Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Kurt Swinghammer: Toronto Mike'd #1252

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

In this 1252nd episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Kurt Swinghammer about his art, his music, his name, working with MuchMusic, Maestro Fresh Wes, CKLN, CFNY, The Shuffle Demons, Ron Sexsmith, Sam the Record Man, Buffy, Bruce, and so much more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, the Yes We Are Open podcast from Moneris, The Moment Lab, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

Welcome to episode 1252 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Alma Pasta. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

Season 4 of Yes, We Are Open. The award-winning podcast from Moneris. Hosted by FOTM Al Gregom al grego recycle my electronics.ca committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past the moment lab brand marketing and strategy pr advertising and production you need the Moment Lab and Redley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, making his Toronto Mike debut is Kurt Swinghammer. Yo. Welcome, Kurt. How's it going?

You biked here today. Yeah, it was a beautiful ride. Really great. Okay, kudos to you. I love it when a guest bikes to the TMDS studio, so thank you for doing that. Oh, my pleasure. It's always so great to ride along the lake. It's just, you get that vista, you know, eyes stretch

out and, you know, it's really informative for me as a visual artist to get into that environment. Yeah, you're a creative guy. It would inspire you, I would think, being around nature in all her glory. For sure, yeah. Okay, cool. Now, Kurt Swinghammer, when I said I'm having Kurt Swinghammer on, a few people thought

I had a porno star coming on, Swinghammer, me and your porno name. I'm like, no, man, this is the coolest guy. And I'm going to basically read some shout outs for you from three pretty recent guests of Toronto Mic'd who all kind of told Kurt Swinghammer stories. And basically when I hear these stories, like I just want to let everybody know, like I'm listening to my guests. I'm not just interviewing, recording, like I'm listening. And I'm like, I got to get Kurt Swinghammer on Toronto Mic'd. Like you're like a missing link. So thank you for being here.

It was a pleasure to be here. I'm not a podcast follower of anyone. I never listen to them, but we know when you invited me, which is a very, very nice gesture, I thought I should check this out. I found it quite remarkable. You've created this incredible archive of all these Torontonians, essentially, mostly. And I thought that was a really significant accumulation of information that you've created. Well, thank you. Okay, that's praise from Caesar.

Love it. Thank you so much. Now, you're right. They're mainly Torontonians, but not always. For example, I will throw in the odd Burlington resident, but Rob Pruce, when Rob Pruce heard Kurt Swinghammer was coming on, he said,

he's the coolest guy. Ask him about his band, Communism. They're so good and they do an amazing version of Nova Heart. Right, yeah. Yeah, I,

Communism, I'm no longer in the band. Kind of it, it changed abruptly during covid and uh but yeah we were playing it was led by don kerr who some folks would know from his work long-standing work with uh sexsmith and uh currently the bahamas uh live show and dan mangman uh and he used to be in the rheostatic so Don's kind of like a really central figure in Toronto music scene and it was his band and uh with Kevin Lacroix on bass and myself on guitar

and uh yeah it was a really good thing and then I I've always loved uh Nova Heart I remember distinctly the first time I heard it when I was living in Niagara Falls. And I just thought, wow, this is super modern sounding. And I saw the band a couple of times play The Spoons. And it just kind of really blew my mind. So I've always had that song in my back pocket as a cool Ontario cover. And yeah, that's what we used to play that. And I know that Rob caught one of those COVID-y, simulcast-y things, Zoom-y things. And yeah, it's very touching to play it for him.

Well, Rob's going to be on Toronto Mic'd again later this month for another episode of Toast. Now, Ron Sexsmith, you dropped the name Ron Sexsmith. So there's going to be more Sexsmith content later, but he's another guy who was on recently. He came on during the pandemic, actually, because he's in, remind me... Stratford.

Yes, right. So he was like, that's a long drive. I'm like, okay. I let Ron Sexsmith zoom it in. That's how much I respect the man. I'm not going to make him drive here from Stratford, but same with Peter Mansbridge. He got the same deal, okay? You're from Stratford but same with Peter Mansbridge he got the same deal

you're in Stratford you can zoom in but Ron Sexmeth who will come up later he was telling Kurt Swinghammer stories but here's a guy who told this Whopper great story Whopper sounds like it's a lie this was not a lie

so I shouldn't call it a Whopper I don't know I didn't go to Burger King great line from Pulp Fiction. But Blair Packham, who's been on many times, he wrote me this. It's kind of long

so I think we're going to step through this. I need to cover all of this, okay? So Kurt, work with me here. I'll pause for you to share your story or your remarks and then I'll keep going with Blair Packham's note which is a pretty detailed note.

But first he starts with Kurt Swinghammer. Oh, by the way, if you want to pop your beer now, you can do it on the mic. Great Lakes sent you over some fresh craft beer. That's awesome. I have to see what they are here. Okay, okay. So the coldest one is a Canuck Pale Ale. That sounds good.

You can't go wrong with the Canuck. Right on the mic. Kurt Swinghammer just opened his Canuck Pale Ale, courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery. So if you have room in that backpack, I'll send you home with some Great Lakes so you can have some later. Get comfortable there.

Good to go. Okay. He goes, Kurt Swinghammer, my dear friend of many years, ask him about our evening with Burt Bacharach. So I'm pausing right now because there's a lot more here to cover. But when Burt Bacharach passed away, I had Blair Packham on the program,

and he told this detailed story. But now let's get it from your perspective. Tell me about your evening with Burt Bacharach. Well, it started earlier that week. I drove out to Ottawa with a mutual friend of ours of Blair's, Dan Brick a singer-songwriter from Mississauga originally

and we were both hardcore Burt fans so we made the pilgrimage out to see Burt with a big orchestra at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and I thought, shit, I really want to, you know, shake the man's hand.

So we did the thing where, you know, you case out, like, where's the limo? And we walked around the building and we found the limo. And sure enough, you know, there are a couple other geeky people there to get autographs. But Bert came out in this beautiful, fresh Adidas gear, like powder blue Adidas jumpers. And he's like white kicks and he had his gold chain. And it's just like, it was like a dream come true. He'd look so hip.

And, you know, so we met him and chatted a little bit. That was really sweet. And then I went on to Montreal. And on the drive, I was by myself. I had a girlfriend in Montreal at the time, and I started writing this song about Bert in Montreal and it turned out to be a really, really good song actually. And then when I went home, I had a little gig at the Cameron and I got this call, hey,

I had a little gig at the Cameron and, uh, I got this call. Hey, we've been invited to have drinks with Bert. And I, cause he was stuck in Toronto at that. That's when a nine 11 went down. Right.

He was grounded. He was grounded. No one knew what was going on. LaGuardia was shut up. There wasn't, people couldn't fly. So he was stuck in Toronto and I guess he called Mike Myers who, you know,

he had to develop a friendship with from the film and everything. Right, Austin Powers. Yeah, and then Mike said, well, I know some people there that would love to meet you because I think Burt was really bored and Mike's brother Paul

is a really good friend. Gravel Berries. Yeah, the Gravel Berries. Also on FOTM, he's been on this program. Right on was in the gravel berries for a moment oh yeah yeah and i art directed one or did set design for all right um i dug the gravel berries oh yeah it was a jangly pop it was great power pop and um yeah so uh paul i guess put the word out and uh yeah there it so anyway i i had this little gig so i had my guitar with me and my guitar had burt's head on the on the headstock little picture and with a gold crown and so uh because i tend to decorate my guitars and i've always covered his stuff i've been a fan

since a little kid and so i when we go to this the part the dinner was already i missed the dinner or whatever but i got to get to this swanky joint in yorkville and someplace i'd never go to and uh i got my axe with me and there's this there's bert and there's blair and there's michael phillip boivoda who's a guy that I've worked with extensively as a producer. And a couple other folks, actually. And Ruth Moody, who was in the really nice little trio singer-songwriter thing. And there's a chair beside Bert. And so I got to sit beside the maestro.

And it was just incredible. And he had told great stories. And it was a remarkable evening. And then the classic thing was when he, you know, he's an older dude and he had to, you know, kind of call it quits at some point. So he gets up to leave

and everybody says goodbye. And I just impulsively sat in this chair to absorb his body heat, you know. And then I noticed there was a glass of unfinished wine and that he was drinking so i grabbed it and took a sip and swallowed it and you know the bird entered my body and it was you know for me it was just like the most significant thing that had ever happened in my life and i went home just feeling amazing i i i went to my girlfriend at the time at her place in Toronto, and I just ended up breaking down in tears.

It was just, I was so overcome with meeting my hero and actually having, you know, kind of some quality time with him. It was just mind-blowing. Love that story so much. So normally, you know, I would kind of start with like, okay, I would ask you about your upbringing in Ontario, and we might start at the beginning.

Like, when did you realize you wanted to be an artist, a musician? And we'll kind of sprinkle that through. But I'm actually going to run through. I like this note from Blair Packham so much. So we're going to be chronologically messed up, but just think about it like it is a pulp fiction, a little jumping around. It's good for you. Okay. So he says, ask him about writing with Alanis Morissette.

