him solo at Canada's Wonderland.
He warmed up for a guy named Michael Damien,
who was a teen idol at the time.
He was in soap operas.
Yeah, exactly, that's right.
Yeah, he was a soap opera star who did the cover of
Hey Kids, Rock and Roll, Rock On.
He covered that and had a hit with it.
Pretty boy, nice guy, it was okay. He's a and had a hit with it. Pretty boy.
He's a soap opera guy. He's a handsome guy, right?
Michael Damien. I remember Michael Damien. Mid-80s, I guess.
Billy opened that show and since we were out there with a film crew, we said,
let's record Billy. So we recorded that and he came up
to the studio and mixed it. Yeah, he's a talented
guy.
And he's also a sweetheart and full of energy.
Yes.
If you ever need to pick me up, have a chat with Billy Newton Davis.
Yeah, he's one of the most positive human beings
you'd ever want to meet, that's for sure.
Absolutely.
All right, you might have heard in the intro
that I said that if anybody has any real estate questions
whatsoever, they can ask Sammy Cohn.
It's Cohn, it's K-O-H-N, by the way.
Sammy.Cohn at ProperlyHomes.ca.
You could write him right now.
And if you don't have a real estate question, you can ask him a drumming question. by the way, sammy.cone at properlyhomes.ca. You can write it right now.
And if you don't have a real estate question,
you can ask him a drumming question because do you know what his side hustle is
when he's not selling properties
and helping people with their real estate related needs?
What is Sammy Cone's side hustle?
You want me to tell you?
Sammy's the drummer for The Watchman.
Oh, there you go. Now, that's why I need to ask you, you must have recorded The Watchmen. Oh, there you go.
Now, that's why I need to ask you,
you must have recorded The Watchmen
in your illustrious career.
Yeah, we did an EP for them at the Horseshoe Tavern.
And good band, real great songs.
Well, this is early on, right?
Like, is this when they,
because they were,
I think they were playing the Horseshoe Tavern for,
yeah, I mean,
for, yeah, I mean, for,
tragically,
Hips Management,
I think they were going to,
like, will they have,
get a deal out of this,
if I remember correctly.
Yeah, because they're a Winnipeg band, right?
Yes, yes, for sure.
Yeah, and I do remember,
I just remember that horseshoe thing.
Jake Gold.
And mixing.
Like, didn't they do,
didn't Watchmen come from Winnipeg and do this horseshoe gig. Jake Gold. And mixing. Like didn't they do, didn't Watchmen come from Winnipeg
and do this horseshoe gig for Jake Gold?
It's possible.
Okay, I think so.
And then Jake Gold does manage the Watchmen in the 90s.
It's funny, I knew Jake before he started managing the hip.
He was a stereo salesman
and he sold me a beta hi-fi machine in 83.
So that was just before he started,
well no, because the hip started in 87.
So that was well before the hip I guess. But I've known him started in 87. So that was well before the hip, I guess.
But I've known him that long.
That's funny because he's an FOTM too.
But he grew up, like I guess he grew up
on the same street maybe as Mark Hebbshire.
Oh, there you go.
And they were like childhood friends.
And I record every week with Mark Hebbshire still
called Hebbsy on Sports.
So we'll be doing that live tomorrow at 9am.
Everybody.
And Jake Gold loves his tennis.
I'll just say that he's a huge tennis fanatic.
He's a great manager.
I'm glad that he's back manning the helm for the hip because there's things
starting to happen for them.
Well,
on that note,
because you brought it up now,
uh,
our instance,
Jake Gold is an FOT and we can talk about the hip here.
The,
uh,
are they releasing any more
Doug McClement recordings?
They're doing a big documentary right now
for CBC, Gordon's brother.
It's a huge project.
And so they have been scouring,
they've been looking for old recordings
of the really early stuff.
Well, Saskadelphia was a big release
for these guys. And so they do have a lot of stuff. Well, Saskadelphia was a big release for these guys.
Yeah, yeah.
And so they do have a lot of stuff.
They were pretty meticulous
about recording most of their gigs,
but we did some really early stuff with them,
like 87 for CFNY at the Spectrum,
on the Danforth,
and at the CNE,
one of the barns at the CNE.
