Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Stephen Fearing: Toronto Mike'd #443

Episode Date: March 22, 2019

Mike chats with Stephen Fearing about his solo career, years with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, and Fearing and White before he kicks out the jams.

Great Lakes Brewery, eh? That's your sponsor. Great. I'm about to crack one open. Okay. What do they make? Welcome to episode 443 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Propertyinthe6.com, Palma Pasta, Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair, Buckle, and Camp Turnasol. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me this week is singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing. Welcome, Stephen. Thanks, Mike. Nice to see you. Nice to see your setup, too. Thanks, Mike.

Nice to see you. Nice to see your setup, too. This is new. This part here, like literally your third episode, I think, or fourth episode on the new board here. And I'm super, like, jazzed about it, so we can spend two hours talking about it if you like. I just love that you drive. You know, these days you drive up to somebody's house and you never know what's going to go on inside, right? It just looks like a suburban house. And then you come in and there's a recording studio in the basement, like a radio station.

This is where the magic happens. Yeah. Absolutely. Dude, what a pleasure to meet you. And you. And I'm glad. We've barely said hello and we're in front of a mic. This is the way to do it.

Honestly, by design. Yeah. I always hope my guest doesn't think I'm being like a bit of like rude no i think it's great you know years ago i had the pleasure of being interviewed by the late great peter zosky and uh i got ushered into the studio and i was really nervous because you know he's an icon and um i sat down opposite him at the desk and he looked up and he nodded at me and that was it and it was really uncomfortable because i sat there for 10 minutes and he ignored me and did his thing.

And then the producer said, okay, we're going to air and three, two, and at two, his head came up with this big smile. And at one, he looked at me and we started talking and I realized, oh, he wants to save it all for the air. I get it. That's exactly it. Like, I want to like learn about you and get to know you uh on the recording like that's straight up but yeah you got your coffee i

do i heard you off the top talk about the beer i'm going to crack one open yeah let's hear it octopus wants to fight let's get this here get the sound that's the sound of civilization right there, folks. Now, yeah, you're looking good. What do you got there? What's that one? That's a Restrained Jubilation Hell's Lager. That's a new one.

A nice lager. Yeah, they've got the whole selection here. The pompous ass. Pompous ass English ale, yeah. Always popular. I was actually at Great Lakes yesterday to meet my buddy, Steve Hagee. Hello, Steve.

And I got myself a Canuck pale ale. I think that's in the front row for you there, the staple, but thank you. Great Lakes for sponsoring the program and for giving that six pack to Steven, all yours. Take home with you.

Oh, it's homes in Victoria, right? I love Great Lakes beer. That's great. That's really great. Thank you. Is there a home to take it home to? You're a West Coast guy, though. Oh, I am, but

it's not going to last too long. I've got a bunch of friends whose houses I'm staying with and it's always nice to show up when you're couch surfing and touring with something to share other than just expecting to get into somebody's fridge. No, good, because the beer I wasn't worried about, like that was going to go today.

You got a show tonight. I do, Hughes Room. That's awesome. So that's like stop one on the tour, right? Yeah, yeah. And what time, like if you want it like right off the top, just the people listening right now, I'm going to drop this like 15 minutes after you leave.

Really? So people could theoretically, someone could hear this and like, I got to hear this guy live and be like, I got to go to Hughes Room. That's so great that you got it down. The show is at 8.30, I think, but you know, it's Hughes Room. So generally people come in and have something to eat and have a sort of the full meal deal. I don't know if there's that many tickets left, to be honest with you. There may be a handful,

but it was looking pretty tight there earlier. Well, what's the website if they want to check out other dates on the tour and stuff like. Stephenfearing.com or Facebook or, you know, hopefully at this point it's not so hard to find me, you know,

just do, do the Google. Just Google it. Just Google it. Just Google it. Google me, man. So I wasn't worried about the beer. That's going to go, but I have another gift.

So of course, thank you Great Lakes, but I have another sponsor, Palma Pasta. They're Mississauga's best fresh pasta and Italian food. Wow. And like,

I guess you can give that to somebody who you're couch surfing. Sure. Because that's a frozen, a large frozen lasagna. Yeah, well, you know, the folks that I'm staying with right now, yeah, I'll stick that in their freezer and with a little note,

and when they come home, because they're out of town, they'll come home to a nice lasagna. So that's so great. Wow. Now, it's funny because I... This is really good. I've been texting Tom Wilson.

It's like a brick, dude. That's a serious pasta. It's going to last a long time. I've been texting Tom Wilson. I gave him a heads up. Oh, Stephen's coming over. So I have a message from Tom. It's all lies, folks.

He goes, tell him to take the lasagna door prize and see if he can drop it off by dinner time so tom thoroughly enjoyed his uh his palma pasta lasagna oh that's great well tom if you're listening contact me um about writing and maybe i'll bring the pasta with me now um we're gonna play a lot of music in this episode. Yes. I got a lot of your music, which is fantastic. And then you're kicking out the jams. And I tweeted about this last night, but you sent me 11 jams. And I'm too chicken shit to say get it down to 10. So we're playing 11 jams for you today.

Okay. But I'm going to read a quote from the BBC. Great. Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best song smiths on the planet Okay. But I'm going to read a quote from the BBC. Great. Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best song smiths on the planet, quality albums, stunning shows. You want to guess who the BBC is talking about in that quote? It's you, man. I would wear a t-shirt with that quote on it. Yeah, it's pretty good.

Song smiths, I love it. You're always looking for, you know, and I think that, like that Stephen Foster, he's a great DJ up in, he's around Colchester, and a real music lover. He's one of those guys that you come across early on in your career and you just keep running into, you know, over the years because they're genuinely interested and they want to know, what are you doing and what are you doing next year and the year after that. But I was joking with him saying, you know, Stephen,

I use that quote all the time because it's just, you could put the BBC UK or just BBC and it's got such cachet to it. But he knows that when he's coming up with little one-liners like that he knows that um come up with the pithy quote right amazing quote and i want to acknowledge somebody's birthday today so let's where did i stick this here you go okay so i don't know about you but like i was never into star trek are you a trek? I watched it when I was younger. I think I kind of lost it around Deep Space Nine, which still seems kind of new to me,

but I know that's really ancient history. So you watched The Next Generation? A little bit. Okay, and the original series, probably. Oh, I watched the original series, yeah, for sure. I mean, I was a kid, so that was right up my alley then. Guess who turns 88 years old today? I don't know. I don't know.

Is Leonard Nimoy still alive? Oh, he passed. No, he's gone. He's gone, yeah. So Shatner? The Shatner, yes. Really, eh? William Shatner's birthday.

And it's funny because, of course, he's Captain Kirk, and everybody talks about Star Trek. And I think of T.J. Hooker. Isn't that strange? I think of Priceline.com. Oh, yeah. The negotiator. Shatner, you know what?

That guy has proven time has been kind to him because he was kind of a joke for a long time. And then we suddenly realized that he actually knew that and he was letting us all in on the joke. Right. What a brilliant man. So happy 88th birthday. I'm sure he listens to Toronto Mike, especially if Stephen Fearing's on.

I'm sure he's dialed in here. But this theme song, you know, Heather Locklear, a young Heather Locklear was in TJ Hooker. So this was, I don't know if you ever saw an episode of TJ Hooker, but. My wife references it a lot. Oh, is that right? Yeah. So happy birthday now uh i mentioned west coast so you're like uh you're in vancouver victoria victoria even nicer yeah but you're born in

vancouver i was born on the north shore and north van um well yeah 56 years ago but not 56 years ago today you don't't share a birthday with William Shatner. No, with DJ Hooker. That would be even more points with my wife if I did. That's right. And now I need to pause. Stephen, it can't be all about you. I need to pause your story too,

because I forgot to mention this when I was talking about Great Lakes Brewery. So I'm turning 45 on June 27. Okay, congrats. The 45 king of swing and coincidentally that's the day of TMLX3 that's the Toronto Mic'd listener experience we're going to do it on the patio of Great Lakes Beer on June 27th

now you're not a Toronto guy so you're excused if you can't make it okay because I have to let you off the hook because you're in Victoria right probably on the road or something excused if you can't make it. Okay. Because I have to let you off the hook because you're in Victoria. Right. Probably on the road or something.

But maybe you've bumped into the guys from Lowest of the Low. Uh-huh. In your travels. Over the years. They're performing at the event. Excellent. So I want to make sure all the big, the music fans listening know that

although Stephen Fearing won't be there. No. He's got a good excuse. You know, Ron Hawkins and Lawrence Nichols and hopefully more members of Lowest of the Low are going to be there. So come to Great Lakes Brewery on June 27th from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

for great music and some good conversation and just to collect all the listeners collecting on the patio. It'll be a great night. Great. Now back to you, Stephen. So I have like in my notes, it's like you're raised in Dublin. I was.

Like Dublin, Ireland? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. My ma is Irish. And when I was six years old, we moved back to Ireland. She and my dad split up and she moved back to where she was from. And so I grew up in Ireland. And when did you come back to Canada? I came back here. Oh, Lord, I got to do the math. I left Ireland after my leaving certificate, which is the state run exam that everybody does, you know, at the same time.

And so that was 79. I came back to Canada sort of early 80s, 83, 84, somewhere in there. I lived in the States for a while, a couple of years, so somewhere in there. Did you ever develop like an Irish accent? Oh God, yeah. So where is it? Does it come out when you're drinking? People used to tell me they could hear when I sang, which would make sense, but I don't know. I was born in Canada, and gradually I think it reasserts itself. I'm a bit of a chameleon. I can pick up things. If I stick around with somebody long enough

and they've got a more prominent accent, but as I get older that trait seems to be less and less it's like me when I watched Dairy Girls on Netflix recently this is a bunch of girls from Northern Ireland

and you start talking like that oh I gotta talk to my dad that's right Dairy Girls is so uh the accent is so thick it's it's it's intense what a great show it's really funny like i've been very funny singing its praises but uh yeah so i do the same thing and when i watched the wire like the first time i started talking with a bit of a baltimore accent like it just it comes out in you but yeah it's it if you're around around, it's almost like a character,

and you can sort of feel the inside of the character, and so you suddenly want to get in there. You want to get under the hood, and you find yourself taking it on. And if you're around people that don't understand, they think you're taking the piss out of them. You know, they start looking at you funny, and it's like, no, no, no, this is just me kind of getting the lay of the land. Right. Now let's get to the music. It's all about the music now.

So let me start this jam and then I have a nice message for you from my good friend Mark Hebbshire. So let's play... Let's play a little Stephen Fearing here. Then I'll bring it down and read Mark's quote. the only sound is like a diesel's distant thunder ring I'm a desolate town with a railroad station where my heart should be railroad station

where my heart should be I got a railroad station where my heart should be Nice. So here's the quote. Mark Hebbshire, by the way, his podcast, if you care at all about Toronto sports, and Stephen, I'm guessing you don't.

Not really a big sports guy, no. I'm actually a minority. I know most musicians are really heavy into sports, but because I moved around so much as a kid, I never really landed on a sport or a team, so I am the outsider. Yeah, a lot of Canadian musicians play hockey regularly. Yeah, and they're all over it.

And it's like, yeah, okay, whatever. I know Dave Bedini has all these games. And I know Ron Hawkins, they're all about it. But Mark Hebbshire, he has a podcast called Hebbsy on Sports, which is about Toronto sports. And I was chatting with him, and I said, Stephen Fearing's coming over. He was actually here this morning and he says,

please listen to the Juno nominated The Assassin's Apprentice, produced by my friend. Huh? His friend. Steve Berlin. From the Los Lobos band, which provided Mark Hebsey with his theme song,

which is Do the Murray by the Los Lobos band. He asked me to play the station, and he says he can't wait for the interview. So Hebbsy's a big fan. That's very cool. Well, thanks. I'm glad that he knows Steve Berlin, too, because Steve is one of the great human beings on Earth,

and it's nice to know that other people appreciate him. So let's go back. I mean, the obvious question I have is, when did you realize you wanted to be a musician? Like, uh, when did that strike you? I don't know. I mean, it's, it's never sort of a one, a one time deal. You sort of find yourself into it more and more. However, I can remember being four or five years old and, um, pretending that I was kind of like a dog in a marching band. And I was kind of on parade under the kitchen table or the dining room table.

I mean, this is going way back. And just wanting to be in a band, play music of some kind. So, I mean, it's in my family. It's been in my family for generations, music and some kind. So, I mean, it's in my family. It's been in my family for generations. Music and the stage, theater, that kind of thing. Music hall. So really, it's no big surprise. In fact, honestly, I kind of was born into this life.

Although I didn't realize that. You never do. But in hindsight, as you get older you kind of go oh yeah well this is nothing new it's great jam here at the station so yeah there's you know the the uh the the steel that you're hearing the the overblown steel is a guy named mike holder who's originally from toronto and uh I recorded this album out in Vancouver. And Mike, I don't know how Mike ended up on it, but he ended up playing all over it.

