Naked Singing

Yeah. I have a lot of masks I wear as a singer. Born of insecurity. About my voice, about myself. About whether people will love me. Just human being stuff really but for performers that can be trouble. If I build a performance from my need for you to be impressed then I'm not really singing from the truth of the material am I? I might impress you but ultimately what am I really communicating about the song?

Producer Gavin Bradley helped me identify a habit I had of over singing to try and communicate the intensity of feeling in the material…like a stage actor who is a ham and goes over the top. He pulled me back to being more like a screen actor who feels the emotions in a scene and allows the viewer to go on the journey with him. Thats how we approached the vocals on "Domesticated"..and it was a real adventure of trust and faith for us.

Gavin asked me to trust him enough on one complete vocal to prove to me that this more vulnerable approach would suck the listener into my world in a more compelling way. We chose "I'm Coming Home" which was a real challenge because I had been singing that song for years before Daniel suggested we brush it off and work up an arrangement for this disc.

The experiment worked for me (you be the judge) and launched us into the rest of vocals which we recorded at Gavin's home studio "Afternoon Tea" where we could take our time to develop the approach that would work best.

I like long takes as much as possible..and although at the beginning Gavin had to work me hard to keep me naked and "open" in my performance we got to a shorthand by the end of the disc. By the end of summer 2010 we were flying along stacking those back up vocals sweltering in the August heat and surrounded by a Futon for sound baffling.At one point it was actually close to "naked" singing with me stripped down to my underwear having been caught in a rain storm while biking over. LOL

Finding The Producer

Daniel and I started to think through who could guide this music through it's final recording stages summer of '09 while most of these songs were just being written. We had building and focusing the sound for a while and knew it would take a special touch to get things just right and so were interviewing producers that seemed like a potential match. I had been introduced to Gavin Bradley and his music through a few friends in the business and was songwriting with a batch of folks including him.. but something just clicked with Gavin and we ended up becoming good friends during the process.

We had been writing in his Afternoon Tea studio in the College and Young street area of downtown Toronto, slipping out for Thai food and to talk about music and love and life and Gavin seemed to have an intelligence about this music and who I am as an artist that really impressed me.

He had an understanding of both my R&B/Soul and Rock N Roll influences and how those elements would eventually feed the Orchestral Pop-Cabaret of "Domesticated".

One day during a session I just turned to him and told him I thought we should be asking him to produce the disc. Crazily he said yes! and we spent the better part of year sweating it out in the trenches to bring you the final product. Because this disc included recording organic instruments live off the floor Gavin had the bright idea to bring in engineer John Nazario to record the instruments just right and eventually to mix this puppy. Although that kind of process was new for Gavin a more meticulous and magical producer could not have been found for this disc. I'll be talking a bit about the whole recording process in the next blog entry.

Hi Folks! I want to talk a bit about the songs on "Domesticated" and how they came about. It took a long time and a lot of writing time to create the material recorded for this disc. We actually went after the beast three times!!

A few years ago my brother Daniel and I started collaborating and building the adult pop "sound" of the disc which included intimate lyrics with softer drums and piano based arrangements and Daniel singing back up vocals. A few tunes survive in the live show from that first period including our "take" on the David Bowie/Nina Simone classic "Wild As The Wind" and Goffin/King "Brill Building" chestnut "Up On The Roof".

On the first round we had feedback from our resident song person Catharine Saxberg, (who was the sort of de facto executive producer of the disc), that our first material was smart but meandering and not yet focused enough for a strong disc. So, excited to have such top level input we went back to the drawing board and wrote and demo'd up another batch of songs that tried to address the issues of length and form. None of them were actually from the heart but they were all very short and well fashioned. LOL. The demo's in Daniel's Liberty Village Studio during that second period gave us a run at arranging the vocals and instruments and so we found out a lot more about how to support this sound musically.

A third period of focused writing proved the charm. I went after the songs with all the knowledge and smarts we had accumulated over the period of development and gave myself over to talking about what was really happening in my life. Thats always how my best material has come about in the past. I seem to have to relearn the same lesson every recording project though.

I headed north to write sketches in the early mornings in the boathouse of the family cottage during the summer of 09.

The many moods of the lake kept me open and peaceful and I found the harmonies and melodies showing me the way to a batch of happier songs that described the deeper truths of my experience in a much punchier and more direct communication. I wrote early before anybody got up at the cottage and felt those hours as a kind of holy communion with the muse that was feeding me daily inspiration and joy in the foam of these songs.

Moving to a new location seemed important to get another perspective but Toronto proves too busy for me with my coaching business and friends etc. I asked my pal Bill in Montreal to recommend a spot and his pal Patti was finished off the Bed and Art apt above her art gallery. Perfect artist hideaway for writing.

By the time I was polishing off the lyrics there I could feel the simple power of these melodies working all together in a song cycle. Coming home to record simple piano and voice demo's at the Rogue Studio's in Toronto with JP (which has become part of my working process) I slid the finished tunes to my team of Daniel and Cathie with no expectations.

When Cathie said "you nailed it" we knew it was time to start the process of arranging and recording them. -phew- A three round process was finally finished!