But we did a very interesting gig with them
for CBC at Fort Henry in Kingston,
where they played Inside the Fort.
And that was only shown,
and again, these things were before DVD,
so they were shown once
and they sort of go into the ether.
Right.
But that footage exists
and I've heard that they're restoring that video
and remixing the audio
because it was multi-tracked
and that's going to be released sometime.
And that was a fantastic show visually too
just because it was Inside the Old Fort in Kingston.
It's a very Kingston gig.
And yeah, those guys,
I have so many connections with them.
Again, we went to the same high school.
So there's a lot of connections with that band.
We miss that band.
Oh yeah, we do.
On a good night, they were just transcendent.
We did a show with them once at much in Halifax at the Misty Moon,
and it was about a million degrees,
and Gord is just soaking wet.
He would just lose it.
He would just lose it in the moment
and just go to another place entirely.
There was an element of danger with Gord
that Iggy Pop has, that Jim Morrison had.
It's kind of missing from rock now,
but you never,
this guy's quite capable of doing anything.
Right.
So you had to watch him because he could jump into the audience,
he could take his shirt off,
he could set,
we did it with Massey Hall once
where he set his boots on fire on stage.
Right.
Like that element of unpredictableness,
this sadly, because now with people playing the tracks and all that stuff, Like that element of unpredictableness, sadly.
Unpredictability, yeah.
Because now with people playing to tracks and all that stuff, it's...
Are rock bands playing to tracks, though?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, you know what, that's...
Because you expect it from like a lot of pop stars do that
and you kind of come to accept it or whatever.
But rock bands, I hate to think they're doing that.
Well, what's interesting,
I've done the Grey Cup halftime show for the
last 16 years.
Okay.
And we were talking
about how only, like
usually the bands are
singing to track and
only three bands out
of those 16 have played
totally live and Blue
Rodeo and Tragically
Hip are two of those.
Love it.
I'm glad you're
sticking.
They wouldn't play
the tape.
Who's the third band?
Well, surprisingly,
Imagine Dragons, which
you wouldn't think, but
we were in Vancouver
and they played live. Respect to Imagine
Dragons. I would not have guessed that because I stick them
in the pop bucket. Same here. I was quite
surprised, you know, because
it's a tough gig. But the Arkells
are playing the tracks. We're breaking a lot of
hearts here today. Well, at
Great Cup you do, because
they blow the whistle in the first half. You have 10
minutes to get the stage out and the PA up.
They play for 10 minutes. You got 10 minutes to get the stage out and the PA up. They play for 10 minutes.
You got 10 minutes
to get it off the field.
So it's a win sprint.
And so the producers
don't like to leave
anything to chance
and man,
it's safer for them to just.
Safe equals boring.
Okay, Doug.
Yeah.
Oh, hey man.
They seem to think
it's easier for us.
It's more complicated for us
because we have to have
two playback rigs
in case one fails.
Just do it live.
Just go and play.
You're a rock band.
Do it live.
That's what we do.
We do live.
They're nervous about it. A lot of the bands I think would rather do it live. I go and play. You're a rock band. Do it live. That's what we do. We do live. They're nervous about it.
A lot of the bands, I think, would rather do it live.
I remember one year.
Here's a good story, though.
Yeah.
We were in Regina to do Grey Cup.
And there's usually a pre-show band and a Grey Cup halftime band.
And the pre-show band that year was the Sheepdogs.
I love the Sheepdogs.
They're all Zypho-Tams.
Okay, Sheepdogs, could you send us your tape?
I said, well, no, no.
We're going to play live. I said, hey, no, no, we're going to play live.
I said, hey guys, it's the last week of November in Regina.
It could be snowing horizontally.
I said, no, no, we're going to play live.
So we get out there and on the night before the show,
for the rehearsal, it's minus 32.
Minus 32.
Wow.
So the band comes out and the Sheepdogs start into the rehearsal.
They get about 45 seconds
into the first song
and the drummer just
puts his,
he said,
I can't feel my hand.
But they are from there.
They would know.
Like when we said,
yeah,
it's going to be cold.
We're from Saskatoon
and we know
it's going to be,
we're going to play live.
Send us the tape anyway.