Oh, right. Well, Alanis, this is before her big record came out. She was- Jagged Little Pill. Yeah. She was writing with a lot of different people. I heard there's a hundred different people she wrote with. And in town, she was part of a small group of people that we were writing together. Like every week we'd do something and Blair was part of that. And it was really neat. And I wasn't really familiar with her backstory, but she was quite remarkable. I got to say like the most focused young person I'd ever met. And there was no indication of what was going to happen. But she just had an amazing kind of determined, focused, positive energy about her that was really, really attractive.

And so she came over. I was living in, I had a really great space in kensington market and a really neat backyard and so we set up back there and i'd seen her at an annie defranco show just a couple nights prior so i said oh i surprised you know you know annie and she oh yeah you know i really want to do something as intense as Ani does. And then she started dropping other names, like, oh, I'm really into Rage Against the Machine. And I was like quite surprised because I'd seen her do some very low key folkier type of things, which she, she sounded great doing, but so that gave me an indication, but we, we, we started writing

something just, you know, winging it right it wasn't really going anywhere and then my cat who was an indoor cat chippewa named after the town got out and in kensington market you don't want an indoor cat roaming around and the cat jumped over the back fence and was like i started you know oh shit so that kind of actually ended the writing session because i was so i'm gonna lose my cat and uh but so we didn't we didn't end up with a bona fide song but if if i may continue there's oh my god yeah there's a second part to this story let's hear it you know she ends up with that ballard dude in la and writes the biggest record of the century and all that. And,

uh, I've only met her once since I was playing guitar with Peter Murphy. You know, the dude. Well, then my next question from Blair Packham is ask him about playing with Peter Murphy so you can kill all the birds. Right. Once don't hear it.

Well, I got, I got asked to, to sub in, uh, for Rob Pilch, I guess that was, he was playing and in,

uh, that band. Ballhouse, right? Well, it was Peter Murphy's solo thing. I gotcha. And I didn't really know too much about it. I was in a band that was called Vital Signs with Glenn Milchman.

We had opened for Love and Rockets and totally blew them off the stage. And I was just like, whatever, these guys, you know, pasty English guys, they can barely play. But this Peter Murphy is a very, very charismatic performer. And we did this gig in Portugal, and we went on after Alanis. And I thought, oh, well, I guess we're here to clear the crowd out, you know, like sort of, you know, get people to go home.

They were there to see him, like a huge outdoor thing in Portugal. He's really big in certain countries. But before that, I thought, oh, Alanis is here. So I knocked on her, you know, her door and somebody said, um, and I said, yeah, I know Alanis from way back and just want to say hi. And just, just a minute, you know, and I'm sitting there waiting and waiting. Is this going to, you, and I said, yeah, I know a lot from way back and just want to say hi. And just, just a minute, you know, and I'm sitting there waiting and waiting. Is this going to,

you know, I thought, uh, okay, maybe she doesn't want to be bugged. I don't think she was huge star at that point. Big star. But she,

she did. So you can come in now. And so I, I went in and we had a little chat, but I just really got the impression that she had been through the, so much and was being generous to say hello to me but kind of the last thing she wanted to do was uh you know interact with another person right she probably just needed some uh downtime and then the interesting thing about her set she had a guy on a teleprompter and all her lyrics were on a teleprompter

which i'd never seen that before. Huh. Was Taylor Hawkins the drummer at that point? Remember? That I don't recall. I don't recall. Okay.

I wasn't dialed into her stuff, actually. I didn't really, wasn't, I wasn't really into it. You didn't own Jagged Little Pill? No, but I know that Ani loved it. When she got the record, she thought, this is, this is people you know a lot of people fucking loved it a fucking huge record yeah did you have so i don't know did you ever tune into much music in the uh late 80s and hear her when she was kind of like canada's tiffany or debbie gibson or something uh too hot was the big hit yeah i think i did had seen that no yeah i loved much music and

that was a source of many gigs for me at one point i was gigging a lot for for much music doing visuals and music and yeah so much ground to cover kurt i hope you canceled your uh any appointments you have coming up this afternoon i might need you here a little while here okay uh ask him about playing guitar with okay actually i was, I was going to ask about, a lot of this stuff was already on my list, but I like the way Blair just kind of hammers it all home, pun intended. Okay, so he wants to talk about Ron Sexsmith here.

So if you don't mind, because you came up quite a bit in the Ron Sexsmith episode of Toronto Mic'd, but yeah, give me your like, your ongoing history of your profession, your relationship with Ron Sexsmith. Well, we had a mutual friend. I used to live in Niagara Falls and Ron lived in St. Catharines.

And we had a friend, Rod Morrison, who built the first multi-track studio in the Niagara region. And he had a day job at Austinax Music, which was like you know walter austinak a legendary polka guy and it was it's now become a long on the quaid uh branch but uh in the time it was the it was the biggest music store so rod kind of knew every musician because that's where you had to go to get your supplies and uh we became friends a wonderful guy. And he was actually part of the whole Port Dalhousie scene that Neil Peart would have been part of, a very vibrant music scene just outside of St. Catharines. Anyway, he said, oh, you've got to check out this guy, this kid, Ron Sacksmith. And he played me a cassette. And this would have been like 1980

or something. And this cassette, he had a band called the midnight scribes and i was like wow it sounded like the kinks and i'd never heard any band sound like the kinks other than the kinks and immediately i thought this is special when somebody's got that kind of um influence and inspiration like that's major marks for me and i thought yeah i gotta i've got to go see him and then shortly after that maybe like the next year i think it was 81 uh we were on a bill together for like at the peace bridge in fort erie and when he started singing i just got the wicked chills up my spine you know which is kind of a rare thing that happens to me when I hear certain music. And I was just kind of blown away.

And he was doing his own stuff. And then we would do gigs together occasionally. Back in those days in that area, you couldn't really do original material in bars and stuff. But I started working at an artist run center which was an art gallery with a performance space and i would perform there and then ron and i started doing some shows together sometimes and then when i moved to toronto in 84 i i said man you've got to you got to get out here you know you know saint c Catharines is fine, but if you want to make something happen, you've got to move here.

So he eventually did, and then I produced a cassette of his first release, basically. Wow. And because I was putting out these homemade cassettes, like really simply done, but I was kind of like the Phil Spector of the four-track cassette deck. Without the murder or the do,

um, but very, very, I was kind of ambitious with limited means and Ron, I was the only person that Ron knew that did that sort of thing, I guess. And so, yeah,

we did a really neat little cassette album and that couple of people in town, William 10 skinny, the famous, he died a couple years ago, the manager, he's working with Hayden and he's really, he was an amazing guy. He liked it and I think he kind of passed it around to some key people and eventually, you know,

Brown found some management and labeled in the States and the rest was history. All right. Now, more recent history involving you and Ron Sexsmith. Let me just pause the Blair Packham segment. I mean, I still have more Blair Packham stuff to talk about, but I did get a nice note yesterday from Michael Barclay.

Oh, yeah. Also an FOTM, of course. And Michael writes in, ask him why live sound techs wanted to beat up acoustic guitarists on stage in the 1980s and also Sex Hammer. So I guess that's two different questions there. But what is Michael referring to

about why live sound techs wanted to beat up acoustic guitarists on stage in the 1980s is that true i've i had a bar owner punch me in the face once for dancing uh with a chair i think maybe the band was uh michelle jordan and the poles you know they have that song kind of a punk band from the early days but i actually sound people um because i can play they always enjoyed it and i had my shit together and i was on and off stage in a jiffy and you know i was doing a lot of opening sets for you know people like bob mold and like like the gary's were throwing me great gigs open for the proclaimers

once and yeah i mean so i never had any problem with sound people ever i don't know what he's but that being punched in the face story did that make uh have not been the same i'm thinking uh maybe he maybe barclay got it in his research for a big book of his. Yeah, he did interview me, and I'm in there a few spots. I'm also, there's a loose end with Alanis Morissette. I did, in the unauthorized biography of Alanis Morissette, somebody said, hey, man, you're in the unauthorized biography. And so I went to whatever bookstore just

to see what was going on and i looked in the index and there's like kurt swinghammer and it's like god there's two pages like holy shit and that's a big entry and so i flipped to the page and goes kurt swing hammer i had to flip the page over to get to the and and then she basically, I'm, you know, I'm not, whatever. She had a bit of a crush on me or something. Wow. And came to, I used to have a lot of parties in, in Kensington Market.

And she came to this party kind of to scope things out, I guess. But, you know, I just, I'm, I was not interested in her or her music, frankly.

But, and she, she, and then in this book, she told her friend, i'm so over him and after what five minutes at my my pad but that's that's that oh you could have been the uh played the dave coulier role in the uh you know the you ought to know uh autobiographical song there right jagged little pill okay so in an alternate universe yeah Yeah. Oh, we're all over the place, but now let's talk Sex Hammer.