And he used to play with Prairie Oyster, and he was a great player. I don't know what he's doing now. I think he's driving a tour bus. Or no, I actually think he's driving a truck. He's done the reverse of every country song you've ever heard right truck driver ends up becoming a musician he's gone the other way always makes me think of uh uncle bobby right who was a big canadian children's entertainer and he used to drive the school bus oh yeah that's a

very canadian thing i think too yeah you gotta have another job. Yeah. But what was it like at True North Records, right? You worked with Bernie. I did. I got to work with Bernie for years and years. It was fantastic. And again, you know, in hindsight, you sort of look back and realize how lucky you are to have worked with one of the legends

and still call him a friend. You know, we parted company because the business is changing so much. And I kind of realized that I would do better to truly be an independent musician and hang on to those little margins. But I am so grateful that I got to work with Bernie. I learned a whole lot from him. And also I got to be on the same label as Bruce Coburn, you know, and that never hurts

to be sort of aligned with somebody that's so iconic and great as Bruce. He wrote the lyric, kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight, which is still one of my favorite like lyrics of all time. Oh yeah. Well, he also wrote, he wrote a lyric, I wonder if I'll end up like Bernie in

his dreams, a misplaced man. So right, that song. And when I first met Bernie, I realized that this was the Bernie in that song. Right. Waiting for a train, part hope, part myth. And it was really kind of an intense thing. It was like meeting Mickey Mouse or something. Because I'd known the song for so long, and then suddenly I was sitting across a desk talking about working with him and it was very exciting and really a great thing for me. It's sort of, I'm still living off of the things that we did which is to create a touring base for me in Canada which I don't think any of either of us realized how important that would be because it was always about getting, you know, up the next rung of the ladder. But

in hindsight, you realize that since the whole business just kind of fell away of records and all that, that actually the most important thing Bernie could have done for me was what we did, was create a touring base, a very solid touring base across Canada. And that's what I've been making my living off since. Well, yeah. Thank you,

Bernie. And that leads me to a question. I always wonder when I have like Canadian, great Canadian musicians come over and, uh, they've often had, they often have what I would call full-time gigs and then they're like music rock stars

or whatever in their spare time. Do you know what I mean? And I always wonder, money-wise, there's no money in streaming. No, not a penny. Literally, not a penny. That's what I hear.

I've heard that from people with big, much music, hit singles and top 40 radio singles. Well, it's just the percentage is so small. I think it's 0.003. I may be missing a zero, but it doesn't really matter after that per play, per stream. So, I mean, yeah. But that sucks.

At least if you sell a CD, there's a percentage of that that comes to the artist or whatever. So, as you just mentioned, you can be a professional musician because you tour in people. And I mean, do you find yourself like selling like vinyl records for fans and things of this nature? Or is it all just buy a ticket and then come see Stephen play? It's, you know, once you get them in the door,

it's try you know, once you get them in the door, it's, it's, it's try to try to augment that. I mean, I don't want to give anybody the impression that I don't love what I do and I don't, um, I don't cherish it in a way that's not, not like touchy feely, but I mean, it's just, I'm really lucky to get to do this and I get that. And on top of that, I really love it. So it's kind of a double win for me. But once you sort of acknowledge that, because that's the thing that's always got to be in the room, the relationship between the player and the audience is just, if that doesn't exist and there isn't this sort of mutual love, then the whole thing is, I don't even know what that is. But once you acknowledge that, then you start to get down to the reality of making a living. And so, yeah, it's like,

what can I sell to my fans? What can I sell them that they're going to walk away with and go, this is great. I really like having this. Be it a t-shirt, a vinyl, a CD, a book of photographs, a painting, a novel that I've, you know, like I'm thinking of Tom, I'm thinking of all my buddies who are out on the road doing this. And, and it's, it's, it's not, it's about making a living in a way that, that your fans come back the next time going, I really liked the whole experience. Even the thing that I, the little tchotchke that I bought and I walked away with, I liked that too. So I want more of him and it and everything. And that's the hardest thing.

I think even a restaurateur would tell you, you can get them in the door the first time, but can you get them to come back again and again and again? Because that's the only way you're going to make a living. And bring their friends and tell their family, like, you've got to hear this. Was there any point in your career that you had that

moment of like i should drive a truck like did you have that moment at all in your career yeah still do sometimes but um i i used to drive a bus up in the rockies um at a place called lake o'hara lodge and i i um it was you know it's like a tourist bus. We'd pick people up at Lake Louise Chateau and drive them up to this lodge. And it was just school buses. And it was kind of a gorgeous job because the responsibilities were so small and the scenery was so beautiful.

And every now and then I have fantasies of, you know, going back there and just sort of anonymously driving. I think that's the premise of American Beauty, I think, right? Like he quits and he's working a fast food restaurant because there's no responsibilities yeah it's like this fantasy you have and then you yeah but you i mean again uh we won't dwell on this because i want to i want to get you to blackie and the rodeo kings here but um you're doing what you love and you're creating art and sadly in my opinion, we don't compensate our artists the way we should. Like, if you played hockey, you know what I mean?

Like, but you're a fantastic musician. Therefore, you need to, you know, I'm not saying to go to bed hungry, but, you know. No, I don't go to bed hungry. Sometimes I think, Jesus, I'm 56 and I'm worried about the mortgage, you know, like that. But, you know, welcome to the rest of the planet, really. In some ways, doing what I do means that I can react a little faster when change happens. And it's always happening. Nothing is permanent.

And so you have to be able to adapt and react. And artists are real good at that because otherwise they die. You know, there's no margin. And that's sort of scary when you see artists that are getting older, like older than me, and they have no safety net. That's when it gets really scary. They have no safety net. That's when it gets really scary.

But generally we're pretty good at doing things on the fly and figuring out the angles and how to keep things on the table, keep food on the table. Now we're going to come back to your solo career because you've got, what, 10 albums under your belt as a solo artist? Something like that. It's in the double digits anyways, for sure. But at some point, you hook up with Colin

Linden and Tom Wilson. Let me play a little... What should I play here? The Lucky Ones. The Lucky Ones. And full disclosure, I have a little bit of a man crush on Tom Wilson, so I feel I should disclose that.

Totally understandable. Yeah, that's his artwork right there. Yeah, yeah. Tom's the greatest. Thank you for knowing Tom. Well, I can't even do Tom. Forget it. If I could do Tom Wilson, that's all I would do.

I would just talk like Tom Wilson. You just got to kind of breathe hard, get right close, and then say something about fucking us. Born with two hands who reach unknown A heart that knows the joys of love The stars above is a lucky one Oh, the lucky one Have these dreams to dream it all That's Tom on the right channel. You can hear him in your right ear.

He's got headphones on. You can hear his acoustic guitar sound. It's really distinctively him. Tell me the origin story of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. Like the superhero origin story. I know, it's pretty good. Well, when I moved to Ontario from, thank you for playing that. I love that tune.

When I moved from Vancouver, I realized I had to plug in quick. And, of course, I knew a whole bunch of people from the festival circuit. And I had signed with True North with Bernie. And Bernie put me on a tour opening for Bruce Coburn. It was a Nothing But a Burning Light tour. And Colin was the band leader, Colin Linden. And the band was John Diamond on bass. I think Kenny Pearson was playing keyboards

and Mish Puglio on drums and, of course, Bruce. And I got to hang around with those guys, and I realized that Colin Linden was the dude, and I needed to figure out something to do with him. So I started with Hey Let's Write a Song Together, which he was amenable to. And as I was driving back from Toronto to Guelph, where I lived, I'd just moved there,

I thought, I've got to come up with a project. And I knew that Colin, one of the things we had in common was Willie. Because Colin had been Willie's side man for like 25 years, since he was a kid. And I had come across Willie's music when I was a kid living in Ireland. I was 17 years old and my sister Jane gave me the album Hobo's Taunt because she heard that I was starting to play guitar. So I mentioned Willie, Colin's face lit up and as I was driving back to Guelph thinking about an idea I thought you know everybody was making tribute albums. It was kind of the era and thought, if we could make a tribute album to Willie, that would be a great project. So I emailed Colin as soon as I got home.

And this was in the day of dial-up. So you had to plug your computer into the phone jack, dial it up. And I'm just explaining this because most of your listeners will know this, but some of them won't remember this. And it was this whole thing of downloading the emails to your computer and then you'd answer them all and you'd set them back up. So as Colin is downloading this email, he's talking with his wife, Janice. He still lived in Toronto at the time. He's talking with Janice saying, you know, somebody should do a Willie P. Bennett tribute album. That would be a really cool

idea. And then he gets my email and it says, what do you think about doing a Willie P. Bennett tribute album? And he thought, okay. So Colin being Colin, this idea that I, this sort of bug that I put in his ear, we ran into each other at a John Hyatt concert like two nights later, and he said, I've been thinking about that idea, and we need another vocalist to do it right,

and we shouldn't do it as 12 artists doing 12 songs. We should form a band and be the only Willie P. Bennett tribute band in the world. And we need one more vocalist, and I think we should have Tom Wilson. And that was it. That was pretty much it. We did have a couple of guests, Russell DeKarl, Chris Whiteley, a couple of people came in who were close to Will, and of course, Willie was still alive. And it was Colin's band, which was John Diamond, Gary Craig on drums, and Richard Bell on keyboards, and that was Black in the Rodeo King so colin ran with the idea and uh the only

other real uh sort of deciding input i had was um coming up with a title and colin wanted to call it the willies and i said no man i can't call it the willies because i grew up in ireland right i mean we might as well call it the dicks if we're going to call it the Willys. So I said, how about Blackie and the Rodeo Kings after Willie's iconic song, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings? That's the story. So you start with the tribute band, and then how many albums later? Like 22 years later, anyway, nine albums or so?

Yeah. Do you credit? Yeah. Yeah, and we've got another one coming out. Is it 22? I thought it was 20. But you know what? I'm going to have to go and do my math.

Okay, I think it's more, I believe that you guys found Blackie and the Rodeo Kings in 1996. So we're now in 2019, so that to me is like 23, no, so yeah, 22.5 years or something you would know better than me yeah you know what I'd have to go and look

I don't remember these things but I know that next year is an anniversary so it must be the 20th anniversary so it must have been 98 that we got together but we didn't actually put a record out until 99 or something like that anyway it's our anniversary next year and we're putting another record out until 99 maybe that's something like that okay anyway uh it's a it's our anniversary

next year and we're putting another record out for that so it it quickly the first record higher hurt in the songs willie p bennett i remember because you know tom tom didn't have a driver's license tom has a driver's license now but then i hope so because he drove here yeah he does now and he owns cars yeah well we can talk about that later but well let's talk about that now uh well uh tom no you know you could talk to tom about that stuff if you want to have him and i'm not going to tell wilson's stories we'd be here all day but he um i was i would pick him up and and go to grand avenue with him which where we're making the And I remember talking to him and saying,

you know, this is really something. Like, this has really got something here. And he'd look at me and go, because he was so involved with Junkhouse. You know, they were flying to Jamaica and making videos. Well, that's the kind of band that I mentioned, the Much Music Hits and the Top 40 Radio in Canada, at least, a lot of Junk house out of my head and all this.

Yeah, they were, they were a serious band. And of course you never know in hindsight, you look at it and realize that they were, they were on the way out. But at the time, nobody knew that. And Tom was just sort of taking a moment from his busy schedule to do this Black in the Rodeo Kings thing. But I remember saying to him, this is, this has got legs. This really has got legs. This really has got legs.

There's something magical here. And I would drop him off at his house and try and entice him into doing a live show and talk about it. And then gradually what happened was that everybody in the media loved Willie P. Bennett. He is one of our great, great, great songwriters in the history of this country. People will put Willie's name in there.

I hate making comparisons with Americans, but in the same way that Townes Van Zandt never had commercial success, Willie's that to me. And so once the record was released the press was able to look at it and instead of you got some keen journalist saying to their editor I want to write a

story about Willie P. Bennett and the editor says why? How are you going to sell that? That's never going to fly and so instead they say I want to write a story about this band Black in the Rodeo Kings and there's the blues guy the folk guy, the rock guy. They've recorded a tribute album to this legend.

Everybody, it was like the perfect storm. And then everybody wanted to see us live. And the whole thing just took off. And that was the beauty of it. We're in the tail end, exactly the tail end, but that was Got You Covered by Blackie. Yes, with Roseanne. With Roseanne Cash. Which is cool.

Yeah. Very cool. And you're a big Johnny Cash fan, right? I am. I'm a I love artists like that. I love Roseanne. I mean, Roseanne's amazing. That album Kings and Queens was

Colin's idea. Taking what we are at heart as a collaboration and expanding that to collaborate with other artists, female artists. Oh, let me ask you about, okay, so I have a lot of time for Stephen Brunt, who, you know, you're not a sports guy, but Brunt. Oh, I know him through Woody Point. Well, this is where I'm going, right? Yeah.

So I know that Blackie and the Rodeo Kings have played the Woody Point Festival in Newfoundland. What was that like? That's amazing. It's great. I mean, you're in Newfoundland for one, so that's like the best part right there. But celebrating Canadian authors in a little outport town in Newfoundland where everybody can drop the hoity-toity and just wander about in the streets, go for a beer. It's pretty great. I think Tom Wilson told me a story about some guy just lending his car or something.