So luckily they had
sent us a tape
because,
I mean,
the drums just sounded
like cardboard boxes.
It's so cold.
Yeah,
that's just too cold.
That's the kind of cold
where if I go on a bike ride,
my brake line seizes up.
Like, this is next level cold.
We couldn't wind up.
Some of the audience mic cables, we could not wind up
because they just snapped like a hose full of water.
Yeah, like your headphone wires would do that.
I'm not kidding.
We literally cut the connectors off the ends of the cables
and just left the cables because they were just iced in.
Because they were back there this year,
but it was like minus two or something.
Yeah, it was really decent this year.
It was like balmy.
Yeah, it was balmy.
You were wearing shorts, right?
Because we were there,
like you're there for a week.
And so by the time you lay the cables in
and then it snows and then it freezes,
you have to get an ax to break the ice
so you can get your cables.
Anyway, it was like luxurious there this year,
but some years it's brutal.
Some years it's brutal.
I like the Sheepdogs
because they,
actually the brothers
in that band,
they have this side project
called Bros,
which is kind of like a,
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, it's called,
it's kind of a yacht rocky thing.
That's how I would,
in fact,
you ever heard the song,
sorry,
you ever listened
to the radio show
Q on CBC?
Yeah, back in the day
with,
Okay, well,
with Gian Gomeschi,
who I know,
I don't know if we're allowed,
yeah,
you did record them too,
Moxie Fruvett.
I co-produced their first album, yeah.
That's an interesting story.
Yeah, give it to me,
because yes, we all know about Gian,
but let's hear about this recording.
Well, yeah, but we didn't at the time.
I was talking to somebody the other day.
We did a series of commercials
for a commercial producer in Toronto,
and one day he comes into the studio and says,
Doug, I've written this commercial for discount car and trucks.
And I was just walking down Bloor street the other,
the other night.
I saw this band busking out in front of the Bloor cinema.
And he says,
these guys would be perfect for this commercial,
but the discount car and truck guys don't can't,
don't see it.
So he said,
can we do this on spec?
Can I bring them into your studio for four hours and we'll cut a version of
this commercial.
And if,
if we get the gig, we'll do the commercial at your place. It fine these spec things never work out so they bring them in we get hit it off they're charming guys do this commercial they take
it to discount current trucks they love it so they come back up and do the commercial two months later
um gomeshi phones me up and says doug the um you know how the bernie galiz have sold a pile of these
cassettes in these cassettes he says we're getting a lot of requests for a cassette and we've we've
done a few recordings here and there but we never got a sound on our voices the way that you got it
on that discount truck commercial so we can we come up to your studio and do a five song cassette
said sure so they came up for 20 hours and we did, over three or four nights, we did this cassette.
They sold 40,000 copies of the cassette with no major label support.
Yeah, is that like,
I'm sure,
like Sam the Record Man
and was it DNA?
Yeah, and off the stage.
They just sold it off the stage.
Off the stage, right.
And so they got signed by Warner Brothers
and they decided to have,
they didn't want to do the album in Toronto.
They wanted to leave town.
So Colin Linden and Blair Packham suggested a studio
that they knew of in upstate New York near Woodstock
called Dreamland.
It's owned by Peter Gabriel's old drummer, Jerry Murata.
And it's in a church in Woodstock.
And so we went down there for a month and cut the record.
So I engineered and co-produced the record with the band.
And we spent a month recording it in Woodstock
and then a month mixing it at Comfort back in
Toronto at my place.
Wow.
And that album went platinum.
That was the biggest selling album.
Whenever I hear stories about Giancomanche,
I think, I had Noah Mintz on the show.
You know Noah?
Yes.
Yeah, I know Noah.
I'll be seeing him on Tuesday.
Okay.
Say hello for me.
Yeah.
He was in Head.
Yes.
With two H's.
And he also went to Thornley Collegiate
with Gian Gomeschi.
So he's got a lot of great high school stories
about Gian.
Yeah, I must say about Gian,
like the band was just gobsmacked
when all that info came out.
And we, I mean, I spent,
we lived together in New York,
in Woodstock for a month
because that studio had a house next to the studio
and a little cabin out back where I lived where the band shared a house because we lived downstock for a month, because that studio had a house next to the studio,
and a little cabin out back where I lived, where the band shared a house, because we lived down there for a month cutting that record.
