 First We Take Manhattan is a song by Leonard Cohen. It is another instance where we have taken a demo made by Graham Young and I that was intended to help us get some work as a duo … we didn’t get any gigs but we had lots of fun … and have turned it into a full band recording thereafter, as we have done with some other songs like Hold On I’m Comin’ and Long Black Veil. That involves deleting the keyboard “drummer” and bass on the original demo and replacing them with our drummer Al Cross, our bass player Dennis Pendrith and in this case, we added in David Chester playing organ … a Hammond B3. The main reason I wanted to do that was I was so taken with Graham’s guitar. You might think that is a simple process … that we get the musicians in the studio, just turn on the recording equipment, count in the track and record them playing. But in fact, there is far more to it than that … on the part of the musicians. They listen to the demo many times to get ready before they come in, and in many cases, they chart out what they are hearing beforehand. On this tune, if you listen carefully, you will notice that Al Cross embellishes every move I make on the piano and many of Graham’s guitar riffs in a wonderful way after charting all that. At the end of this Tale I have posted a player of the original demo and then our final recording side by side so you can listen to what a huge difference it makes to have a world class master drummer and bass player playing on a track instead of some computer generated drum loop and keyboard bass … a far too common way of doing things in the music of today … not too mention how Dave’s organ playing lifts the whole recording to another level … it is indeed truly magical. Patrick Fockler and I were working on the mix together when he asked me … What’s this song about anyway? … good question! Reminds me of another song we recorded a while back … Tears Of Rage. Apparently Bob Dylan came downstairs one night at Big Pink, the house where The Band lived and rehearsed, handed Richard Manuel the lyrics for that song and said … Do you have anything for this? … meaning a melody, chords, the music. Then Dylan left and after Richard read the lyrics over he had the same question. But as he said later … You don’t go upstairs and ask Bob Dylan what his song is all about … you just get to work and come up with something … which he did! Sometimes poets use words like abstract artists use paints to create an image. An image that the viewer finds appealing regardless of what the artist meant. There may be a parallel in this situation in some respects and indeed we can’t ask Leonard Cohen about that anymore even if we wanted to because he has passed on. Our drummer Al Cross had the good fortune to hang out with Leonard one afternoon at The Silver Dollar in Toronto … they were both from Montreal so they had a lot of stuff to talk about together … Al probably brought up Montreal bagels! Al has raved on about those to me and I eventually got one from Burke Carroll. They are really chewy and delicious I must say … can see why Al cherishes them. Al told me that everything Leonard said to him all afternoon sounded like poetry. Makes a lot of sense … Cohen was a well established poet before he wrote songs. When considering the lyrics in First We Take Manhattan it seems to me that there are several threads here that have something in common underpinning them all. The whole thing seems to be a fantasy of some kind in Cohen’s mind about how some things and assumptions in our civilization and society are inappropriate, unjust, oppressive, unfair and that as a result he intends to meet out some kind of retribution for having them imposed upon him and us … ergo take Manhattan and Berlin by military force … to set things straight and in an effort to change things. In the first verse he seems to be talking about the fact that we all spend a great deal of our lives working in a system, most often for others, on tasks we don’t have any personal investment in … sometimes in little cubicles staring at computers or typewriters under neon lights … like human worker ants … in order to receive a whole bunch of pieces of paper with pictures of the Queen or Prime Ministers on them … south of here that’s George Washington … in order to “make a living”! In this regard I am reminded of a story about a Blackfoot chief named Crowfoot who was approached by government officials at a meeting around a council fire in his village to discuss purchasing their land and moving the tribe to a reservation. In order to impress the chief they had brought a chest full of the paper money they were offering the Blackfoot for the purchase and they spread it out on the ground. Crowfoot apparently got up silently, walked to the riverbank nearby, picked up a handful of clay, rolled it into a ball as he walked back and sat down again. Then he rolled the ball of clay into the fire and invited them to do the same with their money … an invitation they obviously declined … but a wonderful metaphor that was for what was really going on at that moment between the parties. After all, as Yuval Noah Harari points out in his wonderful book