It's that kind of place or whatever. Yeah, you'll be walking around at 1 o'clock in the morning leaving a pub, and you'll run into Sheila Rogers. It's a lovely, lighthearted thing and a real celebration. And because it's out in the middle of nowhere, everybody can kind of drop the hustle for a while. If you ever go back, bring me with you. What is this?

So you mentioned tribute, like tribute albums were all the rage or whatever. So there were a couple of these. We borrow tunes from Neil Young tribute albums. And this is, of course, Unknown Legend. Unknown Legend, right. I love that guitar riff. This is a little band known as Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. I never saw a woman look fine I used to order just to watch her float across the floor.

She grew up in a small town. Never put her roots down. Daddy always kept on moving, so she did too Man, I'm a big Neil Young fan forever. Somewhere on a desert highway There you guys are. She rides a Harley Davidson Her long blonde hair Flying in the wind.

She's been running half her life. Man, so do you remember recording this, Unloaned Legend? Very vaguely, very vaguely. There's some songs, you know, it's amazing. I recognized it when I heard it, but I couldn't place what it was. And you'll never know what will resonate with somebody. Like, here you are in some guy's basement in South Etobicoke, and he wants to play the song you don't remember recording for the Borrowed Tunes.

Borrowed Tunes 2, I think it was. Yeah, that's right. I mean, Neil Young's a great songwriter. I like Neil Young performing Neil Young songs, but I really like other people doing it because it's sort of like a Bob Dylan thing going on there, right? Where other artists can sometimes do it even better. Yeah, I think sometimes you can find your way into a writer's stuff

and find stuff they didn't know was there. For sure, for sure. I also think that Neil Young is so prolific that he doesn't spend much time he like cranks them out. Sometimes you might as a performer miss a nuance because

that's not what's important. It's just about getting on to the next thing. Do you recognize this song please? You drink your coffee. I'm going to listen for a moment here. And drink my beer. So this is Fearing in white with the the early version of this song before nick low got his hands on it because nick nick recorded this this was one of the songs we offered up to um to the kings and kings record

and nick low recorded it which was amazing but he wrote to colin and Kings record, and Nick Lowe recorded it, which was amazing. But he wrote to Colin, and he said, yeah, I'd love to record that song, but do you mind if I change the lyrics? So Colin wrote to me and said, are you cool with this? I'm like, of course. He can do whatever he wants. And so I finally got to last, no, a couple of years ago,

we played the Shrewsbury Festival in England, and Nick was on the bill, and we all went cap in hand backstage to meet the mighty Nick Lowe, who was delightful and gracious. And I got to ask him, I got to say, look, why did you change those lyrics? Because he changed a few things.

There's one of the lines, I can't think of them with the song in the background, but he changed lyrics. He said, I'm about six, eight years older than you. And those lyrics wouldn't have fit coming out of my mouth. People wouldn't have believed me. So I made the character a little bit older. And in doing so, he tightened up the lyrics. He said, I had originally written, I was born at the start of the summer of love. I grew up in a world full of change. That was what I originally wrote.

And he said, the summer of love. I'll bring it down so you can. Yeah. Something about that he wasn't born at the start of the summer of love, but he was actually, he was there at the start of the Summer of Love, and he was loose in a world full of change, which me saying loose in a world full of change is so great, because loose change, right, it immediately evokes that.

So it was kind of a masterful songwriting thing to do, which is he just subtly made the character a little bit older, and he also tightened up the metaphors and made the whole song stronger. It was quite magical. Nice, but as we've learned from Brian Adams, who could not possibly have been playing that sixth string in the summer of 69. Do the math on that.

It's okay. We forgive the anachronisms, or whatever they're called. What I like about Nick is he's always really authentic. You always believe him when he's singing. What, are you singing about half a boy and half a man? Or are you singing about his 12 steps to quit your babe?

He's always believable. And I think it's because he pays attention to stuff like that as a writer. Now, who's the white in Fearing in White? It's Andy White. We were talking about Northern Ireland before. Andy, and of course Andy will never hear this so I can do the worst Northern Ireland impersonation

ever because that's where Andy's from. He's from Belfast. And how did you just wanted to record together because you released a couple albums? Yeah. And you toured together? We did. We ran into each other. Andy had a very, very brief period of his life where he was signed to True North Records.

So Bernie licensed an Andy White record from a cooking vinyl or something. And Andy was sort of making a foray into the Canadian scene with a True North release. And we ended up at the Winnipeg Folk Fest. And Bernie had sort of said, hey, keep an eye out for Andy White, who, of course, I was familiar with from his rave on Andy White days. And I just went up to him backstage and sort of said, hey, you know,

I'm Stephen and introduced myself. And we kind of went past the usual nice-to-meet-you backstage chit-chat and actually got into it and realized that we had a whole lot in common because he grew up in Belfast, I grew up in Dublin, we're about the same age, a lot of similar musical references. And Andy, of course, never misses a trick. So he suddenly went, hey, here's somebody that lives in Ontario. I'm coming through Ontario.

I can crash at his house. So he said, I'm coming through town. We should get together. And then quietly introduced the idea of sleeping at my house. And of course, I was happy to have him. And so that arrangement went on for a couple of years. He'd come through town, sleep on my couch. I actually had an air bed, an air mattress that I put up in my office shed,

and he slept on that, and it would collapse. And then I'd get him a better one the next time he came. It would de-inflate as well. But we started writing songs together. And at some point we started demoing them, and I brought them to black in the rodeo kings at first and then we decided you know we've got enough songs we should make a record so scott merit uh yeah guelph legend recording studio scott merit um we went to his

place and uh and we made another one and then we toured them because once you got a record out you got a tour and then we realized that it financially was completely unfeasible because Andy lives in Australia now. And so that was the end of that. Yeah. So if you're keeping score at home, we have Stephen Fearing, the solo artist. And we'll get back to that actually right now. But then we have, of course, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. And we have Fearing and White.

Yeah. Keep in track. Multiple income streams, folks. Nice. guitar solo Every soul's a sailor Rolling on the deep. The tinker and the tailor, the beggar and the thief. The winners and the failures, the shepherd and the sheep.

It's beautiful, man. Yeah, it's a pretty, I don't know. It sounds weird sometimes when you get all misty about your own stuff, Beautiful, man. Sometimes I really do because I sat there and I agonized over every single syllable. That one came pretty quick right at the end of a week of writing wherein most of the material for that album was written during that week. And this is one of the last tunes I wrote and it really just kind of came out of the air. It was quite a lovely thing. It's a gift, man. It is. You know, I can't go do that.

I tried. So I guess you wrote that in 2016 because this is Every Soul's a Sailor. It's the title track from your 2017 album of the same name. And there's, did this win any awards? It won a Canadian Folk Music Award for, I don't know what, for something, for being good guitarist. I don't know. Have you ever won a Juno?

I have. I won a Juno on my own for Yellow Jacket, which was very cool. And then Black and the Rodeo Kings won one as well. And the secret to winning a Juno is do not attend. Every time I've attended the Junos that I've been nominated, I have not won nothing, not even close. And every time that I have not attended that I have been nominated for something,

not every time, but the only times I've ever won anything at the Junos was when I wasn't there. So from now on, anytime I'm nominated, I'm not going, which is great because, honestly, I'd rather poke my eye out with a hot needle. All right, now we're talking. This is real talk here. So we just had it in London, I guess, because I watched it. Sarah McLachlan hosted.

A couple of Colin James and Splashin' Boots are some former guests that actually won Junos. Molly Johnson was nominated. She's been on the show. But tell me, like, it looks like a good time. Is it looks to be deceiving? Oh, no. It is a good time because it's a whole bunch of your peers. And I think the more you're in the business or in the game,

probably the more fun it is because you just know people. And so maybe not take it this seriously, but at first it's very serious stuff and it's not a lot of fun at all. Probably the best one I ever went to was the very, very first time I was nominated and was like new male vocalist of the year which apparently is the kiss of death so if you win that you're fucked your career is over i didn't know that i believe that so i was nominated and this was before they televised it so this is going way back and uh i didn't win um and i was uh having a leak after in the bathroom and vaultiesi's at this, you know, the cubicle beside me. And he says,

he says, you know, the really important thing to remember is that you get nominated because if you think about it, there's however many thousands artists that, that, that are out there that are new male vocalists and they nominate it down to three and then they pick one. So the real cut happens in the nomination. If you get nominated, that's the most important thing, which was very, very sweet of Valdi, and I will forever be grateful to him because he was sort of doing a bit of a there, there, son. But who won that year?

I don't know. You don't remember that? No, I don't remember. I got nominated for years. I got nominated a lot. I was like the Susan Lucci of Canadian folk music because I never won the fucking thing. That's funny.

That's funny. Now, okay, so that was Every Soul's a Sailor. That's the 2017 album, but you put out an album in 2018. Yeah, right. Forgot that. Nice vinyl pops on this one yeah I have walked a long way to freedom And tried not to stumble and fall down in the road

I discovered the secret of climbing these great hills I would guess from listening to this that you got that file from the YouTube clip. That's correct. So what we're listening to is a record that I recorded in England in 2017 when I was touring Every Soul is a Sailor. when I was touring Every Soul is a Sailor. My friend Roy Gandy, who is in his 70s and started a label, he started a company called Riga back in the late 70s somewhere. Turntables, speakers, amplifiers, and Riga are considered,

Riga turntables are kind of considered a bit of a blue chip company. And they're some of the great ones. They're really simple. They're not complicated at all. The sort of lower end models, you have to move the tone arm by hand. But they just sound great. And Roy is completely obsessed, and I've spent a lot of time with him, about things that mere mortals don't even know about. He improves things by microns, which is what you measure the thickness of your hair in,

right? So he wanted to make a record with me with as little technology as possible. And so we literally took two very nice microphones and went direct to a refurbished studer uh reel to reel and from that um to vinyl um so the irony that we're listening to uh this because then i had to of course you gotta you've got to make a video of everything now. Everybody watches music. They don't listen to it. And so to put it into the digital realm and to include the digital download with the vinyl-only album, because we didn't make a CD of it, I had to go to David Travers-Smith, who's the producer-engineer who made Every Souls a Sailor with me,

Toronto guy. And David took the test pressing, which is from Germany, and he subtracted the digital files from that by dropping the needle and putting it in the digital realm. And then he removed some of the hisses and pops that you get even with the most pristine vinyl, especially when you compress it. because the beauty of vinyl is that the dynamic range is huge. CDs and digital is much more compressed, which we don't need to get into that, but it just makes everything louder. And so when you compress it, the noise floor, the little crackles and static pops come up. And so we removed a whole bunch of them and uh and we put it out as as the digital download attachment

and then when i made the video for youtube which i made by compiling a bunch of free clips that i found that seemed to be you know i spent hours with filmora creating this video and i took the digital file and i overlaid it and i needed needed a long run-in to get the credits. And so I found online hisses and crackles and pops, and I added them in to give the long intro. And added them back because it sounded so clean. But what we're listening to now is a digital version of a digital version of the original analog version. And all I can tell you is that if you ever get like it's very limited run but it finals your thing come and get a copy

of this album from me if you're coming to hughes room tonight get one there you can get them from me online but there's very few left it's the most exquisite sounding record because we didn't run it through mixing desks there's there's there's no uh there's no nothing really nothing added to it no eq it's just two decent microphones um the performances that you hear are intact there was no cut and paste no splicing nothing and it's a it's a very it's it's it's a really interesting sounding record it's very intimate i don't think we've uh named the album yet but this is the secret of climbing and it's uh like you as you said vinyl only release yeah which is which is cool now i in this home that you're sitting in right now there's there is no way to play vinyl yeah i know current moment well

like the funniest thing with this record is that I've had three pretty raving reviews of the album, and everybody that's reviewed it has listened to the digital download, which is, in fact, the vinyl, but turned into the digital realm. But I haven't had anybody who dropped the needle and listened to the record.

And I can tell you that the digital download sounds really good, but the vinyl sounds even better. And it's ironic that in this day and age, our generation, and I don't know how old you are, Mike. I'm turning 45. Yeah, you're about 10 years younger than me. So my generation, but nominally yours, they're not listening to vinyl.

The vinyl revolution that's happening, and Ikea is putting a turntable out this year, right? So we're not talking about some fringy thing. This is actually going as much as anything. Well, guests keep bringing me vinyl. I see Bare Naked Ladies, Look People, Tom Wilson, they all bring me vinyl. So there's definitely a vinyl resurgence going on. There is. I mean, there's nothing can be mainstream anymore except streaming which is i don't even want to go there because it's so fucked but right uh as much as things can be mainstream vinyl has has clawed its way back into the mainstream because companies like ikea don't tool up no for something that's fringy and uh it's just that our generation, my generation, the fifties, you know, give or take 10 years, they're not buying it.