Sex Hammer was, at one point, Ron was really frustrated that nobody in Toronto cared about him except for some friends and musicians, you know. All the record labels ignored him. Pretty much everybody except for, you know, a few venues that liked him, you know. Yvonne Met metzel would give him gigs and stuff and um but uh we just thought well it'd be fun why don't we do a duo thing and i'll play your songs and you play my songs and so that's what we did we traded songs but he would cover mine and i would cover his and we we called ourselves sex hammer and I had a great little logo that would have been, it's kind of naughty, and then I remember one gig we did at Say What,

which was kind of an interesting hub of music in a non-musical area of town, front end Jarvis, I guess. And so we did the Sexhammer gig and then I guess somebody just saw the name and they're all gothed out, you know, like all the gear on. Yeah.

Oh, this is so disappointing because there's two acoustic guitars and these two squares on stage. But that was just a short-lived fun project. Okay. So let's now, since I'm going to just dump all the Ron Sexsmith stuff here, there's a whole bunch more of it.

So Sexsmith Swinghammer Songs. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I never forget here. In fact, this also segues into yet another Blair Packham question. But I'm going to introduce this part with a song. Okay. So look, we're going to play a little of this. You can always talk over it.

I'll just give it a taste, then I'll bring it down. But here is some of Sexsmith's Swinghammer songs. Bye. On carousels of summertime. It all looks so new. When I'm off somewhere. You are on my mind. Memories I'll unpack in time I trace the pages of my life Oh, now I refuse

Cause I'm off somewhere You are on my mind There's nothing heavy in my heart There's nothing heavy in my heart When your love is standing guard There's nothing heavy in my heart Except when you're off somewhere Someday we'll come back and find

The rain has made the sidewalk shine. It all looks so new when I'm off somewhere. You are on my mind. You are on my mind. You're all I'm mine I know I said I'd play a little and fade it down, but I was enjoying that. Me too. I never listen to stuff I do,

so I haven't heard that for so long. I'm quite taken with it. Tell us what we're listening to here. Yeah, the female vocalist is Lori Cullen, who's my wife, and that was Ron singing as a duet. And we had, Lori and I had a kid 10 years ago. He just turned 10 a couple days ago, Ray. That happened. Lori didn't want to make music, you know, and became a mom. And for a few years, like, music was just not part of her life. And she had put out, you know, I forget how many records up to that point. And she had a Juno nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album once.

And, you know, CBC support and Jazz FM stuff and beautiful records. Really amazing. And then Ron, when Ron lived in in Toronto we used to hang a lot and and one night we're just having some drinks and music uh we gotta we gotta write an album for Lori and to get her back in you know and I thought yeah that'd be that's a great excuse to get together and write. And Laurie had gone to the bathroom or something, and he came up with this idea, and when she came back, we'd go, hey, we're going to write a record for you, like it or not, right?

And so I wrote all the music, including the melodies and everything, and then Ron, I'd send him like that song, and I'd just be playing guitar going, I'd send him I'd send him the like that song and I'd just be playing guitar

and go dwee da dwee and then he would come back and plug in words to all the dwees and dums

and even sometimes would be inspired by oh that dwee sounds great and he would you know find a word that would rhyme

with dwee right yeah and so that project and then Linus you know or the or no true north i heard about it and uh they they said well we'll put it out you know if we had we we recorded it and mix it and and finished it without any uh label interference or anything like that but they

they released it which is awesome yeah so that's sexsmith swing hammer songs 2016 and uh laurie cullen uh your your partner your wife and uh ron sexsmith and that was the uh i was going there anyways of course i know blair's talking to his uh i don't know how's he listening on his iphone he's talking to his iphone right now but uh i'm glad that uh blair had that on the list he wanted me to ask you about your lovely and talented partner, Laurie Cullen. Yeah, well, she's an amazing singer and really interesting writer. Her last album was all her own material, and I didn't have anything to do with it. I think because I had my fingerprints all over that one, the Sexsmith Swing hammer thing. She wanted to do something where I didn't have anything to do with it.

And then last night she actually played me the new stuff she's doing, which kind of blew my mind. She's working with like a DJ type of guy, right? It's a very contemporary sounding. But with her unique sensibility with the melody and vocal texture and stuff. But the, yeah, that,

that album was, um, you know, Ron and I both are such huge fans of Bacharach. And that was a major sort of, uh, inspiration. We thought,

well, let's do something that of that ilk, you know, and I remember that, that song is like with a duet, like, you know, a female male vocal are often not,

can't work in the same key always. So it was really interesting to find a way to change the key for Ron to sing it. And I'm quite really, really happy to hear that again. Well, buckle up. We're just getting started here, Kurt. This is all a pregame show here. Okay.

Ask him about designing the retail image of Sam the Record Man stores across the country. Yeah. Jason Snyderman is Sam's son. Well, I guess going back, the first time I ever bought a record was at Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street. And the first time I ever bought a record was at Sam Merkman in, in, on Yonge street.

And, uh, so every time I went to Yonge street, I, we always lived in a small town around, you know, outside of Toronto, but I'd go to Sam's. It was just like the pilgrimage.

And, uh, Jason, um, at one point wanted to do, remember that vodka that had like Keith Her herring would do an ad they would absolute vodka yes they would get all these you know warhol all these famous artists to do a version of their bottle right so when that was happening jason said let's do something like that with our sign

and you got mendelssohn joe myself barry margaret o'hara i'm pretty sure he's a great uh visual artist especially when it comes to graphic right she does the she did the rivoli font right you know um and she did some elton cover stuff um including her own of course and maybe uh fiona smith might have been another person i've kind of blanking who all only just four of us i I think. And we all did our interpretation of the storefront. And Jason just really loved the one I did and turned it into a t-shirt and that kind of did really well for the store. And then just started giving me gigs. And I ended up designing the store bag and a font called Sam that, so all the, you know, R&B, soul, all those music categories were in this font that I came up with.

And then the ultimate gig I got from Sam's was doing a makeover for the Zamboni at Maple Leaf Gardens. Wow. Yeah, I did it. I turned it into a hot rod with a big scoop of an engine and a flame job and Sam's on it and and the amazing thing was we did it and it looked wicked and i got to do it there at night you know like when only me and the security guard at maple leaf gardens it was pretty amazing and then they they get a new zamboni like

every five years and the release was up or whatever so they had to get a new one and jason said well i want that a hot rod zamboni you know again so i had i got to do it twice amazing and jason of course was in a blue peter yeah i'd seen him in blue peter and he's currently he plays with the chris tate uh i think and that's another great chalk circle. And my very, like the second gig I ever did in Toronto, Chalk Circle opened for me. Then I was opening for Director 17, Andy Mays' old band from Sky Diggers. Yeah. Andy Mays, also an FOTM. So shout out to Andy Mays. And let me connect all these dots here.

This is what happens when I have on people like you. It's like, oh, it does. But Chris Wardman was in Blue Peter, of course. And he produced that great Chalk Circle album with April Fool on it like you. It's like, oh, that does. But, but Chris Wardman was in Blue Peter, of course, and he produced that great Chalk Circle album with April Fool on it. Yeah. And that's another song that I've covered and love that tune a lot. Also the first band I ever saw live. I saw him at Ontario Place Forum as a kid,

and that was my first concert. I opened for them at the forum once, solo. Was it like, I want to say 85 is when I saw them, but I, it's. Yeah.

In and around there. Okay. Maybe is when I saw them, but I, yeah. In and around there. Okay. Maybe, maybe I saw you there. Well, the funny thing with that gig was like, I'd love the forum, but just before I walked out to do it,

the guy, guy at the gate goes, how fast do you want to spin around? Right. And it was like, I don't know, maybe slow. I don't want to get dizzy.

So I go out there and I'm moving so slowly that like half the audience is staring at my ass for a half an hour. And I just thought, can we step on it? Like, you know, but I, so I learned my lesson. But that disembodied voice asking you how fast do you want to go reminds me. So I worked three years

at the Canadian National Exhibition. So as a game booth attendant and the game booth that I was working at was right across the midway from the Polar Express. That was back when the X was on for 20 days. So it was 20 days and I would be there all 20 days to close up and everything.

The number of times I heard that guy say, do you want to go faster? Do you want to go faster? To this day, it's like and by the way, just fun fact is when you close down the cne the whoever controlled this the uh the boom box or the the loudspeakers on that polar express every single night when everybody left played it's a wonderful oh what a wonderful world by louis armstrong so that song would like permeate through the night sky for 20

it was now you know to this day if i hear any uh what a wonderful world i'm uh back at the x as a teenager so 15 year old so shout out to paul express okay loving this now uh we did mention paul meyer fotm paul meyers earlier but uh blair packham wants to know kurt do you like paul meyer's impression of him of i guess it's you yeah because the way he wrote yeah ask him if he likes paul meyer's impression of him do you like paul meyer's impression of you kurt swinghammer well everybody sort of there's a number of people that do me and they all kind of do have the same go-to things and it's always like dropping hipster language and certain like and it kind of rubs me the wrong way, but you know, it's whatever. It's an honor to be

impersonated. I guess so, but it's always like, well the one person Jason Mercer does a good one. Jason, I used to be in a band with Jason playing with Jeremy Robinson and he got headhunted by Anita Franco and joined her band.