Sapiens, money only has value because it is a collective myth that we all share and agree to. Otherwise it is only pieces of paper … the apparent perspective of the Blackfoot. As they say, life is short and maybe we all spend far too much of it “working”. While we tend to think of our world at present as having made “progress” in the human condition, perhaps in some ways that is not the case at all. Our hunter gatherer ancestors did not spend one minute of their precious lives doing anything like that … every moment of their time was spent doing things that directly related to their own situation … solving problems, foraging for food, escaping predators, working with other members of their tribe or clan for the benefit of them all, confronting and dealing with enemies and relating with allies. Furthermore, since they had no such thing as money … which we invented and then almost immediately became addicted to … they didn’t suffer from one of the most obvious side effects of that addiction … greed and avarice … lust for money. As a result, they thought about each other in an entirely different way than we do. When one of them took down an animal they thanked it for giving up its life so they could eat and survive, then they shared it with everyone else in the clan. We would likely take that animal home, guard it with whatever means we had at our disposal as our “property”, then tell everyone else to go out and find their own! Is that “progress”? In some important ways our ancestors had a much richer quality of life than we do. While it is obviously more convenient to go and turn up the thermostat than rub two pieces of wood together to stay warm, we might be giving up a lot to do that. Our forebears had a much better, far more respectful understanding of their place on this planet and in the universe than we do … saw themselves of part of all other living things and nonliving things rather than being “in dominion” over anything. And if we are indeed in dominion over this world we certainly have screwed up! In her book The Sixth Extinction, after consulting with some of the most preeminent environmental scientists on Earth … who all told her the same thing … Elizabeth Kolbert shared their unavoidable conclusion that we humans are in the midst of our own extinction … that we are consuming and destroying this planet! In the process we have driven more forms of life into extinction over just the last 100 years on Earth than at any other time since its creation 4.5 billion years ago! And that process is being driven, for the most part by one thing … lust for money. Is that progress? And, back to the song, our self destruction is not only driven by wealthy and greedy corporations but also by people like us “making a living”, “working”. We are simply “cogs in the wheel” … in a “system” that perpetuates this reality. In a “system” that Cohen feels he was sentenced to twenty years of boredom. And that, for which he fantasizes he is coming “reward them” … to get even. The images Cohen creates painting with words in the second verse are wonderful. Among them, the statement that he is “guided by the beauty of our weapons” says that he is not alone in his fantasy of a campaign of retribution, we are there too! For some reason or other, I noticed after listening to this track a great many times that my vocals sound a bit like Neil Young in this particular verse. I have no idea why that is the case, nor did I intend to do that on purpose. But I have always loved Neil’s vocals whether David Foster does or not, so I’ll take that anytime … and having Neil Young sing any Leonard Cohen song would be a real Canadian moment! The lyric in the bridge, aside from celebrating Cohen’s fascination with the woman he is singing the song to, also reinforces the reality that we all, in some ways seem like grey anonymous persons in our world with … You see that line that’s moving through the station, I told you, I told you, I told you … I was one of those. The meaning of the third verse is rather self evident so I will let it speak for itself. It is worthy of note that both Manhattan are Berlin are not only centres of the business world, they are also places where the world of fashion is very prominent. The Ending … When we recorded the original demo we knew we were going to fade the track out. So Graham and I played on for a while in the ending because we didn’t know exactly when that would happen until later … and we had fun doing that. I have actually heard a band do fade outs live and it sounds and looks ridiculous. But that strategy works very well on recorded music and is used very often. As a result, on our original demo below you will hear the recording fade out. But when I gave the other musicians the demo to get ready to play on it I gave them the whole original demo with no fade out so they all played to the very end. The more I listened to it the more I liked the way that the recording didn’t really come to an end at all, the wheels just came off and it fell apart … much like what the rather noble but futile fantasy to take Manhattan and Berlin would have done. Especially when Al plays that drum roll … he seems