Mostly some are, but most of them aren't. It's the younger, younger, younger generation that's buying it. And, uh, so for the likes of us who grew up with vinyl and are kind of excited about going back to it because it is, I mean, it's just great artwork. You got way more real estate. The sonic qualities are better. Yes. Unfortunately, carrying 200 of them around in your suitcase is not viable. It is. I will say this. It is awfully inconvenient. It is inconvenience, but it's, it's, it's,

it's a much more touchy feely medium than, than streaming or any of that shit will ever be. But the irony is that the people that are doing what you're doing, by and large, that have enough stability in their lives to create a little radio station in their basement, generally aren't listening to vinyl. I'm making a very broad statement there. You're totally accurate there, I think. It's weird.

vinyl. I'm making a very broad statement there. You're totally accurate there I think. It's weird. Yeah, because I mean, everything's digitized and then all of a sudden we're supposed to go drop a needle and then flip the side and then, it's also not the least expensive hobby around. Like, it's rather inconvenient

and a little more pricey. So, you have to kind of really be into the nostalgic, just the tangible being able to touch the medium. I think there's a value in that. There is. There definitely is. And you know what?

I'm going to rant for about two minutes, and then I'll stop. MP3s, I think the hipster generation, bless their hearts, and I know I'm just even using the word as kind of annoying, but the hipster generation, bless their hearts, and I know I'm just even using the word as kind of annoying, but the hipster generation, the younger generation, what they get is the whole craft, brood, wood-fired, artisanal, all that stuff is quality. It's all about I want something that tastes better. I want something that chews better.

I want crunch and soft. I want all that stuff. I'm fed up with mass produced crap that has been so refined by our generation post-war that it's just awful. And MP3s are the exact oral equivalent of Wonder Bread. There is no, there's no nutrients left. You can only way you can take a file and squish it down that size is you remove things. People talk about compressing as in you think you take something and you squeeze it down and everything's intact. And it's not true. They actually remove a lot of stuff. So it's like the equivalent of the really dodgy tomatoes that you buy at No Name that are kind of translucent, sort of red,

but they look like they've been injected with dye. That's what MP3s are. They've just removed so much content that all of the subtleties and the overtones and stuff that's there that we all register, but you only really notice it when it's gone if you AB. So sadly, there's a whole generation, my daughter's generation has grown up with MP3s. And those that are smart are trying to educate their ears. And it will take some re-education because if you grow up eating Wonder Bread, like first time you eat a loaf of bread that was made in a wood-fired oven with, you know, red fife wheat, it's kind of going to blow your mind, and it might actually not be even digestible at first. You got to retrain yourself again. I could have done two hours on these kinds of Stephen Fearing rants. That was great. That was great. And in the background,

I started playing When My Baby Calls My Name, Just another jam from The Secret of Climbing. Yes. Speaking of vinyl, a little taste of that. A little Irish lilt in there. Yeah, there is. This song, I wrote this for the album That's How I Walk, which I made with Colin Linden producing after we made Industrial Lullaby, which is the first record I made with Colin after we'd made the first Black in the Rodeo Kings record.

So it was kind of my introduction to working with Colin. And I drove down to Colin's place in Nashville because at this point he was living in Nashville to make this record with him. And it was in 2011. And I woke up in the morning, having made the drive from Guelph, and Colin was standing in his living room pointing at the television screen, and it was the Twin Towers.

And suddenly making a record seemed like the stupidest thing in the world. And this song was what brought the record back in track because in the midst of all of that horror and confusion, after about two days of kind of wondering whether we were going to go ahead or quit the whole project, and I couldn't go home because the borders were closed, we ended up going over to this woman's house who had arranged the string parts for this song, which the version that exists on that record. And she played it for

us and it was so beautiful. And we all sat there listening to it, weeping, because it was just gorgeous. And I realized certainly, I don't know about everybody else, but I realized, oh, this is what you do in the face of this kind of horror, is you do something pretty, really pretty. See if you can make something beautiful in the midst of it. So suddenly there was like a way into making the record because otherwise it just seemed obscene to make a record whilst that kind of horror was going on.

So that song really was sort of the gateway back into doing something creative in the midst of that. It's a beautiful song. Yeah, it's a pretty song. And now for something completely different, okay? Politician in a glass of water. Hop in the time machine with me here. We're going to go back

20 years ago. So the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 20 years ago this week was this. It's a little jarring after listening to your music, which is so like roots and... Great synth stuff. Can you name this tune? Do you believe in love after love?

I think this is the birth of autotune. Yep, I think you're right. No matter how hard I try... It was the first time I think that somebody deliberately used it as an effect as opposed to trying to make something better. Right. So, of course, this is, and I believe it still has the record for like,

let me phrase this properly, oldest female singer to have a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100. Is that right? I believe so. Share her, bless her heart. It's a young person's game, apparently, the Billboard charts these days. Yeah.

Do you ever wish, like, I always wonder, like, someone of yourself, where it's so, it's so holistic and artistic and beautiful. Is that our transition, by the way? Into the gym? No, this is actually, okay, no, good point. You're like, what the hell is Mike doing here? No, no, I'm down with it.

Sorry, keep going with your train of thought, because I'm just being rude. But I thought, holy shit, are we using share okay no good point you're like what the hell is mike doing no no i'm down with it i'm sorry keep going with your train of thought because i'm just but i thought holy shit are we using share as the the transition no share is actually this is a uh believe it or not this is for a sponsor this is for this is remember the time which is brought to you by fast time watch and jewelry repair so they've been doing quality watch and jewelry repairs for over 30 years. So if you Steven or anyone listening has a watch that needs a new band or a battery replaced or jewelry that needs repairs

go to Fast Time. Go to FastTimeWatchRepair.com to find a location near you. Their newest location is now open in Richmond Hill. But here's a killer deal. If you mention that you heard about them on Toronto Mic'd, you get 15%

off any regular priced watch battery installation. So that's why I'm playing Cher, but I'm now curious. And again, this is kind of conversations I've had with the guys in Sloan and other great Canadian artists.

How important is it to get like a hit? Like, is there any regrets that you didn't sell out? I've never had a hit really. So I don't know how important it is. I mean, did you ever have that moment? Like we're F artistic integrity.

And what I think is, is right here. I'm going to sell out and create something like this. This is clearly this song I'm going to sell out and create something like this. This is clearly, this song I'm listening to now, which is catchy and fun, is clearly written to be a hit. Yeah, my take is

maybe a little different in that I don't think that it's a decision that you make sitting around your kitchen table where you go, right, I'm going to sell out to Satan and make hit records. I think you either have the ability to do it or you don't. And if you have the ability to do it, then you do it.

And that's when you get artists like Sting or you name them. I'm not thinking so much Cher because I don't think of her as a songwriter. So that's a little different, right? If you were just a performer, then I think in some ways that's another subject. But as a writer, I think that if you have the ability to write hit songs, you do that until the market has moved away from the kind of hit songs that you write, and then you become a legacy artist in another way.

And maybe if you're lucky, like if you're like Rod Stewart or somebody, I mean, Rod Stewart I don't think of as a writer so much either, but you have the ability to kind of explore the stuff that's always interested in you. to kind of explore the stuff that's always interested in you. But it's not that the artist makes the decision to be a hit artist. It's that the artist happens to be writing the right material at the right time.

And that's what everybody wants. So, you know, like Bernie, when Bernie and I signed together, he laughed at me because I showed up at his office in the old Much Music building on... 299 Queen? Yeah, in church. He was... Yeah, that's where he used to be, like fourth floor or something. Oh, that's the 99 Queen Street East.

Yeah, that's... Right. That's... Right. So I showed up there for our very first meeting and I had, you know, my press kit. I had my bio, photographs, press kit, like all that stuff. And I laid it on his desk. And he looked at me and he said, this is so funny,

because he said, I signed Bruce Coburn so many years ago. I think Bernie and Bruce signed in like 69 together. They created True North, started True North for Bruce, I think. And he said, Bruce didn't for Bruce, I think. Right. And he said, Bruce didn't know any of this stuff. He didn't have any of this stuff. And in some ways, I was coming along as a singer-songwriter in that genre of music after the party was over.

Bernie always thought, you know, I'm going to sign Stephen and we'll have him headlining at Massey Hall within five years, four or five years. Because he'd done that with Bruce, with Murray McLachlan, with, like, you name it, right? True North, all of those artists were signed to True North. But by the time I came along, and I mean, whether it was me or whether it was the time, who knows? But that never happened. and in some ways that genre had come and gone so if i had been born 20 years 10 years earlier maybe i would have had hits but that's i mean i don't really honestly i i never really think about that stuff too much there was

a time when i was signed to True North and we were trying and Bernie would say, can you bring me a three and a half minute song for fuck's sake? Not these five minute like long long things. And it's just like, I'm doing the best I can. I'm really trying but I have no idea what you're talking about.

And I still don't. I mean I still think oh that's a single. And it's not even like I can't even get it onto CBC's Top 20 anymore because I am so far away from what is current, from what is. Honestly, I play this game sometimes, which is look at the band name and then the album name and try and figure out which is which because I haven't a clue. look at the band name and then the album name and try and figure out which is which because i have no clue i don't know if you know land of of smoke and mirrors is the song by elephant in the jungle or if elephant in the jungle right yeah i don't know yeah like cage the elephant is that the song

or is that the band you it's just the way it is i i you know i let's i watch my parents do that i'll watch my daughter do that I watch my daughter do that if I am lucky enough to be around that's the way it is so you just keep doing what you do and if you're lucky maybe you get to have a third reel

like Johnny Cash where suddenly you're playing the Viper Room and Johnny Depp is hanging out with his pals and they're listening to you sing Tennessee Stud, which was written fucking, like, you know, who knows how it works. But you do what you do, and maybe when you're young, you happen to come into focus at the right time with the zeitgeist, and maybe you don't.

Who knows? Doesn't matter. Really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If you can make a living, and you can love what you do, you're laughing, John. You're laughing, John. You're laughing. The song we're playing is by Nana Muscuri.

Yes. It's Le Tournesol is the name of the song. And I play it for my friends at Camp Tournesol. They've been around since 2001. They provide French camps in the GTA for tens of thousands of children ages 4 to 14. If you have a child and you actually, Stephen, you're 14 years old, right? Okay, so aged out of the Camp Tournesol here. But if you have a child four to 14, you need to look at the camps offered by Camp Tournesol.

Go to campt.ca. They have day camps, overnight experiences. They have day camps, overnight experiences. There's camps for francophones, French immersion students, people who have no French experience. If you do sign your child up or your grandchild up for a French camp this summer, and you should because then you get to watch their French skills blossom over the summer, use the promo code Mike2019. So Mike2019. the summer use the promo code mike 2019 so mike 2019 use that promo code because you'll save money

and it'll tell the folks that the good folks at camp turn a soul that sponsoring toronto miked was a good idea and we all like that i love that you do that it's uh it's it's really like old school radio. It's really great. Exactly, because it's not like we stop and then I play an ad. No, it's great. Because that's new school radio. But in the old days, it's like the live reads. And I try to weave them organically into the content.

Yeah. We've just had, I don't know, tap your head if you need a bio break at any point. Because we're an hour and ten minutes in. And I'm loving this. And now I realize we haven't kicked out the jams yet that's still coming so i could talk the hind legs of our donkey there mike don't worry about it but you've had such a like long and interesting career and i what i feel with you is that uh music fans in this country know your name and the casual person might not like i saw that tweet from that

guy who's like who's steven fearing or whatever because he wants me to have like yeah you saw that right hello you're a unruly bastard who do you think i'm like listen to the episode and find out like educate yourself because you're missing out so i just want to say thank you to brian gerstein from property in the six.com againcom. Again, if you're buying and or selling in the next six months, you got to talk to Brian, 416-873-0292. And if you want information from Brian about the Galleria Mall redevelopment, so this is Dufferin and DuPont, my favorite mall to hate, if you will. I worked there for five years.

They're going to raise it and then put up a new development, and it's happening now. And Brian's at PSR Brokerage, and they have exclusive rights to sell this thing. You need to get in on this. So talk to Brian from propertyinthesix.com. He's a great guy, big-time basketball fan. He asked a great question of Michael Grange the other day,

and he's excited that Leo Roudens is coming on the show as well. So, Brian, again, propertyinthesix.com. Call him at 416-873-0292 and tell him Toronto Mike sent you. All right, Stephen, one more question. Yes. Are you ready to kick out the jam? I am. Yeah. I went back to the doctor to get another shrink.

I sit and tell him about my weekend, but he never says what he thinks. Can you see the real me, doctor? Doctor! Can you see the real me, doctor? Oh, doctor! The real me, the who? Oh, come on! That bass playing is insane!

The whole band, they were one of the greats. When I was going to school in Ireland, I was there when punk music hit, and some of the bands kind of disappeared overnight. Bands like Status Quo, they were this great band that we loved, rocking all over the world. And Slade, and The The Suite and all those bands.

And a whole bunch of them just chucked it in almost overnight, it seemed, when punk came along. And then there were bands like The Who that had been around, and they hung on and they hung on. And when Quadrophenia came out, I went and saw it at the movie theater with my buds. And one of my friends friends he basically became a mod over the weekend he he found his right he was sort of a a young junior punk like we all were with you know we had you could put safety pins in your cheek so that they weren't actually piercing anything they were just hanging in there and then that was was your cred. And an army jacket and tight black pants. That's what we all wore.