Yeah, you don't know what you don't know.
You don't know what you don't know, but they were, God, we had a good time making those
records, but it was 350 hours on 10 songs.
They were meticulous, perfectionists, in a day of no auto-tune, so they just go in and
sing it until it was right.
Do you use auto-tune. So they just go in and sing it till it was right. Do you use auto-tune?
Occasionally, kicking and screaming.
I'm disappointed to hear this, Doug.
Get out of my basement.
It's not my choice, man.
Believe me.
We had it live at the Grey Cup.
I consider it cheating.
Live auto-tune at Grey Cup.
Okay.
Which act?
It was one of the country acts.
Oh, this year we had a country act.
And it came back and bit them hard
because auto-tune is good
if you're slightly out of tune.
Georgia, what are they called?
Georgia, those guys.
What are they called?
Florida Georgia.
Florida Georgia.
Yes, it sounds like they use auto-tune.
But the guy,
and the rehearsal went great,
the rehearsal went great,
but on the night of the show,
he started into the first song
at least a major third or a major fifth
and of course auto-tune goes
oh that's not the right note and it just
moved him into another key and it just sounded
like he was from Mars
sounds like he's singing Cher's Believe
exactly and it took him about
20 seconds to meander back to the tune
so I remember the guy from Nashville was in the truck
with the auto-tune rig and he's like uh oh we're in trouble
now and it was just like like it's great if you're slightly out of tune it'll correct
it but if you're way to tune it it estimates oh he meant to sing this note and puts that note in
and it wasn't that well what's happened as you know because you're an audio guy but like it was
meant to correct you're right to correct these out of tune things but then people started using
it sort of as a tool like so literally, I believe by Cher is a good example
where they used that effect
as sort of a change the sound on purpose.
Yeah, it's annoying,
but you hardly ever see it being used live, live,
and that was weird at Gregg's music.
You're bringing the heat.
I was warned that you had some great stories.
This is fantastic.
By the way, I got to shout out my friends,
Cam Gordon and Stew Stone,
because they also went to Thornley.
And there's all these interesting people that went to Thornley.
But there's one more guy I'm going to ask you about.
Did you ever record Hayden?
Yeah, just two weeks ago.
I did Dream Serenade at Massey Hall.
I've done that a couple times.
And that's a very noble cause.
That's a very special evening.
He and his wife are remarkable people and they bring that's a labor
of love that show that was a great show this year and of course massey hall everything sounds
fantastic and um but yeah i've done that three or four years for them the um nice the uh dream
serenade which raises money for for uh families with children that have various types of uh
handicaps.
He's such a sweetheart.
He's one of these guys nobody can turn down.
So he's like,
will you be on my show?
And everybody wants to be on that show
because he's just such a great guy.
So he's like the new Andy Kim then.
Yeah.
I just worked with Andy last night.
Another FOTM, Doug.
Okay.
Because you can't say no to Andy
when he tells you
he's got his Christmas special.
No, I've done that show for 16 years.
Okay.
So shout out to Ron Sexsmith, also an FOTM.
And so many, I mean, the Bairdick ladies, Stephen Page, whatever.
Okay, so many names we could do.
We could do this for hours.
But Hayden, what was I going to say about Hayden?
I was going to say something profound.
Oh, yeah.
So when Hayden, he recorded a song called Take
for the CFNY New Music Search.
I think it was 1993 to win this money to record or whatever.
And I think he was so nervous,
he actually had Noah Mintz record the vocals.
So when you hear Hayden's take a part of me,
which I dig the jam,
but I didn't realize Noah Mintz
was actually the vocalist on that song,
even though it's credited to Hayden.
That's funny.
Noah's my go-to mastering guy.
I don't do a lot of records anymore,
but when I do,
he's got the best years in town
and I just take it up with him.
He's like the truth,
he's like the court of last appeal.
And he's so passionate
about getting it right.
I got lots of time
for guys like that.
He'll hang in there
that extra hour
just to get that extra 1%
out of a record.
Love it.