He used to be in the Bourbon Tavern of a Choir. Chris Brown and Kate Fenner. He's got a good swing hammer impersonation. So if he ever comes on, you got to get it from him. I would do it. Chris Brown, he's been over here. He's doing this thing with, still doing it,

I guess, Stephen Stanley and, yeah, I almost said Ron and Ronnie Hawkins, but he passed away. This is Ron Hawkins from Lowest at Low. So they all three came over and played here in the basement. And I think now that I think about it, there was like a deal in place for Kate Fenner to come on and it never actually happened. And I need to follow up.

I need Kate Fenner on Toronto Mike. But before I proceed back, before I go back to the Blair Packham list, and then I have my own list, you're going to be here a bit, but you can, Ani DiFranco, Ani,

right? I was going to say Ani DiFranco. Do you, like, you have more than just like, you're not just a fan. You, she released some of your music.

Is there a connection there I was reading about? Yeah, she, well, first I did a session on one of her albums called To the Teeth and it was down, we recorded down in New Orleans where she was working at Lenoir's old studio there.

And that album actually has Prince on it and Maceo Parker. And they weren't there. Prince did his thing on thing at his studio. But I came up with a guitar solo that's kind of my all-time favorite guitar solo that I've ever done. And it's partly because I loved her material. And to be recording in New Orleans was an incredible, you know, experience. And then,

um, I, she heard this record I did called Vostok six, which is an electronic kind of concept album about the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, Russian cosmonaut. And, uh,

she liked it a lot and she said, well, would you like to put it out on my label? I had released it independently in Toronto. um, so yeah, she put it out on righteous she said, well, would you like to put it out on my label? I had released it independently in Toronto. And so yeah, she put it out on Righteous Babe and gave it another, a second life sort of. Okay. Now that you've opened the Vostok box here. Okay. Let me play a little, if you're cool, let me play a little of that. And then I got questions about Vostok 6. Right. Okay. play a little of that and then I got questions about Vostok 6. Got a ticket for a trip

Get your kicks on Vostok 6 Vostok 6 Vostok 6 Vostok 6 Vostok 6 Vostok 6 Vostok 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, False Doc Six C-A-L-E-N-C-I-R-I-S-H And it goes on and on.

So that album... Can I just say, it sounds great in the headphones. Like, just fucking cool. But go on. That's Michael Philip Voivoda mixing that. And we're old pals, and he loves electronic music, and his studio is full of modular synths and things. So he loved digging in there.

And that's pretty old now, right? It's over 20 years old. And at that time, it was hard to find a vocoder. Those things, none of the companies had reissued them. And there's a lot of ring modulation. And it's all, I all recorded everything at home. It's a lot of Moog Synthesizer. And that project, I mean, it goes, there's some, like, easy listening stuff.

And there's some prog rock. And that's the most, I guess proto techno kind of track uh and it represents the the the uh the uh takeoff of the vastuk six craft her story was fascinating because um yeah the first woman in space in like 1963 and when she was uh spinning around the the earth kennedy was assassinated so all the publicity right to that right and people didn't even know like she was up there right so that kind of like it's it it's spoiled everything. And, um, and then when she, uh, after that trip, the Russians kind of can only assume was an arranged marriage. She, she married another cosmonaut. So the two people that had been in outer space had a kid. And I think it was an

experiment to see what happens when you have a kid that, you know, from two parents that have been in, in outer space. Interesting. I have like a memory of like multiple people dying on the same, oh yes, yes, okay, I believe it was, so the day that they assassinated John F. Kennedy, I believe is the same day that Addis Huxley and

C.S. Lewis passed away. Oh my god, Huxley. So all three on the exact same day, which is just an interesting fact for you there, since you biked all this way, Kurt. I got to leave you some fun facts here. Okay.

Awesome. So much great stuff here. Now, Vostok 6 though, before we leave it, some interesting guest appearances. Oh yeah,

for sure. So one, I'm going to shout out one guy who is a listener of the program, probably listening right now and is a great FOTM, Tyler Stewart

from the Barenaked Ladies. So he, he appears on that, that album. That would have been a great FOTM. Tyler Stewart from the Barenaked Ladies. So he appears on that album. That would have been a funny thing to play. He was basically like an MC guy and reading this little blast.

I'm going to play something first. I know I'm setting you up here. How about this? The following program contains adult themes, nudity and coarse language. Viewer and parental discretion is advised. Okay, please continue. I'm just randomly playing Mark Daly on this program. Well, Mark did a great thing. I was digging a lot at City and Much and I just said, hey, I'm doing this Elton

and I want cameos of different people and you you know i love your voice and you represent toronto in a big way for me and so he came over to my humble studio picked up what i'd written and rambled through it and luckily i'd pressed record because it was perfect he was such a pro pro. And I thought, oh, well, maybe do it once again, just to make sure, you know, and he just did it perfectly again. And, uh, and I wrote it exactly like a throw to one of the late night movies, right? It's. That's my whole youth, man.

Like him throwing the late night movies uh from the corner of you know blue urn bathers yeah so tv everywhere yeah like great movies and porkies it was always porkies did you notice that well that's one of the the tracks where he sets it up and he describes what's happening because it's a kind of a cinematic the voice we literally call the voice and recent argument and uh who was i'm trying to remember who was with but very recently this comes up quite a bit on tor Mic, okay? Because you've got a great Rush song called Subdivisions. You probably remember Subdivisions.

Okay. And earlier you mentioned Neil Peart. So there's a voice in that song, Subdivisions. Right. Subdivisions. And me and many others believe that's Mark Daly, even though I think when they asked uh getty lee he said it was neil peart or something but i think that there might have been a reason why it was like uncredited but i believe in all my heart and soul that it was actually mark daly's voice on that song do you have any insight into that no um i i was i was i'm not really all

that rich literate but i i did see the Doc movie and I fell in love with them as people and really appreciate their music now. But when I was a kid or younger, I was into the bands they were into and when they came on the scene it was very much like, well I've already got

a Led Zeppelin album and I've already got King Crimson albums. But now I really respect what they've achieved. And one thing, Mark Daly told me some fascinating stuff about his history. When he was in Detroit and Windsor. The Big Eight. Yeah, he was working there. But he befriended a lot of the music groups and the vocal groups from Motown Records.

And he was, he said he was personal security for Marvin Gaye. Wow. He was getting these gigs, right? Because he was a big guy. Yeah, sure. But Wilder, one of the vocal quartets came to town once at a gig in Yorkville. I forget which one it was. It wasn't the Impressions. It was in Yorkville. I forget which one it was. It wasn't the Impressions.

It was Stylistics. I forget which one it was. And their bass singer was down. He was like, he had a cold or something. And they called Mark to sub in. Wow. And he did it. And it was like, because he knew the material,

they knew he could do it. And apparently that night in Yorkville, if you went to their gig, you'd see these three dudes from Detroit and Mark Daly. You know what? Awesome. Now, here's a fun fact for the listenership is that, and I believe this was revealed by FOTM Hall of Famer,

Ed Conroy himself, who goes by the name Retro Ontario, like collecting old, he basically digitizes old VHS tapes. And he's been doing that and he kicks ass. That's why he's in the Hall of Fame, Kurt. But he, when, of course, Mark Daly's been dead now, sadly, for several years. And Mark Daly's widow contacted Ed and said, you know, Mark had a whole bunch of VHS cassettes

of stuff that he had kept and like would you like this and apparently there's like a as we speak there's some project underway to digitize to digitize all this mark daily material that he held on to in his personal collection nice amazing right i can't wait to hear that okay so gosh still so much to cover here let's uh should i go back to the blear pack um no because i'm actually gonna play you you you did reference that you did a lot of stuff at much and chum of course it's called much because much is an anagram of chum this uh i should have known this um yeah mike uh mike was on recently mike campbell from mike and mike's excellent cross-country adventure and he was talking about you know going to the crtc to get the license for Mike was on recently, Mike Campbell from Mike and Mike's Excellent Cross-Country Adventure,

and he was talking about going to the CRTC to get the license for Chum. But here is what I'm playing next. This would be something that you'd hear on City TV in the 90s. High atop headquarters at 299 Queen West, this is City TV everywhere. The following is a special presentation. Movie television returns next week in its regular time slot. And action!

One of the things when people watch beer ads, they say, my, those must be a lot of fun to shoot. First thing is, I loved media television. But secondly is, Kurt Swinghammer, why is this opening theme significant to you? Well, it was... I loved that type of show. Like, when I was a kid, there was one called Here Come the 70s. In the States, Walter Cronkite had 21st Century.