And we had monkey boots. Not Doc Martens, but we had monkey boots. And then so he went to school on Friday looking like that. And he came to school on Monday and he was all modded out. And he had a parka.

And it was just like, wow, what happened to you? And he saw a quadrophenia, and that was it for him. That was it. Yeah. Amazing. I ended up with a preacher For the lies and hate

I seemed to scare him a little So he showed me to the golden gate Was it tough to pick just one Who's track? Like, have you had to pick one from this band? Well, I mean, anything from this album. This album in particular was my Who album for sure. But, I mean, you know, you were talking about hits. Like, this stuff was, that was the hits.

That's not the hit sound now. You can come out with that stuff now. I mean, unless you're in, like, Nostalgia Act, where you could be like the Sheepdogs, where it's like, okay, well... It's like the Guess Who. Yeah, it's sort of like a pastiche of what was. It's kind of looking backwards.

Not to take anything away from them at all, but that's what it is. So anybody that would come out with this music now would have a pretty hard time. So true. And you know what I love about this track? Is what you just have, you know, you edit it out right there, but it's the segues.

And that was the whole, you know, Pete Townsend's thing. He was so into concept records and making a bigger statement and kind of the grandiosity of sort of opera and big screen ideas. But at its heart, they were punks. They were a punk band. They were scrappy. Everything is so scrappy sounding, and it's really raw. They were a fantastic band.

Well, Alan Cross came on the show and said that the greatest scream in rock and roll, right? There's really raw. They were a fantastic band. Well, Alan Cross came on the show and said that the greatest scream in rock and roll. Yeah. Right? There's no better. And then there's this. I love this song so much. I've tried to cover it.

It's really hard because the vocal range is huge and the chords are unreal. Not a prison for your friends to open. This boy's too young to be seen. So I could just listen to this and not say a word for the rest of the kick out the jams session. Kind of feel like you want me to talk, but I can also imagine somebody listening to this going, would you just shut up and let this music play like a motor mouth idiot? The great debate.

But I always feel like, like you know people can hear yellow brick road anytime they want nowadays like ask google to play it or whatever and i feel like it's like pop-up video like this is a chance to hear steven fearing is going to tell us why this song matters to him so again your jams you don't have to talk there's been people who like i don't want to dave hodge who's a big sports media personality is like no talking over my jams but i'm always curious and like what is it in particular that drew you to this particular elton john uh classic well a lot of this stuff that's that's in the jams in this in this selection of songs and i mean it we live in an era of curated things people curate their Instagram accounts and they curate their playlists and all that means is choosing the stuff that you love

right oh you'll notice that a lot of this stuff I was listening to it all at the same time from when I was 13 12 really I started sort of being conscious as a, I like this, I don't like this, 12, 11, somewhere in there, up until I left home, which is when things got harder because suddenly you got to pay for everything yourself. But when I was that age, the selection was so limited. There was radio, there was television, and there was the music store and your friends' collections and your parents' collections, and that was it, right? Which is actually really limited compared to what's available now. My daughter's 14-year-old, she listens to this.

She listens to The Who. She also listens to Sizzles, and she listens to everything. But she could just go on Spotifyify it's so easy for her and bless her heart my my daughter is very curious so she she puts stuff on like when i'm driving her somewhere and she she said can we listen to this and she listens another jam you'll hear later um but for us you had to go find it. And one of the real ways that we found music was this thing called Top of the Pops, which was on a Wednesday night, and it was BBC, and it was hosted by this guy

who's since turned out to be a bit of a dark horse in that he was a complete pedophile, Jimmy Savile. I know the story. Yeah, Jimmy Savile was this ex-wrestler, a carny guy. But we knew him as the host of Top of the Pops. And there was a bunch of other ones, and they were all kind of cheesy. And it was BBC's sort of ready, steady, go.

There was like these shows. So you could see The Who, and then you could see Elton John, and they would be number one and number two. And abba and then the sex pistols all at the same time the gang or something like it was all at the same time you're right and there was no okay you know i only listen to hip-hop or i only listen to rock or i only listen to this one genre of rock like i'm only into grindcore man we listen to everything because that's that's the way it was spat out at us and some of some people got into being kind of connoisseurs um and and and

really digging deeper like i had a friend who came to school uh once in high school and he had a black armband on i was like what's with the black army? He goes, oh, Lowell George died. And I said, who's Lowell George? And he said, oh, he was a lead singer for Little Feet. And I went, really? I don't know anything about them. So, you know, he played me some stuff and I kind of got into it a little bit, but I really didn't. There were a few people that went deep, but most of us were just listening to what was being spat out at us, what we didn't realize. And I don't know if this is the same for every generation, but there was a golden era of recorded music. And there's actually a really great blog about this by Ian Tamblyn,

which Roots Music Canada put out. It's a long interview with Ian Tamblyn. He talks about this. But it's really where the technology and the songwriting skills and the media, the medium of the media came together at the same time. And that era is over. And so Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is a classic example of the kind of cutting edge technology that was available at the time, which was analog, paired with one of the greatest artists ever, Elton John. I mean, this album, holy shit, man, it's got Benny and the Jets.

It's got all of these incredible songs that are all from different genres. It's like that album itself is like this pastiche. And if you've ever had the pleasure, you know, the making of, there's a whole series of videos of the making of, the making of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is amazing because he would, Bernie Topham would write the lyrics, slip them under at night, slip them under Elton's door, because they were all staying at this studio that they lived at, residential studio. Elton would get out of bed at 11 o'clock in the morning, grab the lyrics, go down and look at them

while he was having coffee and Froot Loops. And there was a piano in the kitchen, and he'd sit that and he'd start messing around with it, and the band would start arriving in dribs and drabs from their bedrooms, and they'd pick up instruments and start jamming, and then they'd go into the main room, and they'd start recording it, and that would be it. Amazing.

So this song was created in about 24 hours, from nothing to that. Am I correct in that we're getting the... I'm getting passionate now. Oh, the Elton John biopic is coming to theaters near us in 2019, which is going to be, I don't know if it'll be like the Bohemian Rhapsody tribute. I don't know.

I don't know if you can capture that man's story in a two and a half hour movie. That won't stop him from trying. He was also the first, we all knew he was gay, but nobody even, we didn't even have a word for it. He was a poofter. He was a the first, we all knew he was gay, but we didn't even have a word for it. He was a poofter, he was a bender, but we didn't know exactly what he was. And then later the story started coming out.

But he was so, I mean, now in hindsight, it's like, oh my God, of course he was gay. And he flew that flag so strong. He's amazing. Elton John, amazing artist. But even in like songs like Rocket Man, for example, like what a great jam, but he would write about, you know, I miss my wife.

Like that was one of the key lyrics. So it was like back then you sort of came out as like bisexual and then you were like, oh, by the way, I'm gay. Yeah, I don't think i mean it was it could kill you literally that it could kill your career if you were gay if that taint was attached to you um then it would it was it was the death knell so i mean that that's another thing in in our lifetime in my lifetime if you're 20 it's not it's not as relevant at all but in my lifetime um we've seen

that happen where artists george michael is an amazing example because i mean he he he went through the crucible of that where it was like george michael's gay oh my god oh my god you stop the presses fire his manager that's it i'm never going to play his records again and then you know he he he was able to come out and become an icon for for being gay but at the time katie lang the same thing you know these are all artists that had to kind of go through the fire of it where and i you know they paved the way for so many people. He and Bernie Taupin also write lyrics about stuff that they knew. I mean, not only did they say, I miss my wife, clearly Elton wasn't missing his wife. But, I mean, he's missing his partner,

but you had to put it into a format that people were going to digest. But those guys imagined themselves into so many things that they'd never experienced. The album that really I love of Bernie and Elton's is Tumbleweed Connection. And that album is sort of post-band, post-music from Big Pink. And they basically imagined themselves into Americana land,

but they're two British guys who knew nothing about it. So they use words like hedgehog, which is so not American. Hedgehog is British, but you know, they, they, they, they weave this into a song about good old country comfort. Right. So it's, it's, um, I just love that about it. They, you know, it's that era of kind of imagining yourself into a place. Sure. And that's, that's art. Yeah. If you can't do it with art. But let's kick out another jam. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be right back. And I can tell you that I know how you've been living on so late.

You've been painting in blue and you've been looking through so late. You've been seeing and moving You've been looking through So many Don't know what's going wrong in your mind And I can tell you What you'll find when you're moving through Solitude

Solitude Solid Air Solid Air Solid Air John Martin I just love that so much so I'm 17 years old I've just finished my leaving certificate in Ireland, which is the state run exam, and I'm going to America. I'm going to go with my friend Paul Delmaine, who is an exchange student, and he's going back to Minneapolis, where he's from, and I'm going to go and visit him for the

summer, right? So I'm sitting in my parents' front room, and this is in the era of televisions where you had to walk over to the television and go click click click and there was RTE1, RTE2 which is Radio Telefish Air and the Irish television stations BBC1, BBC2, ITV that was it I think I think there were five channels, maybe six.

And I've been playing the acoustic guitar now for probably three years. And I've just graduated from a gut string guitar, learning romanza and air on a G string and trying to play little songs on a gut string guitar to buying a steel string. And I come across this concert. I didn't know who it was because, you know, it was television, right?

You couldn't go and look it up on the internet or pause it or anything. It was like, here it is. You watch it. Hopefully you learn. Sometimes you don't. But I never did know who it was until, anyways, this guy with a guitar and an acoustic guitar singing and playing live to what looked like a couple of thousand people who were losing their minds.

And he was hitting the guitar with his hand, getting that groove. And I think he had a drum machine. So about seven, eight months later, I'm in Minneapolis and I'm living there now and I'm trying to make ends meet and I'm looking for this song. And it wasn't this song. It was Solid. This is the title cut from Solid Air, but it was a tune called May You Never, which is also on this record. And the reason I was looking for it was because I'd been to a show by a guy named Michael Johnson,

who's a Minneapolis singer-songwriter, really accomplished guitar player, but mostly known for doing other people's material. And he was doing a version of May You Never, And it was like, there's that song again. So I went to this local vinyl store called Or Folk Joke Opus, which was the local record store, and I found it. And it was this album. And I suddenly was introduced to the world of John Martin, which I can't tell you how important John Martin is to me as a performer. Everything, his groove,

the way he plays the guitar, the backbeat that he gets from hitting the body of the guitar with the heel of his palm. He also would tap with his left hand and create rhythmic things. He's the first person I'd ever seen use an Echoplex, but I didn't know what it was at the time. But that's pretty common. A lot of Bruce Coburn fans will know the trick of getting an echo, a delay going and playing with the delay and using it as a rhythmic groove. John Martin was the first person I ever saw do that. He also took an old beatbox out of an organ

and basically removed it because there were no drum machines at the time. But there was those old organs that had, like you could dial in, you know, press samba or rock and it would go. And he took one of those out and put it into a box. And so he would run his acoustic guitar through a Fender Twin with an Echoplex and this, and he'd mic it as well. And that's what I saw. And so this album was him with the great Danny Thompson on upright bass,

who I've met over the years later. I don't know who the other players are. I think some of the local, the sort of usual suspects from Fairport, I think, are involved in this record. But it's one of those classic British albums of that time. And this album, any songwriters of my genre, of my era, like Garnet Rogers, a whole bunch of us. John Martin is the man.

He's the man. Steven, you're kicking the shit out of your jams, which is good, and I'm glad now you picked Eleven. Now I'm excited. There's a bonus one there, but that was an education because, of course, you've got The Who, Elton John, and then all of a sudden, I've got to plead some ignorance on the whole Solid Air.

Like, I missed it. It's a seminal record. And most people who don't know about John Martin know about Nick Drake. But that song is about Nick Drake. Okay. Because John Martin and Nick Drake were friends. And Nick Drake, poor guy.

I mean, he was just, he was like a basket case. He was such a, nowadays we know, okay, Nick Drake had, you know, he had mental issues. He's a sick guy, but nobody knew it at the time. And also, maybe he was on the spectrum a little bit. He's an immensely talented, incredible songwriter, incredible guitar player. But at a time when what he did, I mean, here we go again with the hits, right? He was entirely unsuccessful in his life. He was only successful long after he died. And so he would go to John Martin's house. And John Martin is this

Scot with a chip on his shoulder because he's living in England and he's Scottish. And he's sort of caught between his Scottish heritage and his English heritage. And he was prone to drinking too much and beating the shit out of you. And yet he had this artistic, sweet, sweet side to him. And Nick Drake was one of his friends who would come by his house and basically be depressed on John Martin's couch and John Martin wrote that song about him. Wow.

We've been living on solid air. I don't know what's going on in your mind but I can tell you it's hard to hide if you live on solid air. It's all about Nick Drake. Wow. Let's kick out another one. ¶¶ So they're going to play the head one more time,

and then they're going to go with the solos. The first solos were really great. And they're off. Oliver Nelson, Blues and the Abstract Truth. Oliver Nelson, he is an arranger, trumpet player. Kind of lost his way. From what I know about him, he ended up in LA doing music for television shows and eventually took his own life because it wasn't satisfying, wasn't scratching his itch. But he did make a few records like this where he arranged all these tunes and he plays on them. He's not the trumpet player, he's a sax player. But oh oh, man, you hear his arrangements are just gorgeous.