Now, I got a couple more
FOTM bands,
although I know I'm missing
a whole bunch,
but I got to go back to
because I mentioned Q, and then we went
on to Gian Gomeschi and Moxie Fruvis, but
the Q theme, the current Q
theme with Tom Power as the host,
that's a song by Bros,
the brothers, the McEwen brothers from
yeah, so
Sheepdog.
I was going to call them the Wolf Pack. I'm like,
why am I thinking of, because sheep's in wolf clothing.
Okay.
And we didn't spend too much time on it,
but any other thoughts about the Watchmen
before we leave the Watchmen?
It's really early in their career.
I did record them a couple of times.
I think they were on Much at one point
on one of the award shows on the MMVAs, I think.
And I just remember they always bring it.
Like they just, they never, it doesn't matter if there's five people in the MMVAs, I think. And I just remember they always bring it.
Like they just, they never, it doesn't matter if there's five people in the audience or 5,000.
It's the same deal.
Dude, on to that point, we had an event, TMLXX,
which was our 10th Toronto Mic Listener Experience,
just this past September 1st at Great Lakes Brewery.
Danny Graves played, you know, sang for his supper, literally.
He sang some acoustic songs
into the night sky, and he was
amazing. It didn't matter that there's like 100
FOTMs here. He's just
awesome, so shout out to Danny Graves.
All right, these last two
guys, maybe we'll throw Blair in the mix
too, but The Spoons.
Way back with
them, they were on
the very first
show I did for City TV and
Chum
simulcast was an event at
the concert hall the Masonic Temple
and it was called the March Hop Jump
and so this would be March of
81 and
it was the spoons
the sharks Toby Swan and drastic measures I think and and it was the Spoons, the Sharks,
Toby Swan and Drastic Measures, I think.
And they were just these kids from Burlington.
They were all 19 or 20.
I mean, Rob...
Rob Pruce.
Rob Pruce is still a great Facebook friend of mine.
And then I recently got to do the Spoons at the El Macombo
within the last six months as kind of a reunion thing
and it was just great to see them again and they're still
wonderful and who wasn't in love with Sandy
Orne?
Still looks great.
It comes down to songs.
I'm a song guy and they have
great songwriting and that always wins.
That gives you
a career. You won't be a flash
in the pan if you write great songs
and they write great songs.
This is going to blow your mind, I think. So I mentioned that Danny
Graves was like the headliner for TMLXX,
which is my own event. But there were two opening
acts for that night.
The first gentleman who started
us off was Rob Pruce on keyboards.
Oh, that's great. And he was amazing.
And then the next gentleman who performed
for us was Blair Packham.
So it's such a small world, Doug.
Okay.
So shout out to Rob Pruce from The Spoons.
And Blair Packham, so do you want to,
because he's listening,
although Rob Pruce is also listening,
but you recorded the jitters?
Yeah, well, when Blair was working for me at Comfort,
I couldn't afford to pay the engineers
as much as I'd like to.
So we would often give them free studio time. So he would bring his band in and
cut demos all night in off hours, like weekends
and evenings. At one point they had Bob Ezrin in there producing some of the stuff.
But the jitters, the demo that got them the record deal was done in
off hour time at my studio. And I recorded
them at, oh God,
they did a New Year's Eve,
Nathan Phillips Square show one year,
we did them there.
We did them on the Much Music train in Ottawa.
I recorded the Jitters live a few times.
They cut their first video on the roof of our studio
on Soho Street until the police came
and told them to stop.
Just like the Beatles.
Take Me As I Am, I think that song.
Yes.
That was on the roof of 26 Soho.
We were at Queen in Soho.
Love it.
Love it.
And then Blair, as I mentioned, Blair was an usher at my wedding.
We're great friends.
You're great friends because David Quinton Steinberg,
I think he was fired from that band a couple of times.
Yeah, he was not the original drummer.
Blair Martin, Glenn Martin was the original drummer.
And Danny and Matt,
but they played the Comfort Sound Party one year.
Wow.
I recorded them recently,
about a year and a half ago at Hughes Room.
Okay.
Just because I'd never done a real great
multi-track live recording of them,
and I wanted to get it down.
Amazing.
Okay, so I got one more FOTM band
I want to ask you about,
but I'm going to play,
like this is kind of random.