So media television, I just love the content. And when they were putting the animation together for the intro, I knew the people that were doing that. And they asked me to, Moses asked me to do the music. I remember it was awesome because I could go over to where the animators were and go, well, let's set up a structural thing, like a tempo. And so that everything would hit, you know? So I got a chance to kind of score the piece, which doesn't always happen for like a TV theme, you know. And it just made for a very powerful intro,

and it actually won awards and stuff, because the animation at that time was really cutting edge. And yeah, it was fun to just go really super techno-y, and I think at the, it was a fun to just go really super techno-y. And I think at the time it was like, it sounded really different, more aggressive than anything else that was on TV. And it lasted for about 13 years. Well, let me make sure we didn't bury the lead there. I don't think we did, but just in case that you created, you Kurt Swinghammer, you created the theme music for a city TV's media television. Yeah, it was, at that time I was, and I did the Zig music for City TV's media television. Yeah.

At that time, I did the Ziggy show. I love Ziggy. Life on Venus app was really fun. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of everything going on there at 299 Queen Street West. So you can always drop anything. Don't be shy here.

Okay. So back to Blair Packham's epic note he sent me when he heard you were coming on. All right. Yeah, it's about time we get to your paintings. I've been looking at some of your paintings and they're gorgeous, but Blair would like me to ask you about your incredible paintings. Well, I've got a, I just yesterday delivered a new show out to Prince Edward County to the

Hatch Gallery in Bloomfield, a really nice little part of that world. And yeah, I've been doing visual art ever since I was like a little kid. What came first, the visual art or the music? Well, I didn't get a guitar until I was seven, but I was already doing a lot of visual stuff, like really into it. And I always thought I'd keep the music maybe more personal, but it's,

it's always been half and half and yeah. And where in Ontario are you? Like whereabouts are you in the province? Where did I grow up? Yeah. Born in Newmarket, moved to Fort Erie, then moved to Bowmanville, then to Newcastle, and then

to Niagara Falls, and then to Toronto. Newmarket, home of Alan Frew, who's here on Wednesday. Oh, really? Yeah, he's coming here Wednesday. Once I did a gig with, maybe even Blair Packham was on that What? And it was like four singer-songwriters on the stage and Alan was the, you know, sort of like introducing everybody and he forgot to introduce me. So that created a great opportunity for me

to do something a little snarky. So I'm sorry, Alan, if I was. Okay, work me on this. Okay, so the biggest Canadian hit, I think it's like technically i went in and looked at the billboard hot 100 and i think it's their second biggest american hit but the biggest canadian hit for glass higer tiger is don't forget me we're gone right that's a good song great song i think it's a great pop song so the horns are amazing 85 there's background vocals

by brian adams because the co-writer of that song. Valance. Jim Valance. Yeah. Right. So that's 85, okay? What else is Jim Valance working on in 85? Tears Are Not Enough. Am I right? Oh, yeah. Like, why is Alan Frew not on Tears Are Not Enough?

You're asking me why? I'm asking you. Not that you would know, but really, I'm just rehearsing for Wednesday. I feel like, I know that's early times for Glass Tiger like that's like their first big hit I guess is Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone so maybe they were not big enough I don't know I just think it would be a slam dunk to slide in a an Alan Frew into the chorus of Tears Are Not Enough right I don't know you don't even have to dignify this with a response because how the hell would Kurt Swinghammer know?

Except Jim Valance is writing the song that hit. Anyway, this is all the stuff I think about when I'm on these bike rides. Right. Yeah, like it's interesting to look at those things as like these snapshots of time and like, oh, Luba is in there and like somebody else didn't get in there.

Right. And Neil Young's, you know, that's my sound, man. Yep. It's interesting to see who makes the cut. And often like... And who was invited but didn't make it. I've had chats with, who told me this? Terry David Mulligan. Oh, yeah.

Who was buddies with that whole Bruce Allen, Jim Fallon circle in Vancouver at the time. And there's a name. In fact, again, we're not going in order today, everybody. There's just so much stuff, exciting stuff going on. But this song here. Oh, yeah. Oh, you're slick. We'll be right back. You're a globalized curse. You put war on the masses and then you clean out the purse.

And that's how it's done. War after war. You old feudal parasites. You just sacrifice the poor. You got the cutting edge weapons. But your scam's still the same as it's been since the Romans. Hell, it's the Patriot Game. Yo, that's the war racket.

It's the war racket. It's the war racket. It's the war racket. All right, I'm playing this particular Buffy St. Marie song for a reason. But before I get to that reason, Buffy was invited to be a part. She was all going to be a part. I think she was getting her own line in the big part of the song. She was on Tears Are Not Enough. And then this phone call comes in,

because Terry David Mulligan witnessed this call, I guess to Bruce Allen, and then Bruce puts down the phone and says these two words, which I have used many times since I learned about this, Buffy bailed. So Buffy bailed. No Buffy St. Marie on Tears Are Not Enough. She should have been there, of course.

Why am I playing this specific Buffy St. Marie song, which is called The War Racket? I got a call to do an animated video for this track that they released as a single. This was produced by Michael Philip Voivoda voida voida and mixed oh no no sorry i'm i'm that's wrong that's okay um i'm not fixing that in post okay we'll just crack it on the record here he had done the previous record but uh yeah so uh i had a call with buffy and told her what i was thinking of doing and she said just don't make it too gory and

because I had this idea of like skeletons dancing around on the chorus and I said no no it's going to be a bit more it's going to have some humor and and so she said okay and as you probably know like it's very often you have to change things and revise and the artist sees a video go no that's i i want something different it's very very common to have people want to revise things and she saw it loved it didn't ask for a single change and it's since become part of her show actually and i went to see her at massey hall and she had projected and she all synced up yeah amazing and the uh i was really really dug into it because the lyrics are awesome and the dancing skeleton thing is i actually put got black leotards and painted a skeleton and that's me dancing around i i chroma keyed myself into it i love this tangent run right now i wanted to cover that anyways, obviously,

but all because you said you were from Newmarket. That's where that came from. So shout out to Alan Frew. He's on the program Wednesday, but Kurt Swinghammer is here right now. So, okay, so you're just, you're always interested in art. You're interested in creating art.

You're interested in music. Young man growing up around, bouncing around Ontario. Okay, so this is a good time for me to play this next jam, so I'm going to let Buffy bring us into the next song. We'll be right back. Thank you. Right on the bus Right on the bus On the Dynabus Ain't no school bus

Ain't no streetcar Ain't no subwaycar It's the Dynabus It's the Dynabus I want confirmation on my information On my transportation from the Dynastation She wants confirmation on his information On his transportation from the Dynastation

She wants confirmation on my information On my transportation from the Dynastation I'm a dino-boss That's not for me. Well, you can't have fun on the York you run. And the oxygen trolley, it's just a big folly. Well, I don't give a damn about the bathhouse tram. But I'll make a fuss about the dynabus. Because I'm 77B. 77B. I'm the TTC. TTC. Yeah, 77B.

77B. I'm the TTC. TTC. Well, 77A. 77A. I guess it'll be okay. That's okay. But I want 77B.

77B. I'm the TTC. TTC. Hey, check it out. I went down to I'm a D, D, D, D, D, D, D Hey, check it out I went down to the station Man, this is a Toronto jam. Okay, The Shuffle Demons. I just have lost the patience Waited for that

Now, you tell me, is this sort of where it all begins for you? Like, in terms of like, I want to know in the origin of things, like, whereabouts in your career did you start designing, you know, album covers for The Shuffle Demons and such? Well, that was the first album cover I did.

Maybe the second. But yeah, I'd gotten to know Rich in Underhill. And, you know, he's seen the stuff I was doing and thought it'd be a nice mix. So I did the cover for this album. And then Joel Goldberg was directing a video for the next song out of my host Roach, and asked me to art direct that and create the set design and shit. And so that led to a long relationship with the Demons and doing t-shirts and album covers and videos and things. And Goldberg was the director who went on to do

Mice Refresh West, right? And that was a whole other thing happening there. Let your backbone slide. Yeah. Are you kidding me? Yeah, those things blew up. Also one of the co-founders of Electric Circus, the show. Right, yeah, yeah.

And he directed a video for me and we worked occasionally over the years with Patricia O'Callaghan. We did a video. But yeah, you know, I was living in a situation downtown with like a shared space with these other jazz musicians. So I kind of got to know Rich from this jazz scene. Like they were all like into Ornette Coleman and then sort of more avant-garde jazz.

And it was just, it was so much fun. And then after that album, Rich said, why don't you do the next cover? And so I had a chance to do it from scratch and I painted their outfits and which took like a week of my life and for 500 bucks or whatever. But it established

a look for that band and they've kept those suits up but at one point they just fell apart they were worn so much and somebody else is painting them now in the style of which is a little weird

but you know it's an homage to Kurt Swinghammer. You designed the Shuffle Demons painted suits. That's, uh, I can't believe I'm talking to the guy who designed the Shuffle Demons painted suits. Amazing. Okay. Very cool. And at what point in your career here, do you get on the cover of Now Magazine? Cause I would think back then that would be a huge deal to be on the cover of Now. Oh yeah, totally. Well, the funny thing is with that, I was delivering Now magazines.

My last part-time job, which was one day a week, I had two at the same time. I was busing at the Cameron on Friday and Saturday nights. And then on Thursdays, we'd deliver Now magazines. And it was all the musicians. The National Velvet, remember that band? They were doing it. Yes, absolutely.