And this record, so I was in music school for two semesters in Nelson, British Columbia. I was at the David Thompson University Center, and I went there to learn how to read and write music, which I still don't know how to do. But there was either the classical stream or the jazz stream. So I went through the jazz stream

and one of the classes was called Context of Music. And we studied this album for an entire semester. So we would listen to this record, sometimes the whole thing, sometimes one track, pretty much, I think we had like three or four classes a week

for a whole semester. I must have listened to this record, I don't know how many hundred times, and I still love it, and I still buy it whenever I can, whatever format I see it in. If I see a CD, I'll buy it and give it to somebody. If you see it on vinyl, it's a beautiful record to own. That's Eric Dolphy playing the flute.

He is completely bananas. Like, listen to his playing. It's like a bird flying around inside a small room. So we would listen to this record, and the instructor would say, listen to how the drummer is reacting to the bass player. Stop listening to the soloist. Or listen to what the soloist is doing in relationship to, you know,

and they would try and make us hear how the parts fit together. And I mean, just, I mean, you could just sit and listen to the snare on this like the for hours it sounds so good the pocket is so good and the sounds that they're making never mind what they're playing

but just the tones they're getting is so fucking good it's an amazing record so uh it's the only this album is the only time i've ever won a competition too which was um ross porter who used to have a great jazz show on cbc oh i'm very familiar with ross porter raw sewage as we called him um he uh he he had this thing where he was like uh right in with your you know your top 10 jazz albums of all time.

So this was my number one album. And I won it. I won it. And they wrote in and said, okay, are you willing to do the interview and stuff? Because you're a musician. And I said, yeah, yeah, I'm happy to do that. But I want the prize, okay? Don't just...

For sure. I definitely want the prize, okay? Don't just... For sure. I definitely want the prize, but I think the reason I won it was because of this album, because this was the theme for his show. So I wasn't just being cheesy by picking the theme for his show, but I kind of went into detail about the album. If you're ever looking... I think that's Dolphy. No, I think that's, I'm sorry, Oliver Nelson right there.

Oliver Nelson, okay. So his tone is kind of, he's not a bebop guy. It's like his tone is more from the big band era. It's like, really, he doesn't squonk and squeak. It's a really clean, lovely sound. If you're on the road touring, because of course tonight at Hughes Room it all starts, and you want to kill, I don't know, 90 minutes,

listen to my last episode, no, two episodes ago of Toronto Mic'd. Ralph Van Merge came on, and he kicked out the jams. Yeah. And it was quite the education too, and he also drops Ross Porter's name in that episode too. Ralph was great. I got interviewed by him many, many years ago when he had a CBC radio show, late night show. Well, he's most recently at Jazz FM here in Toronto.

He's got a great radio voice. Anyway, yeah, this is sort of one of those, it surprises me how many people don't know about this record, but to me,

it's one of the really important, it's kind of like the Birth of Kool or any of those kind of seminal records. This one's pretty important. It's funny you mention that,

like, so Ralph Ben-Murray kicked out a Miles Davis, something from, what's the album, Blue? What's the seminal, the Blue, something Blue? Anyway, yeah. Sorry, brain not working. It's okay, it's okay. But yeah, we hear a lot.

We still hear a lot about Miles Davis or Dave Brubeck or whatever. But you don't hear a lot about Oliver Nelson. I don't think. Again, going back to the whole the hits thing. Like, we could just keep, that theme will keep going through this podcast because jazz was the pop music.

It was the hit. I mean, yes, there was bebop, which was kind of the groovy end of it. But, you know, they were sending Dizzy Gillespie out into the world to combat the Cold War. Like, these people from this era,

they were the music titans of the day. They were the drakes of the day. And this music was sort of a pop music of the day. Maybe not quite as sophisticated as this, but as you get farther away from the era, certain people kind of keep getting

mentioned over and over. And unless you study it, or unless you're interested, I'm not making out that I study it. I don't. But unless you have the good fortune of being around people, as I have, who are passionate about it, a lot of stuff just disappears. And stuff that gets played in the restaurants or whatever stays alive. It gets used in films and it becomes connected to other... Or nowadays in ads.

Like Pink Moon from Nick Drake became a hit, if you will, posthumousous many years later because of its use in an ad. So, I mean, it has its life and it becomes linked to other things, but that's the sign of a really great song or a great piece of music is if it keeps resonating

a tune like You Are My Sunshine, that's going to go for a long, long time, somewhere over the rainbow. Those songs are going to be around for a long time. And people will, my daughter, I was playing her Come On, Feel the Noise. And she goes, she's, what did she say? The original or the Quiet Riot version? She was likening it to Quiet Riot.

And she thought she was like, she's 14. So she's referencing Quiet Riot. She's like, seriously down, right right she's like seriously down right that's deep i went oh no yeah i know it existed before quiet right i remember when i discovered that because she was like what i was like yeah there's a band called slade right and now you only hear slade at christmas time because what's the christmas is a slade christmas song so here it is very yeah yeah well that's the key if you can write a Christmas song, then you can be evergreen. Oh, that's true.

Yeah. That's true. All right, let's kick out another jam. Oh, okay. Now we're talking. This is the shit. I love how, I'll tell the listeners, how Stephen lights up with his jams. I love it.

Love it. I'll tell the listeners how Stephen lights up with his jams. I love it. Love it. Sing a song of sad young men Glasses full of rye All the news is bad again Kiss your dreams goodbye All the sad young men Sitting in the bars

Drinking of the night And missing all the stars All the same Drifting through the town Drinking of the night Trying not to drown The Ballad of the Sad Young Men, Roberta Flack. There's a big note coming up vocally from her. It's a little bit later. Honestly, this just kills me, this record.

This is from an album called First Take, which was in my mother's record collection. Probably was my stepfather's, actually, not my mother's. I was just lucky enough that they had it because honestly, this is probably one of the most important records of my life still. And I will buy it if I see it anywhere, in any format, and give it to people. So I gave a copy of this to Tom Wilson years ago

because he didn't know it. And he was just like, oh my God, how have I not heard this record? So first take, Roberta Flack, mostly live. So she's at the piano singing, playing, Ray Brown's playing bass. I imagine that they're all in the studio. They probably overdubbed the strings after to the track. But the core band that you're hearing would have been live.

And so just, we're talking, so so you can't but go find the record it's honestly it's on itunes it's not hard to find and it's been repressed so you can get it on vinyl and the vinyl is really the way to hear it but just listen to it and imagine the skill of the musicians that are doing this there's no click tracks and people sitting in a little sterile room playing to it and then fixing it in Pro Tools. This is a whole bunch of people

playing together at the same time. They count it in, and they play it. And then they do another take, maybe two or three, but the album's called First Take. So the point of the record is everybody's on their game and this is young Roberta Flack, because she was

really young. This is before Killing Me Softly with his song and her sort of 70s commercial success. This is her coming out of her gospel tradition and just starting to flower. There's the note.

It's deadly. She's so good. And she's playing the piano. So she's playing and singing at the same time with these heavy players around her. And they're just doing just what it needs for the song to fly along. It's one of the greatest albums. You'll never, if you like this kind of stuff, you'll never regret buying this album. Just buy it over and over and over.

Give it to friends, honestly. It's like spreading seeds around the country. And the song, I mean, the song is is gorgeous it's the saddest sweetest thing i'd argue most guys my age only know killing me softly yeah yeah it's well i would only have i mean that's what i know um because she was sort of having that success right when i was a kid but this was in my uh my stepfather's collection. And, you know, as a kid, you just, like, that's what I love about my daughter.

She, unfortunately, oh, there's another story about me. I remember, I have a 14-year-old daughter too, so I'm always interested in the 14-year-old daughter's story. Well, we've been moving a lot, so I don't have that kind of permanent collection, although I'm rectifying that quickly. And I think because I make my living playing music, I don't play as much music as people might think.

I tend to turn the radio on. And there was a period because of the times we live in and the changing formats that have happened in the last 10 years where we've gone from vinyl to CDs to streaming, it's like, fuck, I can't keep up with all this shit. So I stopped buying music without really thinking about it. I stopped actually buying music maybe 5, 6, 7 years ago, 8 years ago. My daughter's 14, right?

Right. It's only lately since I bought a turntable or I was given a turntable that I've started again. It's like turning the taps on again. We've forgotten the importance of going through your mom or your dad or your parents' record collection. Like, I mean, speaking of Bohemian Rhapsody, like I found the Queen's Greatest Hits or something. And there's a song, this is before Wayne's World, okay? Yes. And I'm like, I missed it in real time.

I missed it. I was too young. But I'm like, what is this? Like I miss that kind of discovery that you don't get nowadays. Like are people going to log into your Spotify account and listen to your playlists? I don't think it works the same way. If you're, I mean, I think those that are curious

will always keep digging, but when you have access to everything, then in some ways nothing is important. Paradox of choice. It's like TV shows now. I say this all the time. You mentioned, you know, you had BBC One, BBC Two, and ITV and whatever.

You had five stations. But I'm going to guess there was always something good on. I'm going to guess that the... And what I think is happening now with Amazon Prime, and Netflix, and HBO, and regular television, and all this, is that we have so much awesomeness everywhere that we're sort of drowning in it, and I can't stick with any series anymore.

I watch a lot of pilots, and then I bail. It's just different. Back in the day, everybody watched MASH. I'm not saying this is better now. We have better quality stuff around us, but I find it causes a little bit of anxiety, like a paradox of choice. When you go buy toothpaste, just show me the toothpaste so I can buy it and keep my teeth clean.

Don't give me 40 kinds of toothpaste because then I'm paralyzed and I don't know what to buy. Yeah. Is that just me? I don't know. No, it's definitely not. And I mean, I can talk about that in, in, in the technology.

Again, I'm going to refer back to this Ian Tamlin interview. It's worth trying to find it. It's on Roots Music Canada blog, and it's an interview that Ian Tamlin, songwriter from Ottawa, did where he talks about the technology of recording and how it's changed and how that has totally changed the way that we all make a living. He's talking about streaming and he's really going into that sort of debate. But the difference between being in a recording studio 20 years ago and being in a recording studio now is that 20 years ago, you didn't have the ability to do anything. You had in some ways that it was sort of the golden era because it was the refinement of analog technology had reached its apogee.

And then it started to go into digital technology and it started to unravel again. When you have limitless tracks, when you can pitch correct everything, when you can take a sound and use it as an impulse to trigger another sound, you can pretty much do anything. You go into the studio and you write a song and you play a song and then you give it to a mixing engineer and they can turn it into something completely, completely different. Not just slightly, but completely, utterly, unrecognizably different if they want to. Of course, there's no point in doing that. But what happens is that when you have the ability to do anything and everything, it's very difficult to make a decision. And so people that sort of fix it in the mix mentality starts to take over and you don't commit yourself to a course of action. You don't commit yourself to a sound. You don't commit yourself to a performance in the same way.

And what we just listen to is artists that are all, they have to commit themselves right there and then. First take. Yeah, yeah. And they were so good, and that was the name of the game, was you had to be so good that you could go in and somebody would write a chart right then and there and go, here's the chart.

And you go, oh yeah, you're Ray Brown on bass. And you look at it and you go, oh yeah, okay. One, two, and you start playing it. And you're going to get it right the first time. And then maybe somebody didn't make a mistake, but they didn't like it. So it's like, let's play it again and see if we can make it even better. And that was the name of the game. It was, everybody was

on the mark. Good. They, they, they had their chops down. They weren't learning how to play their instruments as they're putting the song down. They they've, they're way ahead of all that. And I mean, something gets lost when you can fix everything later because mistakes are wonderful things and errors are wonderful things. And I don't mean just be like clams, what we call clams when you make a big error. Not just that, but if you have two instruments that are slightly out of tune with each other, slightly out of tune with each other, there's a thickening that happens. You notice this on a 12-string guitar where the strings are supposed to be in unison, but if they're slightly out of tune, you play a chord, it sounds sweeter. It sounds bigger because you have all this very subtle

dissonance going on. So same with players that aren't playing to a click track. Same with instruments that aren't all tuned to a tuner, but tuned by ear to the piano in the room. It's just about, you know, it's human. We like complicated things. We like complex sounds. And unfortunately, right now, going back to the Wonder Bread analogy, we are being fed kind of things that have been narrowed down to their basic ingredients, and that's been mass produced. And so a lot of the sort of a lot of the bran has been removed from the diet. Yeah, yeah.

Here we are, song number six. And finally, some CanCon. So let's kick out this jam oh yeah there was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run In the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun From my personal collection, so maybe I pulled the...

It's a... There's a couple of different... So which one is the... I mean... Sorry, shut up, Steve. No. As you know,

Gord's going to go for a while here, so anytime you want to talk, just type in. No, actually, I think this is the right version. There's something that happens right when he gets to the end of the

slower version, the slower segment that comes in, and somebody starts clapping, thinking it's over. That's how I know if it's the right version. But Canadian Railroad Trilogy. So, my mother's record collection again.