So a few weekends ago,
I was at Sneaky D's
and I was watching Rusty perform
because I love Rusty.
Okay, did you ever record Rusty?
Yeah, I recorded them on a ski hill in Banff
for Snow Job.
I think it was Banff
or Jasper,
one of those.
Yeah,
sounds about right.
I absolutely love Rusty.
Yeah,
good band.
I still love Rusty.
Great band.
So they're there.
So they only played
for like an hour
because there was a big snowstorm
in Buffalo
and they were supposed
to do something else anyway
and they couldn't do it.
And I haven't even thought
of those guys in a long time.
Yeah,
well Ken's in,
he lives in Sudbury.
Be like early 90s? Yeah, mid 90s, early mid. So like Fluke was a long time. Yeah, well, Ken's in, he lives in Sudbury. Be like early 90s?
Yeah, mid 90s, early mid.
So like Fluke was the big album.
I still spin it all the time, by the way,
because much like Moxie Fruvis,
I'm stuck in the 90s, but okay.
Like we'd be set up in a ski hut or something.
Like a snow job.
We'd take the portable rig and we'd be,
oh, let's record the band.
Like Much was always like,
let's shoot the band halfway up the,
let's shoot the band in front of the waterfall.
Like, well, where are we going to get power? You guys are technical, you'll figure it out. Much was always like, let's shoot the band halfway up the... Let's shoot the band in front of the waterfall.
Well, where are we going to get power?
You guys are technical.
You'll figure it out.
And I remember they were halfway up like a ski hill or something when we recorded.
Well, that's kind of Scott McAuliffe's band,
and he came from...
Where did he come from?
What's the Montreal band?
Doughboys.
Doughboys, okay.
I'm happy he's been to London.
I've heard of them in Jamaica.
Okay, well that explains the dreadlocks that John Castor came up with.
When we did that much music jamming in Jamaica
they were one of the six bands we brought down with us
to play in Jamaica. Well, Castor, one day
hopefully he's in FOTM. I haven't talked to him yet, but he's
married to Don Draper's second
wife. The actress,
of course. Who knew? Okay, so what
am I talking about Rusty for?
Because a dream came true, Doug,
and I don't know
where else to put this.
I'm going to do it.
I only found the audio today.
So earlier today,
somebody, Scott actually
told me that there's
some YouTube video
of when they played
Empty Cell,
which was their big hit
off the follow-up
just to fluke.
So what happened
during Empty Cell?
I'm going to play it for you.
This happened at Sneaky D's.
I guess we're going back
about three weekends ago.
I've lost track of time,
but here we go.
It was 100 yards from my house.
Okay.
That's my name.
That's your hood.
Yeah.
Love it.
Here's what happened. Now, that's Ken McNeil, the lead singer for Rusty,
who spotted me in the crowd and shouted me out during Empty Cell.
So that's never happened to me before.
And I wanted to share it with the universe here.
That's great.
My shout out here.
Okay.
Last band I want to ask you about
and then we'll see if you have anything
you want to drain the swamp.
You've been amazing, Doug.
Honestly, I love these stories.
This is great.
The Tea Party.
Yeah, I've recorded them a lot of times.
Yeah, because Jeff Burrows was just on the program.
So tell me about recording the Tea Party.
We did them there at Sarstock
at Downsview Airport.
We recorded them there
and I did a big thing
with them at Mutch when they had a string section
and
I remember that
tabla drums and stuff like there was a lot going on
yeah he's a menacing
powerful presence
well he thinks he's Jim Morrison right
actually I
had trouble with him in the 90s because he just seemed
a little much,
like a little pretentious or whatever.
But when I saw them this past summer at History,
I was like, I was turned around on the guy.
Like I kind of, he felt, it felt like he was self-aware
and he just, it just seemed,
I just enjoyed him more than I did back in the 90s.
I haven't seen him for a long time.
I know he's really into old cars too.
He's real big on muscle cars.
Well, he lives in Australia now.
Oh, really?
Jeff Martin, yeah.
Oh, that's right,
because they were huge there too.
Yeah, they were big in Australia
and he married,
I think he married an Australian woman
and settled down.
They were always good.