The Skydiggers. Andy, I think, was doing it it was all maybe and andrew cash might have been doing it um so all these people were all these musicians were delivering me on magazines a really fun job and uh and then one day i got the call like oh we're gonna uh review your new album and put you on the cover and it's like i can't possibly deliver the magazine and put you on the cover. And it's like, I can't possibly deliver the magazine with my picture on the cover. So I quit Now Magazine because we're taking all the glamour out of that, right?

That's funny. Yeah, it's like, look at me now. Okay, cool. But years later, go ahead. No, finish your story. Well, that was for an album my first cd called pomo a go-go and that came out on a little label called fringe product they you know they licensed it off me and like every other label situation i never i've never seen one cent from that but uh it was

a fun record and uh yeah oh man okay but many years later, you would be recognized as Best Local Guitarist. You got the Best Local Guitarist Award from Now Magazine's Reader's Poll. This was in 2000. Yeah, and, you know, Jeff Healy. Now, the drummer for Jeff Healy Band just passed away, actually, earlier this year, Tom Stephen. He's an FOTM, too. Now, I mean, it's okay. So much ground to cover. I'm just looking here.

What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to give you a couple of gifts. Then I'll get back to the Blair Packham note, and then I have a few other hot spots I want to hit. I hope you're having a good time. How are you doing there, Kurt Swinghammer? Awesome. Honored to be here.

Trying to mic for sure. Swinghammer, though, because you're having a good time. How are you doing there, Kurt Swinghammer? Awesome. Honored to be here. Swinghammer, though, because you're a guitarist, right? Like the Swinghammer is a fake name, right? Nope. My dad... Show me your driver's license. Yeah, my dad was born Louis Schwinghammer in Germany, came over here when he was three years old, and to avoid all the hoopla over there, and was fought in the second world war underage he snuck in as a 16 year old or something because he didn't want to be in a small town ontario as the only guy or whatever wow and uh his his lieutenant or whatever couldn't get their head around

pronouncing schwing you know and so he called him swing. And when my dad came back home, he just kept it. And he never changed it officially or anything, but it became Swinghammer. Fascinating. I was actually, so your dad, I'm glad you brought up your dad because Blair tipped me off that he met Paul McCartney. He did, yeah. In the 60s. When the Beatles came to Toronto, my dad was an electric glide motorcade cop, right? He rode the big Harley.

And the OPP were hired to be the security. And so they escorted the Beatles from Malton Airport to the King Eddie. And when they were at the airport, my dad had the wherewithal to get John and Paul's autograph on the same piece of paper, which is remarkable. Paul's autograph on the same piece of paper, which is remarkable. And then the telegram, which was one of the big newspapers at the time, the staff photographer shot my dad getting in his OPP drag with Paul's in his Pierre Cardin outfit. And, you know, it's just, I've got it blowing up really big because it's the coolest photo of all time. Well, you know, of course, you know, on the coverant pepper album there's the op is that's your dad's uh doing well i my dad didn't talk to me we didn't have rapport and i never did

hear how opp crest got there but i don't think it would have been my dad but because but print the legend kurt print the legend uh liberty valance here. Okay, because that's kind of wild that Schwinghammer, your father, is the reason there's an OPP logo on the cover of Sgt. Pepper. It looks like OPD, officially pronounced dead. That was one of the clues. Paul is dead, right? What a time to be alive.

Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home, by the way. See, that's how we roll here, Kurt. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home, by the way. See, that's how we roll here, Kurt. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. The good news is Paul is still with us. Still very much alive. By the way, we've talked quite a bit about Paul Myers. It's worth noting. I'm going to make this up, okay?

I'm just letting everyone know I'm making this up, but I'm going to say it anyway. Paul Myers' brother, Mike Myers, heard about Schwinghammer and said for Wayne Campbell of Wayne's World, Schwing! Right, you can also print that legend. It works too. Well, there is a character, I found it just a couple years ago, the band, either Bread or Air Supply, there was a musical about that incorporated all their tunes and told some crazy story.

And it was. It's got to be Air Supply because of his Jim Steinem connection. I feel like. Okay. I feel like that was all showboat show, like Broadway style songs. Right. Well, but there was a Toronto theater director who did this, mounted this show. And it was in like, I don know it's in thailand or someplace beautifully exotic

and somebody said hey man there's a character named kurt swinghammer in this musical and i was like what like and so i wrote them i said and and it turned and i read the stuff and the character kurt swinghammer in this musical of air supplier bread um is like a kind of a bad a and r guy kind of nasty music biz character which is like you know sometimes i only listen to music for 15 seconds but i'm not a industry insider right and uh so i wrote them i said well send me tickets and airplane tickets to your show and i won't sue you you And I was like, but nothing became of it. Interesting though. Yeah.

Because that's not a coincidence. Somebody. Well, the Toronto director. Yeah. Who, he would have heard my name. Of course. At some point. Of course he would have.

Of course. Very interesting. All right. So you got your beer from Great Lakes. Do you like Italian food, Kurt? Mm-hmm. Okay. I've got a large lasagna for you in my freezer

courtesy of Palma Pasta. Awesome. Delicious, authentic Italian Palma Pasta. Awesome. Delicious, authentic Italian food here in GTA. There are four locations, Mississauga and Oakville. Go to palmapasta.com. Thank you, Palma Pasta. I also have, by the way, Ridley Funeral Home wants you to have this measuring tape there in case you need to, emergency measurements

need to take place, Kurt. Good to know, thank you. Insert joke here, okay. But, Moneris, they've sent over this wireless speaker. It sounds damn good. And with that wireless speaker,

you're going to listen to season four of Yes, We Are Open, which is an award-winning podcast from Moneris, hosted by FOTM Al Grego, who I hope to see Thursday night because we're having TMLX 12 at 6 p.m. this coming Thursday,

which is May 11th. If you want the map, just Google TMLX 12 or write me, Mike, at torontomike.com. I'll send you the map where we're going to all gather and enjoy tasty beverages and check in with one another. But Al Grego's been traveling the country, talking to small business owners, gathering their stories so they can inspire entrepreneurs

and other small business owners like me. And this season's been awesome. Season four, yes, we are open. Subscribe, listen, enjoy. That's what you're going to do if you're a wireless speaker there. Sweet. And I am going to just shed out, recycle my electronics since I talked about this wireless speaker.

Because if you have any old tech any old electronics you need to dispose of, don't throw it in the garbage. It just ends up in the landfill and those chemicals do not belong in the landfill. Go to RecycleMyElectronics.ca and find out a safe place to drop off your old tech. So thank you

EPRA for RecycleMyElectronics.ca Let me go back to the Blair Packham note here. He says, uh, ask him. Oh, great question. How many albums have you released?

And before you give me a number, Blair wants you to know his favorites are in this. This is a great note, Blair, uh, the Vostok six that we talked about and black eyed Sue. He still loves the song Tammy Left Town. How many albums you released?

Well, there's at least a dozen. And I've got a couple in the can that I've been very slow to put out to the world because it's so depressing to put a record out these days. But I do have two that are mixed. Do you want to speak to that? Just like, I mean, I feel it's an obvious, like we all know,

but maybe hearing from someone, from your perspective, like how have things changed for a songwriter like yourself? Well, I've never relied on music to make a living other than writing for film and TV. And I was very much immersed in that world for a long time and, you know, very appreciative of those gigs and was able to buy a house downtown because of TV music.

But my music that I put out for myself is just, I'm doing it because I have an impulse to make music and there's no financial reward whatsoever. Well, you're an artist and that's some of your art that you're producing. Yeah. And, and I've never like expected it to, uh, do anything other than just make me feel good making music. Um, but, uh, at this point, point like it just feels like we've got there's too much stuff in the world uh in all areas and so contributing to this landfill of music is kind of depressing and there seems to be like this you know 24-hour news cycle of of music now that it's it's there for a day and then it disappears and even like pa like Paul McCartney will put out a record and people really don't care.

They don't really want to hear anything other than Blackbird or whatever. But, you know, I hear new stuff sometimes, like a band like Black Midi or something comes out of the blue and it's like, this is wild. It's visceral and it's exciting and inspiring. And thank God people do put out music but on a personal level it's it's kind of it's like going to a dance and no one asks you to dance you know it's like nothing's worse so uh i'm sort of on nothing's going to stop me from making music

but the idea of going through the trouble of of releasing is, yeah, I'm not that ambitious anymore. Let me play a little something here so we can at least talk about this project. Beneath the skin, the beast within, dying to be. Meet the stars. Tears and scars. We'll look in. Till the end. That's from Ginger Snaps 2. Unleashed. Have you seen Ginger Snaps 2?

Oh yeah, well I saw it like a million times. Just making sure there. Yeah. Now the thing of when you score a film, you watch it hundreds of times or at least segments of it. And yeah, that was uh actually lori my partner is singing and the only track that has any vocals on it and most of it's very very uh like hardcore techno i was at the time i was listening to a lot of autechre and you know sort of industrial edm or you know like um complicated sort of industrial EDM or, you know, like complicated sort of techno.