She had this album, Gordon Lightfoot's Greatest Hits. It's the one that's got the painting of him on the cover. And it was compiled when he was leaving, I can't remember what label, he was leaving Capitol or something. And they did what labels do, and they sort of went into the vaults

and pulled everything out and made another record to kind of make a bit more money off the artist that is no longer with them. Right. And they put this out, and it's got Bittergreen, Did She Mention My Name, Black Day in July, That's What You Get for Loving Me. Early Morning Rain. Early Morning Rain, which was so important to me. Yeah, and this.

And so I'm a kid in Irelandireland still feeling very canadian but have left the country now at this point i've been 10 years maybe uh eight years gone from canada so canada's like this concept to me more than a real place it's something that i vaguely remember i mean when you're when you're 10 6 and 4 seems like a long, long time ago. That's true. It's like half your lifetime, over half your lifetime. And I was just starting to play guitar, and this album was really important to me. I learned a lot of the songs, or tried to.

This one was beyond me. I still struggle playing this song. This one was beyond me. I still struggle playing this song. His right hand in this, the rhythm guitar, never mind the picking that's going on, Red Shea's picking, that's Red Shea,

but the rhythm guitar, the 12-string rhythm, that's Lightfoot. Pretty hard to play this stuff. He had a wicked right hand. The driving rhythm of it, the way he slows it down. It was a really seminal piece of music for me. Being that it's about Canada,

being that just so many elements of it, I was learning guitar. What I found out later, which is really fascinating to me, is this was commissioned. He was commissioned to write this song. I didn't know that. Yeah.

CBC was doing some kind of, I mean, it's like an anniversary of the last spike or something. Okay, yeah. And they commissioned Gordon Lightfoot to write a song about the building of the Canadian Railroad. So he went home and he wrote this song. Can you imagine? Can you fucking imagine writing this song as a commission?

Like, okay, I'll go write a song about the Canadian Railroads and this is what you write? Amazing. Holy shit. I mean, this is like Ben-Hur. This is a huge song. This is like three different songs all in one. And he pulled all these different threads of history, the Navis.

He talks about the Irish. He doesn't talk about the Chinese in this song, but they're within the word Navis. They're there. But, oh, my God, he pulled in so many aspects of real Canadian history and turned it into this kind of beautiful, beautiful song. And it's, never mind the content, just the melody, the chords, the groove. It's huge.

It's a big, huge story song. And he's good at those big, huge story songs, like Edmund Fitzgerald and all this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like Edmund Fitzgerald and all this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Gordon Lightfoot. He's still alive. He's still kicking out the jams.

That guy is like a... He closed down the Massey Hall. He did the last shows before they shut it down. And I'm sure that if there's any justice in the world, he'll be the first artist to open it, too. I think that's a slam dunk if he's ready, willing, and able. That's a slam dunk. Yeah, I agree.

I've sort of given up buying magazines like Uncut and Mojo. I kind of went through my era of that. I think those magazines must be suffering as everybody turns to their tablets and iPhones. But back in the day, those were kind of the magazines. And I started noticing that Gordon Lightfoot was never on the cover. And it's about time that everybody just sort of got it together and realized

who Gordon Lightfoot is. Like, he's still alive, so maybe he's got to kick the bucket before everybody starts to get it, and then they'll have all these retrospectives. But mark my words, when Gordon, bless his heart, when he finally does move on, there will be such a retrospective,

because this is one of the greatest writers of this type of music, which was kind of the golden era of recording that we're talking about again. He's one of the greats. I mean, okay, this is not just me talking, but Bob Dylan, who everybody reckons is the greatest, he talks about Gordon Lightfoot as being one of the greatest writers of all time.

Lightfoot is heavy, heavy, heavy, huge. All over the world, everybody knows Gordon Lightfoot. You talk about Canada when I was a kid growing up, if you mentioned Canada, first thing people would talk about was Gordon Lightfoot pretty much, if you could read my mind, was a hit growing up, if you mentioned Canada, first thing people would talk about was Gordon Lightfoot, pretty much. If You Could Read My Mind was a hit. And Sundown?

Sundown, all of them. But If You Could Read My Mind, I mean, that went all over the world. Like people in Thailand know If You Could Read My Mind. Yeah, Lightfoot. Who else? I'm curious. Like in Ireland, when you mentioned Canada, when you mentioned Canada, who would they mention? Is this the time of Anne Murray? Or is this before Anne Murray has her...

No, I mean... But it was just Lightfoot. They would mention him along with igloos and maple syrup. It was like that kind of basic... And hockey, right? Even more than hockey. Maybe I just wasn't tuned in, but Lightfoot was kind of like a basic fiber as far as the rest of the world was concerned about this country.

He was one of the main threads that ran through. And I still think he is, although he's elderly now, but he's still playing. As we get farther away from things, sometimes it comes into greater perspective. And this generation currently that's sort of on the Junos and in the charts and all that, some of them will last. But it will go a long time before we find another artist of his caliber. Okay, this is a really different version of this song.

Oh, okay. That's okay. I needed more specific instructions. Yeah. It doesn't matter. So I was looking for the... There's a version with... I think his name is Ellis Larkin. I can't remember.

Pianist. So it's just her and a piano. And the album's called Ella Sings Gershwin, but she may have done a couple albums called Ella Sings Gershwin. Clearly, because... Yeah, that's what happened in those eras. There was these great sort of song books, and artists would dip into them over and over.

She probably recorded this four or five different times. Well, my apologies for... It doesn't matter. I mean... Getting the wrong version. That's a cardinal sin. Kind of the same era. She's young.

That's what I loved. So, again, my mother's record collection. She had Ella Sings Gershwin. And I just was... She's a little older, for sure, in this version. So this might be with Nelson Riddle or somebody. The orchestra. But I didn't know much about her.

I just, as a kid, I put the record on. I was intrigued by how playful her voice was. And then later, when I started singing, I'm in awe of her voice. I mean, her voice, her instrument is unbelievable. There's humor. There's laughter. There's great depth and pathos and sadness in her voice.

All of these different qualities. But she can be light and nimble. I got to see her right towards the end of her life. Her, Oscar Peterson, and Joe pass all in the same bill Wow and even better my buddy so I at this point I've moved to Minneapolis I'm living in Minneapolis I'm like 19 and my buddy Paul and I snuck in by shimmying up a drainpipe oh Oh, like Shawshank Redemption. And going all the way into the top of the auditorium,

we found a door and we snuck in through the balcony. Wow. And it was a very elderly Ella, Oscar, and Joe Pass. Oscar Peterson is actually on a mural near where you are right now, here at my home, as a lakeshorehore great if you will yeah yeah yeah well another i mean there's no ask like honestly i did 11 songs i could have gone on i think we all could but oscar peterson would start to come in with night train pretty quickly as we get into the 20 kick out the jams um but this i just i um i listened to this album not this album yeah the ellis sings ellis sings gershwin um with just her and a pianist uh pretty much um over and over and over

because i just found even like i was 16 and i i'm sort of like what what is it that drew me in is quality of her voice um the authenticity of it i without knowing it it's like do i believe this person or not do i find them hokey or not and it wasn't about the material it was about the intention behind the singer and what i found out later about her is that she was an orphan very early in life her parents, and she always wanted to be a star. So she ended up going in for a talent competition at the Apollo Theater, I think, in Harlem. And she was terrible,

and the audience actually laughed her off the stage. And there was this band leader named Chick Webb who was there, and he saw her and he went there's something about that kid so he took her on and he groomed her and it was a bit like um it was a bit like Pygmalion or uh My Fair Lady where this sort of older guy takes this young woman in and he cultures her he teaches her etiquette and he teaches her how to use a knife and fork and he teaches her how to sing because he heard the raw material, but he refined her and she became his singer, but not for a while. Apparently she would travel with the band and watch.

And then she became his singer. And then when Chick Webb died, she took over his band. Then she became his singer. And then when Chick Webb died, she took over his band. And then she became Ella Fitzgerald in her own right. But what you hear there is her, I think, probably just post the Chick Webb band, I think. I think I've got these names right. But she's still really young. And the thing is that she was so young when she kind of hit it.

And again, the golden era of recording. Analog equipment, fantastic fucking microphones like Neumann's. The Germans got it right early, early on. American tape recorders like the best of the best at that era. And that's why it just sounds so good. And everybody is playing at the same time. They're not overdubbing their part later. They're all playing. It's like countered in,

bam, and they all hit the mark. And that's what you hear. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. far apart How it would feel to hold this moment Mouth to mouth Heart to heart

I guess it's a good thing Dreaming's free. Wow. Why was Sunday kind of woman? A Sunday kind of woman want an everyday man like me. So that's the song. Now they just repeat it, but with slightly different lyrics.

Sunday Kind of Woman. So this is from the Behind Closed Doors album. The big hit was Did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world? Which was a hit all over the world. I thought the album was called

The Most Beautiful Girl, too, no? I thought it was called Behind Closed Doors. You would know. But you know what? There may have been a version. They did that. The birth of what they called country-politan. So it was kind of... This was when country music was

starting to get sophisticated. They had strings. You go, yeah, it's country, but is it country? It's certainly not Hank Williams. It was that era again. I'm a broken record, obviously. But all players playing together, state-of-the-art, 70s, 60s, 70s, All players playing together, state-of-the-art, 70s, 60s, 70s, analog, beautiful, warm, but great players. And him, people might know of him from Mohair Sam, but Charlie Rich, he was trying to be a hit.

He was the last of the Sun artists. was he was trying to he was trying to be a hit he was the last of the sun artists so when sam phillips was running sun studios charlie rich came in and he he was kind of rockabilly but he kind of missed the boat it was over by the time he arrived so then he moved to nashville and he finally had a hit as a country singer but it was he was an outlier he wasn wasn't a country singer like a lot of country singers of the time were. But Johnny Cash was at Sun Records, right? Yeah, Johnny Cash would have been. Because he had Sunday Morning Coming Down, am I getting that right?

Which is in a similar vein to this Sunday kind of woman. Well, Sunday Morning, well, Johnny Cash would have been ahead of Charlie Rich. So Johnny was there when it was still kind of, Sun was really happening. The Million Dollar Quartet, right? Yeah, johnny was there when it was still kind of sun was really happening john the million dollar quartet yeah so he was there like at the at the end of its of its really big era but charlie came in later when it was still it was still alive but it was sam phillips had moved on to other things and and he never had any success so he he he did this but this the reason i put this out is um into my jams is because again through my parents collection right

this would be a classic album of my parents generation and i i was so out of touch i mean i was listening to this quietly in my bedroom because, if you recall, the music of the day of my era was The Clash, The Jam. You know, nobody was listening to Charity Rich. That would have been so embarrassing if any of my friends knew. I mean, I had some friends who were listening to Frank Sinatra, and that was okay because it was kind of groovy and ironic. But this was just like country music was corny it was like from mars nobody understood country music in ireland it just seemed like what the hell is this but i love this record and i i now i understand why it's the sounds the sounds are so incredible on this record the tones that they're making and Charlie Rich's voice. Some of the, uh, some of

the subject matter is a little bit corny, but I don't care. Um, so I, I would buy this record and I remember a late night drive early black in the rodeo Kings. And we were, there was Tom and Colin and I, and Charlie Ferguson, who is our road manager and our sound guy. And we would drive, you know, sometimes we'd have to drive like back to Toronto from Ottawa after playing Barrymore's. And you know, it's a long drive and you get home at four o'clock in the morning kind of thing or five in the morning. And we would play records and CDs. If we burn our own CDs nobody had iPhones they didn't exist so it was either cassettes or burning CDs and

I would have played this and I remember Tom going oh I love this record and I was surprised it's like what Tom Wilson likes Charlie Rich and it was like I think it was the point where I suddenly realized,

oh, yeah, we have huge things in common. But I remember when I played this track, not this track, but this record, is when I kind of realized how much, how deep it actually was going to go with all of us. I don't know if Colin dug this record. Probably, I mean, Colin is encyclopedic. He knows, it's really hard to stump Colin. You can play him anything and he'll know it from the first two bars. Um, the only time I can ever really stump him is when I get into stuff like, uh,

a Fairport Convention or the Chieftains or stuff like that. He doesn't know that music very well, but anything that's North American he knows. But but it was it was tom's reaction that really floored me and so my daughter uh she was uh i give her 20 bucks every now and then and say go down to value village and see what you find and she came back with a pristine copy of this and vinyl oh wow that she found at value village for three bucks so So they're still out there, folks. Don't despair and don't think that it's too expensive a hobby. It's not.

You just have to go digging. Right. Let's kick out another CanCon jam. Yeah. Yeah, this isn't from the Travelogue album. Oh, it's okay. Another bad. Yeah, this is the... This Travelogue album. Oh, it's okay. Another bad. Yeah, this is the one from my collection.

This is a beautiful version. Why I picked the Travelogue version is because this is Joni when she's sweet and very young. And it's, I mean, it's sort of a game. Like, shut up, Steven. And the sky was full of thunder And tearful at the falling of a star And the seasons, they go round and round And the planes and ponies go up and down. We're captive on a carousel.