I mean, we did them
probably half a dozen times
during their peak times,
but I do remember them
at Sarstok
because there were three trucks
at Sarstok.
There were so many bands
and it was one day
there were 15 bands.
Big bands there, yeah.
So we... Well, then you did record Rolling Stones. No, I didn't because there was trucks at stars there were so many bands it was one day it was 15 bands there yeah so we um well
then you did record rolling stones no i i did like because there was three trucks so so 15 bands so
it sort of went abc abc abc so so they go and say doug you're not going to get to do the rolling
stones uh but you are going to do acdc i go yes which stole the show which like much rather do
acdc so so they So they were just fabulous.
So we did, like, you know,
so that way we had an hour between bands rather than 10 minutes between bands.
So there was our truck, the CBC truck,
and a truck that was brought up from New York City
to do the Stones and Rush and Flaming Lips.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That was a marvelous day, 2003,
but that was a very, very special day.
Absolutely.
But, yeah, getting to sit there
and solo ACDC guitars and basses
was a career highlight.
And I remember Ed Cherney,
who was a Grammy award-winning engineer
who was in the next truck
doing the Stones and Rush.
He comes in during ACDC
and he looks down at my input list
and he goes,
Doug, you realize that all of ACDC together
has fewer inputs than Neil Peart's drum kit?
Because Rush had been on just before them.
And he said, this sounds great.
And I said, Ed, I'd have to be an idiot to make this sound bad.
Just walk out on stage, listen to how good this band is.
They've been playing the same 20 songs for 20 years.
But it was just like one brain.
They were so tight.
Last question goes to Brother Bill.
Good FOTM.
I mentioned him earlier.
Brother Bill,
who now lives in White Rock, BC,
and he's gone back to his birth name,
Neil Morrison.
But Brother Bill says,
what was the funniest or strangest thing
you've heard a musician say
during a live recording?
Oh, wow.
It's a tough one.
He brings the heat with these questions.
Well, maybe not the funniest thing,
but a bit of sage advice.
We were doing Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris
and Albert Lee and Roseanne Cash
for a TV show called In Session at CHCH in Hamilton.
And I remember saying, I get on the intercom,
I go, okay, Rodney, do you want us to record the rehearsal?
And he said, record everything that moves.
And I've taken that in good stead
in terms of recording dry runs and rehearsals
and just saved my bacon so many times.
Oh, that blew up.
Oh, did you get the dress here?
Well, at Grey Cup,
they wanted to put on YouTube that performance,
and the manager came and said,
we can't, the first 20 seconds of the vocal are toast.
I said, I recorded the dress rehearsal the night before.
This is a great tip.
And they're playing the track,
so it's going to be dead in time.
Right.
And so we went in, after the show,
we lifted those 20 seconds of vocals off the dress,
dropped it in, seamless.
You know, that's a great pro tip.
Yeah, just record everything that moves.
Well, it used to be a big,
back in the analog days
when tape was $10 a minute,
you couldn't do that
because it was too expensive.
But now it's a hard drive.
Now it's digital.
You get 50 hours on an $80 drive,
hit record.
Like, always be in record.
We did Neil Young up at Omimi
for that concert about three, four years ago.
Oh, the one that was on Crave or whatever.
Yeah.
And his sound guy's been with him for 30, 35 years.
And we got talking about stuff.
And he said, Doug, he says,
I never put a microphone in front of Neil
unless the machine's already rolling and record.
And the red light's on.
I don't even put the microphone up unless,
because what's going to happen?
He'll start singing and at the end of it,
he'll go, did you get that?
And if I say no, he's like,
that's the best I ever sang it. How did you not, not like i said i'd be out of a job just record everything record
everything that moves oh what a great advice should i record this conversation doug you can
always erase it later you know but but at least if the red light ain't on it didn't happen right
it didn't happen that's what denise donald much used to say was there a camera rolling
no well then it didn't happen wife Wife of Murray McLachlan.
Yes, exactly.
Listen, okay,
so you've been amazing.
I've already captured,
you know,
an hour and 20 minutes.
I don't want to take
too much of your time,
but is there anything
you were,
maybe you were driving here
and you're thinking,
I want to make sure
I tell this story
or I say this
or thank this
or anything you want to do.