And so most of the music on that is really aggressive. And it's actually the most successful album I ever put out. One label decided to release it as, you know, the soundtrack. Right. it as a you know the soundtrack right and to this day like goth kids all over the world you know download it uh from band camp it's interesting you never know what will be your most popular piece of work like uh and it's going to be your uh you know ambient uh techno soundtrack to be called here horror film uh ginger snaps too yeah and the funny thing about that, the process of that, the producer, when we had a

meeting, said, you know, I don't want any guitar in this album. No. Can't have any guitar. And 99% of that album is made on guitar, but you'd never recognize it as guitar. Just processed through the smithereens. And he's, I played

a lap steel for the most part and just like throwing the bar at the thing and just crazy got the crazy sounds out of it because it was it's such an expressive instrument you know lapsed with a with a bar um so i but i never told the producer you by the way you know there's a lot of guitar in here but they they didn't it didn't sound like guitar here is the conclusion to the Blair Packham essay. Okay. So it gets a little, uh, gets a little real here. I really, uh, you know, kind of emotional here.

He writes, Kurt taught me by example to be a hugger. I began hugging my own dad again after maybe 10 years of not. And I did that because of Kurt. Oh, that's lovely. I met his dad and his mom. His mom's a really interesting painter. And they were just like, yeah, they're beautiful people. It's touching to hear that.

I had no idea. He says, I love Kurt and admire him deeply. So thank you, Blair. That's nice, yeah. Wow. All right's nice yeah alright gonna hit a few more hot spots here before we you've been amazing before we wrap up so here literally like these are like the best of the rest and then if I missed anything you really

wanted to talk about of course we'll give you an opportunity to talk about that but I played the I did play the Buffy St. Marie cut and I wanted to play this one oh it's so good guitar solo Here we are Faced With choice

Shutters and walls Are open Embrace Like it or not Or open embrace Like it or not The human race Is a song History is what it is Scars we inflict on each other don't die But slowly soak into the DNA of a sloth Of us all

This is Bruce Colburn's All, sorry, Us All. Beautiful song by Bruce. Yeah. It's from his most recent record, and Colin Linden produced, Gary Craig's on drums there, one of my favorite drummers, he's amazing. And, yeah, True North asked me to come up with some lyric videos. So I did three videos for the new Bruce. I'd done a couple animated videos for previous records. And, you know, they just give me total free reign.

You know, do what you want. Nobody had to prove anything and just, you know. And I just fell in love with this track. And I just fell in love with this track. And Bruce, for me, has always been a real example of how do you conduct yourself as a musician in Canada. Remarkable career. And you go through his work. It's just amazing. go through his work. It's just amazing. And I had done, when COVID hit, I did a little painting of a COVID molecule, sort of inspired by all these graphics I was seeing of like, how do you depict,

how do you render a COVID? So I did one. I just wanted a reminder when I left the house, oh, put on your mask. So I wanted to do a little painting of a COVID. But then I became like the dude in Close Encounters who does the mountain over and over and over again. I became obsessed with it and I ended up doing over

150 of these little COVIDs and would name them COVID number 20. COVID 21. But I felt like, what am I going to do with these things? I made a mural at home, sort of a mosaic of these things, which was really neat. But for Bruce's cover, the artist had this nice image, and the cover's called, this album's called Oh Sun, Oh Moon.

And the COVIDs that I was doing look celestial, look like, you know, it could be a star or it's a planet or something. And so I thought, oh, this relates to the cover. And it had a spiritual quality when I started animating them. quality when I started animating them it's they became mandalas and really seemed to be a nice image for the song and not distracting and just you know like it's just a textural image that's kind of fading in and out and and very subtle movements. And yeah, I was really, really enamored with that song and honored to do a visual for it. Amazing. Now to go further back, you mentioned murals a minute ago.

Is it true, Mr. Swinghammer, that a mural of yours can be seen in Tom Cruise's Cocktail. Yeah, that's true. I've not seen the film, but I did see a clip of it, I think, on YouTube or something. Do you know I've never seen the film either? Yeah. That's a blockbuster.

How did we both miss that film? I feel like most people have seen Cocktail. Yeah. Well, they shot at Lee's Palace upstairs in the dance cave. And I had done the, at Lee's Palace, I'd done the Lee's logo. I came up with the logo. And believe it or not, there's shots of wall, and I threw up this thing that says Dance Cave, like really, really big mural. And there's this shot of Tom Cruise making cocktails in the movie Cocktail. And in the background, there's maybe slightly out of focus

for some depth of field. There's the Dance Cave mural that I didn't, I don't think I get any credit or anything in the role at the end of the film yeah i i don't know did i own the i'm asking you as if you could ever have a clue if i own the cocktail uh soundtrack on cassette but i might have owned that at some point like i feel like that was a big i know it had it had beach boys kokomo on it but it had a lot of big jams on it, as I recall, the cocktail soundtrack. Anyway, tell me what you did for CKLN.

Yeah, CKLN, Community Radio Station, awesome station. A lot of great people came through there and have gone on to wonderful things. And I started just donating my graphics to them to do posters and things. And we started doing annual fundraising t-shirts. And at one point, I could not go out any night and not see somebody wearing those. They would do like maybe 10,000 of them.

They were all over the place. And did four or five of them i think and uh it was just really beautiful to give a you know create a visual representation for this station that i loved and was multicultural and very diverse and uh like once even my own stuff would get played sometimes and i remember like they they had these little like uh charts you know and i remember the first time before i started doing the graphics actually but when one of my first cassettes that i put out i got charted on ckln and it's gonna you know kind of right home to my mom say hey look i'm on a chart but i was right the artist right behind me was uh on a label

called radical cunts anonymous so i didn't I didn't show that to my mom. That's great. Speaking of CKLN, here's how we're going to tie things up here. DJ Ron Nelson, of course, hosted Fantastic Voyage on CKLN. DJ Ron Nelson's been over here to talk all about it. One of the local rappers that he broke on that program, a number of FOTMs, including Maestro fresh west and you did touch on it but now i need the specifics now so what's specific because you mentioned joel goldberg also a good fotm by the way hello hello joel if you're listening

so joel goldberg we talked about him directing the back let your backbone slide and drop the needle and what and i know they get you know juno awards and much music awards and all that but what specifically did you do for those videos is it that graffiti design like what is the okay that's a very cool uh aspect i wanted to get the specifics as what you were doing for those two videos yeah like set designs and uh graphics the second one uh Needle, was a bit more green screen stuff. So I generated a bunch of images and then people would be dancing in front of them via green screen. Backbone was shot in an old church. So I did some big

murals on seamless paper, like from the photography stuff. It would be like 8 by 30 feet long or whatever, right? some big murals on seamless paper, you know, like from the photography stuff, like be like eight by 30 feet long or whatever. Right. And, uh, yeah. And that actually, it was really remarkable because before that video I'd never heard of the guy. I'd, I'd, he, I remember going to the Rivoli one night and seeing these two really cool dudes and their, their jacket said dope state. I thought,

wow, that's so hip. And it turned out to be Maestro and, and his manager, Farty Flex. But so when I got the call from Joel to do this, I thought, cool,

this sounds neat. Let's do this video. And when we got to the space, there was like 200 kids lined up waiting to go in. And usually it's a nightmare trying to, you know, beg for people to be in the dance part of the video, right? But something was happening with him already. And then the video just blew up and it became the most requested video. It won Junos and much music awards.

And just a couple of years ago, like even like TIFF included it. It's like one of the 100 most important canadian moving images or something like that is very prestigious kind of amazing yeah amazing he had a role in that and just love it and shout out to fotm dwight drummond do as a cameo in both those videos he well yeah and he was on the crew of one of my videos that joel directed because he was doing like security for Electric Circus. Oh, yeah. And then, of course, that's Joel's thing.

And that's where Maestro gets his U.S. record deal because an artist named Stevie B was playing Electric Circus and saw him there and said, yeah. Well, and then Joel asked me to art direct a Stevie B video and he came up and he hated the stuff. He just said, I'm not doing it. Because maybe I just pushed it a bit too far. Gotcha.

Oh, you can't please everybody, Kurt. Come on. Now we're going to, before I close up a couple of just more recent Kurt Swinghammer songs, uh, although now I want to call you Swinghammer, but okay. I need to know because we cover very in depth here on Toronto Mike, we cover the ongoing history of CFNY. You designed the Casby Award logo? Yeah, that was, yeah, at one point, yeah.

Casby was a Canadian artist as selected by you. So it was an alternative to Juno's. Yeah, but they were called Juno's. Juno's was a sort of a, yeah. Yeah, they were like a parody of Juno's. Yeah. And David Marsden called them the You Knows. Yeah.

And then they morphed into Caspi's Canadian Artist that's Selected by You. Yeah. And you did the logo and the set, you did the set design. Yeah. Like, what does that mean? What's set design?