Okay, so Michael, here's what I want you to do. Yes. You won't be able to, it won't be, it'll only be for your edification. But I want you to find this from the album called Travelogue. And then you'll get why I'm all wiggy about it. Because it's Joni. I mean, Joni, I don't know if we're going to have another record from her. I don't know if she can sing anymore.

She's elderly, you know? And had a serious illness. I don't even know if she gives a rat's ass about her anymore. She's always, from what I've read, she's always sort of had a bit of a distasteful relationship with the music industry because she's an amazing artist. But she made an album called Travelogue with the London Symphony Orchestra

and various other musicians augmenting it at Air Studios in London. And it's Joni, grown up Joni. It's Joni Mitchell much, much later in life with all those cigarettes and all that living in her voice. And she sings this song, and it's not sweet in the way that this song is. It's looking backwards. And it's, holy shit, man, it'll blow your mind.

Oh, we're going to get it. Oh, my God. I have to redeem myself here. Okay, so never mind the arrangement of the orchestra, but listen to her voice. Yes. Yesterday A child came out to wonder

Caught a dragonfly Inside a jar Fearful when the sky Was full of thunder And tearful at the falling of a star And the seasons, they go round and round And the painted ponies go up and down We're captive on the carousel of time

We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came and go round and round pretty wild i'm glad i could correct this. I'm so glad that you could play them both. That's awesome. Because it's the first word of the first line of the song is yesterday. And this is yesterday as in 25, 30 years ago yesterday, not last week. Whereas the first version is last week. whereas the first version is last week. And she's being kind of a precocious young person being wise beyond her years, whereas this is an elderly person genuinely looking back.

This is Johnny Cash singing Hurt. That's what this is. Great comparison. Johnny Cash, Hurt. One of the greatest. It's like the song was written for him to sing, right? It should be in my jam. If we had 12, we'd stick that in.

But to let the listeners know, this is recorded, I think, 2002? Maybe. I have no idea. According to my YouTube. Yeah, okay. It's a double CD. And it was a toss-up between this and the version of Amelia, which is exquisite

but I chose this one just because Circle Game is like one of those songs that eventually will be like You Are My Sunshine, you know it's one of those songs that's going to live forever You know when I think of great Canadian singer-songwriters like we've talked about, you know Gordon Lightfoot and Bruce Colburn and, of course, Neil Young, but Joni Mitchell, too, right up there,

like in the Mount Rushmore. Oh, absolutely. Many years ago, I was at the Edmonton Folk Fest, and she was playing it, which was really, really a rare, rare, rare thing because she was going out with a brain. My brain. Fuck, I'm 56. She was going out with brain. My brain. Fuck, I'm 56. She was going out with a dude whose name will come to me. I can see his face and I'm sorry.

He built the mighty railroad to the sea. He built the mighty... Anyway, she was going out with him, which kind of floored everybody because he's a Canadian singer-songwriter from Saskatchewan. And they'd met at an art exhibit, and she was kind of putting herself into his world a little bit,

and she ended up playing the Edmonton Folk Fest, and I was backstage, and Joni Mitchell's walking around, and I couldn't go near her. I just couldn't go near her. It's like, I'm not going to be that idiot that goes up to Joni Mitchell and says, I really love your music and you've been so important to me. I just stayed away from her. And I found out later that she ended up killing somebody's minibar with Bill Bourne and a couple of

the usual suspects. And everybody is hanging out and smoking cigarettes on the balcony of her hotel room, killing the minibar, and I missed it because I'm such an idiot. Yeah, such an idiot. But sometimes it's better not to meet these people. It's like, what are you going to say to them? They are like, they are titans. And really, they're not. They're just human

beings, but you can't tear yourself away. And so you're going to talk to them from some really strange place which is... I don't know. If you can't talk to somebody like a human and be normal with them, that's

probably best to just leave them alone. I often, like, if I... Freed. If I'm out? Don Freed. Don Freed is the guy's name. Don Freed. He built the mighty railroad to the sea.

So, yeah, Don Freed and Joni Mitchell were an item for a short time. When I'm out and about and I see somebody that I, like, admire and respect and they're a big deal or whatever, I always have that moment of, like, do I bother them and bother them and like introduce myself which is really just for me right because they meet a million people and you're forgotten or whatever or do i just like just just they're there that's cool but just don't bother them and i usually end up like not bothering them as i usually end up doing and then i usually end up going home and regretting it. So, yeah. And I mean, you know, there's, there's, there's sort of, um, there's, uh, there's various grades of star, but there's, then there's people like Joni Mitchell.

Sure. They're, you know, they're like Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis. There's only, there's only a few people in that club. And I don't really, I don't really have much to say to those people if I ever had a chance to meet them, other than the shit that they already know, which is you completely shaped my life. Right.

And they don't need to hear that again. I don't think so. My daughter, now 14, but I think she was 13 at the time, she had the chance to meet, like, a casual encounter with Will Smith. And we often have this contest, like who's the most famous person one of us has met and had a conversation with.

Now she wins that contest because I was like, oh, I had a great conversation with Stephen Fearing and she goes, well, Dad, that's not Will Smith. And I'll be like, oh, you're right. She's like the guy on Twitter going, who is he? No, but I mean, you know, like you get to meet people occasionally. Like I met Gordon Lightfoot once or twice.

And, you know, he's a fascinating man. I have great, great respect for him. Unless I can find some common ground, it's just pay respect and then move on. But you have common ground, right? Because you're a accomplished singer-songwriter. Yeah, we do, but I'm not, you know. I know what you mean. Yeah, it's like I got to meet Nick Lowe. Same thing. Pay your

respects. Show them, and maybe it leads to something. Maybe you get to go somewhere with it, but beyond paying your respects, there's not a lot to say. Let's kick out another jam. Got a lot Yeah, she did My baby grows up in a brand new Got a lot She said, hey, come here, daddy

I ain't never coming, baby Baby, baby Who's to be my queen? Yeah Come on, sugar Just come on back to me The Clash. Brand new Cadillac. London Calling, man.

There's an album for you. Well, so this is, now I'm finally catching up with my own era. But yeah, like this was, this music was being made as I was a teenager. And, and yet, and yet, what's so great about this track and this album is that it was,

the Clash was already sick of punk. And to be quite honest with you, I was too. Like, I love melody. Right, right, right. And I love it when it sounds like the musicians give a shit. Like, they actually give a shit. Now, not that it's slick, but that they know how to play. I like that.

I like, and this is like, the melody's great. The riff is great. Some punk music, in hindsight, is superb. And of course, God Save the Queen, you know, as you get farther away from it, you go, oh, yeah. But at the time, I remember thinking, I don't get all this. I don't get it. Some of it I get because I'm 17 years old and I want to run around and spit and jump up and down. But I'm not getting it in the way I got quietly in my own quiet bedroom.

Charlie Rich and Ella Fitzgerald. How does that go along with God Save the Queen? You know, so with The Clash, they were into melody and they were into groove. And so they actually were, this was a really controversial record

because they were seen to be kind of selling out and it was like old dad rock. They were going backwards to Gene Vincent and Rockabilly with this. Lending Calling? Yeah. Well, I mean, this is an old Rockabilly tune. But they were infusing it with their Clash thing, which is dead cool.

I mean, nobody was cooler than the Clash. And part of the reason they were so cool was they had to create this bulletproof persona to deal with the criticism of their peers, which is that they were selling out, that they were using saxophones on tunes, they were using real studio techniques. They weren't just going in and bashing it out and not giving a fuck, like supposedly the ethos of punk was, that you were supposed to not give a fuck. But they did.

They gave a fuck. They actually gave several, and so much that, and they loved the music that went before. And they had to sort of somehow hide that beneath the sneer of being The Clash. And they were so unbelievably untouchably cool and um but you know listen to the like the drumming is is like top or head and he really

knew how to play and um they all knew how to play even though they were still you know you could argue that that that um they weren't the greatest but in hindsight, you'll kind of look back and go, no, actually, they were really, really, really good. So that's why I love it. And I mean, the riff, just the first, the needle drop of that tune is like, can you just play the riff again at the very start? Can you do that?

Or is that like a big drag? Listen to the reverb on the guitar. That is rockabilly okay thank you it's it's just superb you know and it's like it's timeless it's it has to be timeless otherwise it doesn't get to be in the the jams now you have a your 11th jam by the way congrats uh you made it like you didn't tap your head. You somehow made it. This is like two and a half hours deep.

Do you realize that? It's amazing. Oh, is this where people go, I've had enough. Let me out of here, Mike. Usually by this point, I've started a jam and they put up their hand

and I've muted the microphone. They're like, I need to go pee. Oh, yeah. That's starting to... Well, last jam. Yeah. Well, yeah. Hopefully I haven't bored the shit out of you. No, actually, honestly, the exact opposite.

And your listeners too. I think I invented kick out the jams for moments like this. Like you were born to kick out the jams. So let's start an ideal exit song for kick out the jams here Wake from your sleep The drying of your tears Today We escape We escape Pack

And get dressed Before your father It's so hard to say anything over this because it's such a beautiful piece of music. The sample's about to start coming in. Makes me wiggy. The drum sound. Coming in.

Not yet. Breathe. Keep breathing. Don't lose your nerve. So Radiohead, OK Computer, Why Choose This? You may notice that there's nothing on my jam list that is... This is the most modern piece of music on it. And this is for the hipster of music on it and this is for the hipster generation. It's old

school. 90s. Yeah. So to me this is the end of it's the end of that era of you know what, when I made this list I wasn't thinking this way but I read that blog post by Ian Tamlin that I've been going

on about and I read that blog post by Ian Tamlin that I've been going on about, and I realized that I chose music that is all part of that golden era, and to me, this is the end of that era. Radiohead is one of the last of the big world-beater bands that is sort of on the cusp. They're using instruments in this piece that are really old technology. Those voices you just heard is an old keyboard that was, each note was a different tape loop.

So when you played a note, it activated a tape loop. And there were several different sounds. The most famous example is in Strawberry Fields Forever. That's the same instrument, but they were using the different tape loop. It wasn't the voices, it's the flute. And for some reason, the name of the instrument is escaping me. But it's really old 60s, 50s, 60s technology.

And yet, this whole record is digital. It's this digital, it's the real pro tools. Now we're into it. The sample rates have gotten better. So it's this really weird mix. And I mean, the melodies are, they're a super melodic band, but they're so informed by punk and all of that.

Like, listen to the fuzz bass. It's a really weird mix of hi-fi, lo-fi. His voice is exquisite and huge. And listen to this sample. That you chose It's a very disturbing piece of music. And it's exit music for a film, if we haven't mentioned that. Exit music for a film. So when this came out, I remember listening to this record and thinking,

wow, this is one of those records. It's one of those probably listened to for the rest of my life albums. Yeah, what a great band and what a great album that OK Computer. Yeah, I've seen them a few times. Haven't connected in the same way with many of their other albums, like with any of them really, the way I did with this. There's just something about this. I think they were on the cusp as well of going from indie to world beater band.

I think that Tom York was already struggling with fame. Bless his heart. I mean, who wants that kind of weight? But they made this record, and I still listen to it. You know, every now and then I'll turn my iPhone on and just plug it into the rental car and just play. Let the computer tell me whatever it wants to play.

Write the algorithm. Yeah, just let it spit stuff out. Sometimes it goes alphabetically. But whenever OK Computer tunes come on, but whenever, um, okay. Computers tunes come on, it's just like, wow, it's a, such a weird mix of old and new and his melodies. I mean, he grew up listening to the same kind of music I grew up, which is a lot of music informed by the church, by him singing. Um, there's a lot of his changes are, I think, I've never seen him interviewed, but I'll bet you that, uh, a lot of his compositions, um, a lot of the changes and

the melodic, uh, leaps that they make are, are, are related to, uh, church music and, and Protestant, Presbyterian, Protestant, Church of England, Anglican, somewhere in there. That's my musical background when I wasn't, you know, listening to Top of the Pops on the radio. That's the other big influence, right? Because it's every Sunday, whether you like it or not. Right. And so I'll bet you that that's a common thing.

So it really rang the bell for me, and it's a nice way out. And it is the 11th track. The illegal 11th track. Like Spinal Tap, right? We go to 11. Go to 11, man. Steven, what a treat, man. That kicked ass. I really enjoyed that.

It's my pleasure. Seriously, I don't get to do this very often. Nobody will allow me, so thanks. You can come back anytime, by the way. I'm the guy who allows it, so anytime you want to come back anytime by the way I'm the guy who allows it so anytime you want to come back that was amazing and that

brings us to the end of our 443rd show you can follow me on twitter I'm at Toronto Mike Stephen are you at Stephen Fearing on twitter yeah yes I am and I'm on Instagram and I'm on my web

I have a web page i have a web page oh you need a web page i have email you can contact steven buy his vinyl and go see his show he's at hughes room tonight i hope i hope you're not late for your sound check but fantastic our friends oh shit we'll wrap up here. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Raptor's Devotee. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Fast Times Watch and Jewelry Repair is at Fast Time WJR. And Camp Turnasol is at Camp Turnasol. See you all next week. Where you been because everything is kind of rosy and gray.

Yeah, the wind is cold, but the snow won't stay today. And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away. Because everything is rosy and gray.