This is your opportunity, Doug, before I play some Lois at Low.
Did you ever record Lois at Low?
I think once.
Okay.
At the Palais Royale.
I bike by it every day at the Palais Royale.
I actually just saw Lois at Low last Saturday night at Lee's Palace.
Yeah, it's funny.
Some bands fall through the cracks.
There are some people that I haven't done.
Blind spots?
But I've,
I've been really lucky.
I've been really lucky to get paid for my hobby
since I was 22
and you know,
you go to high school
and you think,
oh, everybody gets to do
what they like to do
and that's not the case.
Like most people
hate their jobs.
You know,
if you go to your high school
reunion,
you realize that 80%
of the people
you went to high school with
hate their jobs.
Yeah, they're miserable.
40 hours a week.
They can't wait to retire
and get away from it.
Whereas me,
they say like,
you know, I'm going to be 70 in two weeks.
And people say, well, are you going to retire?
And I said, to what?
Right.
My cousin said, do you play golf now, Doug?
No.
Well, you're not going to play golf.
People think you're going to take up the piano.
Well, you love what you do, right?
So why would you want to retire?
When you love what you do.
You'll never work a day in your life.
Well, you just, you know, it's not...
I think people...
Retirement's for people that don't like their jobs.
But, like, I like mixing.
I still love getting up in the morning
and the challenge of getting a good show.
And so as long as my hearing holds out,
I'll probably...
They'll carry me out of that truck in a box.
I can't think of what else I'm going to do.
And eventually I'll have to hire some younger guys to take over
because I won't be able to hear this stuff,
but I can still run the.
Let me know if you need help.
Cause I feel like that's the next chapter for me.
But when you're being carried away in that box,
just remember Ridley funeral home.
Man,
I opened the door.
You just walk right in.
You made it easy on that one though.
Oh man, that was incredible. Man, I opened the door and you just walked right in. You made it easy on that one, though. Oh, man.
That was incredible.
I feel like there's a sequel in our future.
We got to capture more stories.
But I really appreciate you making the trip here today.
Yeah, no problem.
Happy to do it.
And that, speaking of lowest of the low,
and that brings us to the end of our 1167th show you can follow me on twitter
i'm at toronto mike doug what's the best way to follow you like do you have a instagram or where
just the website uh for uh www livewireremote.com liveireRemote.com Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery
Don't leave without your beer, Doug
At Great Lakes Beer
Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta
I'm going to go to the freezer, get you a large lasagna
And stick it in that beautiful red box right there
StickerU.com is at
StickerU
Moneris is at Moneris, you've got your wireless speaker there
Raymond James Canada
At Raymond James CDN.
Recycle My Electronics are at EPRA underscore Canada.
Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH.
Canna Cabana are at Canna Cabana underscore.
And Sammy Cone Real Estate is at Sammy Cone K-O-H-N.
See you all next week. And I don't know what the future can hold or do for me and you.
But I'm a much better man for having known you.
Oh, you know that's true because everything is coming up rosy and green.
Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow won't stay today.
And your smile is fine
And it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Cause everything is
Rosy and green
Well I've been told
That there's a sucker born
Every day
But I wonder who
Yeah I wonder who yeah I wonder who
maybe the one who doesn't realize
there's a thousand shades of grey
cause I know that's true
yes I do
I know it's true
yeah
I know it's true
how about you?
They're picking up trash
And they're putting down roads
And they're brokering stocks
The class struggle explodes
And I'll play this guitar
Just the best that I can
Maybe I'm not.
And maybe I am.
But who gives a damn?
Because everything is coming up.
Rosy and gray.
Yeah, the wind is cold.
But the smell of snow warms me today.
And your smile is fine.
And it's just like mine.
And it won't go away
Cause everything is rosy and green
Well I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain
And I've kissed you in places I better not name
And I've seen the sun go down on Chaclacour.
But I like it much better going down on you.
Yeah, you know that's true because everything is coming up rosy and green.
Yeah, the wind is cold
But the smell of snow
Warms us today
And your smile is fine
And it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Cause everything is
Rosie now
Everything is Rosie
Yeah, everything is
Rosie and everything is Rosie and Grace.