Well, just like when- It's a radio station, right? Well, but they had a live show. Right. And it needed some sort of continuity with the visuals. Right. Yeah, I did a big mural with quite, yeah, it would have been like 30 feet wide and 12 feet high or something.

And the program, so everything kind of tied together. And yeah, you know, CFNY was really important, right? Like that was an incredible station, like maybe one of the most interesting radio stations in North America, really, you know. It comes back to Rush. They wrote Spirit of Radio. See, everything's full circle here. Any, do any on-air personalities at CFNY, you want a name check here that you would, you would listen to back in the day?

Reiner Schwartz was there briefly and, but he had other things, like he did a video show on tvo which was just remarkable he was like a visionary and uh anticipated what would happen with music video uh and i i tried to watch that as any time it was kind of on late at night and uh it was so incredible what he would do and then he had then he did the news at Multicultural Television for a while. And he would dress up like a news anchor, kind of straight. But then he would editorialize on each piece. He would give his two cents, which I thought, yeah, that's what's lacking in news coverage, some opinions. Yeah, yeah.

lacking in news coverage, you know, some opinions. Yeah. Okay. I know FOTM Danny Elwell has wonderful things to say about Reiner Schwartz and what he meant to her when they worked together at CFNY. Right.

Yeah. But yeah, like in the day it was so happening and unlike any other commercial radio station, it was just incredible. And they were the first radio play that I ever got. Like, because they would actually play local cassettes. The Streets of Ontario with Liz Janik, right?

Right, Liz Janik, yes, absolutely. When you're bored one day, go listen to episode 1021 of Toronto Mic, which is 102.1, and it's got Liz Janik and a whole bunch of people. You'd want to, I mean, Ivor Hamilton, I'll name Scott Turner, May Potts, Alan Cross, David Marston, Humble and Fred, a whole bunch of interesting people on that program. Okay, so we're going to close with a couple of songs.

Mansbridge had tears in his eyes When he told the country the news That Jack Layton had died And a little part of me died too The part that had faith A politician could be on my side A leader I could believe in Who stood for what was right

but Mansbridge didn't know later on that very day in a Fonthill nursing home Grace Appleton passed away

Jack Layton and Grace Appleton passed away. Jagalayton and Grace Appleton. Jagalayton and Grace Appleton. Two names that never were mentioned in the same breath. She wasn't famous and she wasn't rich She lived and voted conservatively

But she was the president Of the Niagara Falls Horticultural Society Yeah They lit up the CN Tower. Bright orange of the NDP. And my mom's favorite flower. Her garden full of tiger lilies. Jagalitin and Grace Appleton.

Jagalitin and Grace Appleton Jack Layton and Grace Appleton Two names that never were together Jack Layton and Grace Appleton. Yeah. Tell me about this song. Well, my mom was... She was very sick and dying. And Laurie and I would drive to Font Hill, where she was in this nursing home. And one day we're going to drive,

and I turn on the news in the morning, and there's Mansbridge totally losing his shit because Jack had died. Jack and Olivia had asked me a number of times to do graphics for their campaigns and stuff and i you know i really admired jack so much and we were going to call our son layton but it just felt a little pretentious late in the swing hammer so we we ditched that idea eventually but so i just um uh you know it was a interesting coincidence that he died when my mom died.

And then when months go by and I was invited to do a recording out at the Canadian Music Center in Calgary, which has this phenomenal collection of synthesizers. And I thought, yeah yeah let's do it so i dragged michael philip voivoda out with me because i thought if if you do all the tech if you record everything and i'll play everything um it'll be great and uh so i i thought well i don't want to wing it you know like i thought i i could go out there and just improvise but i'm going to write everything out. And so I wrote an album about my mom and making use of all these incredible keyboards. And like, you know, they have like the theremin from 1928

and stuff like that. It's just phenomenal. And then the music, the only record I ever played that my mom actually said what is that? It's really interesting. It was Brian Eno's music for airports. And so when I got that I was playing it all the time

and she said yeah that's really interesting. And she'd never liked any music I ever played. And then when my dad died I played it at his funeral and later on she goes what was that music? Because that would have been separated by I don't know how many decades. she said what was that music was really really interesting and i thought oh the second time you've you remember hearing it or whatever it's

like you it resonated and then when she was dying i was playing it in the room just because it's so beautiful and yeah i thought that would resonate with her. So I analyzed the chord sequences from one of Eno's albums, Another Green World, and found two songs that share the same chord sequence. And then for all the songs on this album that I did about my mom, it's all on these musical relationships that are part of the Eno theme. Because he's always been one of my big heroes. So that's what that album's about.

And that's called Another Another. Yeah. Cause it was from another green world, the chords, but they're not overt. Like they're, it's kind of just like the, like I say, it's the DNA that's inside the songs. It's from you know and i should tell people listening if you go to swinghammer.bandcamp.com you can grab a whole bunch of great uh kurt swinghammer songs including the album another another we just heard from and i wanted to close with something from the kurt of Kensington.

It's a true story. I open my door to a day in the life as sung by the hippie across the street on an abysmal acoustic guitar with a bad bongle beat. And the Portuguese men are staring again as they do every day from the billiard hall Well, don't they have anything better to do with their lives? And they're at the $1, $2, $3 store

They've just run out of rich motels And Bruce Copen's photograph is no longer on the wall At the pizza joint around the corner Is it my imagination or have things settled down Since a bunch of fucking goobs got kicked out of the fort And the cops cracked down on the crack house on Kensington Well I close my door to Hotel California As played by the hippie across the street

on an abysmal acoustic guitar, an abysmal acoustic guitar, an abysmal acoustic guitar with a bad bongo beat. Kensington from the Kurt of Kensington. Again, that's at swinghammer.bandcamp.com as well. And that's a live track at the Glen Gould. We recorded an album live and no overdubs, no, a little bit of reverb. Amazing. Look at you. kurt i oh my god i took so much of your valuable time here is there anything i didn't cover that you wanted to share with everybody or you know you're welcome to save it for a sequel i mean i

thought about some at one point i thought hey i could start i could just ask him about all the different people he did like a guitar session work for. And then I said, like, what a list, like from great big C, real static, Sarah Sleen,

Royal wood. I mean, you mentioned Peter Murphy, Ani, uh, Lorraine Sagato, wild strawberries. And we always,

we talked quite a bit about Ron Sexsmith, uh, your, your wife, of course, but like I was going to, then I thought, okay,

what about all these different artists he was a house band guitarist for at different benefits and variety shows? And I said, I can ask about Kevin Drew and Emily Haynes and Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies. And of course, we talked a little bit about Andy Mays.

And then there's Andy Kim. They're both the FOTMs. But anything you wanted to share before we play some lowest of the low to say goodbye here? Right. Well, I do have a site that has the visual art and, you know, there's prints available and stuff like that. But if people just want to see what I'm currently working on, these landscape-based paintings are up there.

Yeah, if you search Kurt Springhammer, it'll come up. Okay, cool. And last thing, maybe, because I think I was very, very early in your career, but you collaborated with Andy Stokansky. Yeah, we did an album together. We were back in the day with ADAT, so you could just, you know, send

a tape back and forth and did a sort of fairly experimental thing, you know. Okay, cool. You ever worked with Lowest of the Low? I did a gig with Steve Stanley just a few months back. I did a gig with the Low like really early on. We were shared a bill.

But we haven't really crossed paths a lot. Well, thanks, Kurt, man. This was, like, I always thought of you as almost like a missing link kind of guy to fill in a whole bunch of cracks. And you've just been a part of the scene seemingly forever, musically, your artwork, the commercial work,

all of it. And, man, just now you're an FOTM. But thanks for doing this, buddy. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate having the excuse to get on my bike and ride out here. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful day to bike. Finally.

Although I bike in all weather, right? So I bike all year round. But man, what a day today was. And that brings us to the end of our 1,250 second show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. So Kurt, you're actively tweeting on Twitter. Whereabouts can we follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. So Kurt, you're actively tweeting on Twitter. Whereabouts can we follow

you on social media? I like the Facebook format a bit more, but I do have a Twitter thing. I don't really tweet. And Instagram I put images up of my work, basically. Follow Kurt and check out his great work. Our friends at

Great Lakes Brewery, they're at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Mineris is at Mineris. Recycle My Electronics are at EPRA. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. And I want to shout out the Moment Lab. If you've been struggling to get your message out to the world,

if you're looking to increase your brand's visibility and reach your target audience, the Moment Lab specializes in public relations and has a team of experienced professionals who know how to craft stories that resonate with your audience and generate positive media coverage. I'm happy to introduce you to my friends Matt and Jared at The Moment Lab to learn more about how they can help you achieve your public relations goals. They're on Twitter, at The Moment Lab. See you all later this week when my special guest is

Alan Frew of Glass Tiger. 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 great 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?

Are they picking up trash trash and then putting down ropes 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 Because everything is rosy and gray And your smile is fine, it's just like mine, and it won't go away. Cause everything is rosy and gray. 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 Shakalaka. 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 rosy now Everything is rosy Yeah everything is rosy and gray Yeah Everything is rosy and gray