to be putting on the brakes. That led to the idea of embellishing that impression or idea with sound effects. Sometimes in the recording studio things happen that you would never have thought of beforehand or planned … this was certainly one of those moments. In the War Of 1812 Symphony there are cannons firing in the score … so in that context cannon fire is music … and cannons are in fact musical instruments. That symphony has been performed many times in outdoor settings with cannons. Something similar is going on here … as it was when we used an air raid siren at the beginning of More Of The Same … and then The Peace Bell to end that song. And we have not just thrown a few sound effects into the track here and there. Patrick did a great job of making sure each one was in time with the music. And he placed them carefully across the soundscape from left to right. So as to create the impression that the listener is gradually entering a battlefield. The glass shattering at the end says it all, that this fantasy has come crashing down. It was a lot of fun working on this concept … felt it embellished the music well. On this recording Burrows And Company are … Drums … Al Cross Bass … Dennis Pendrith Hammond B3 … David Chester Guitar … Graham Young Piano … Bob Burrows Vocals … Bob Burrows Recording Engineer … Justin Meli Mixing Engineer … Patrick Fockler Recorded at Chalet Studio … Claremont ON Produced by … Bob Burrows Graphic Art … Tamara Green Photography ... SilBaBum Now here’s the original demo by Bob Burrows And Graham Young And here’s the full band version again for comparison Thank you for taking the time to read this Tale Behind The Tune. And for your interest in and your support for our music … much appreciated.
Bob Burrows
0 Comments
 I wrote the song Catastrophe in 2017 in reference to Donald Trump’s first inauguration. Not only is every word in the lyric of the song true for that time but they are even more so the case today. Some people have told me that the Democrats failed in the last election but that is not correct at all. It was in fact the American people who failed and they did so rather badly. By re-electing a man who demonstrated utter contempt for them and their democracy the last time they elected him President, when he lied about having an election stolen from him in 2020 … in fact someone did try to steal that election – it was Donald Trump … by directing a mob of his supporters to violently storm their seat of government and thereby try to prevent the peaceful transition of power from one president to the next, for the first time in their history. For the most part, because they didn’t like the price of gas or milk and eggs, believed numerous myths about the economic failures of the previous president Joe Biden and thought those issues mattered more than protecting and preserving their democracy … which is in serious jeopardy at the moment. As Mitt Romney recently pointed out, as a result, Americans deserve whatever consequences come their way for having done that … unfortunately we Canadians … and all the rest of the world … do not. I decided to release this song again in response to Trump’s totally unjustified imposition of substantial tariffs on our country that have nothing whatsoever to do with their stated purpose … a fictitious emergency of fentanyl crossing our border into the U.S.A. … and are in fact a blatant violation of American obligations under our legal negotiated free trade agreement with that country. Apparently, the signature of The President of the United States on that document is meaningless and cannot be relied upon in any way … something we and the rest of the world should take notice of and remember going forward. As stated by our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his wonderful speech in response recently, these tariffs have, in reality, been implemented as part of an ongoing disrespectful effort on the part of President Trump to crush our economy in order to bludgeon Canada into becoming his “cherished 51st state” … and in protest of the failure of the American people and Congress to call out and rein in their unhinged President.  Meanwhile here in Canada, the true north strong and free, let us stand together, let us be strong and let us stand up to this outrageous bully. Let us stop wasting money that we will need to be there for each other … it’s the Canadian way … and our resources, fixing a border that isn’t broken. Let us stop trying to respond to every capricious and fictitious claim made about Canada by Donald Trump in an effort to appease him … that will only embolden our adversary. Let us look for new friends and allies around the world that will treat us with courtesy, dignity and respect. It will be a tough row to hoe, but our wonderful country is worth the struggle. Together, we will prevail … and we shall overcome. A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall We recorded this early Bob Dylan classic for three reasons … That it is a wonderful and powerful song. That we had mentioned and referred to the tune in our song Catastrophe. But also because, although Dylan wrote the song long before Trump’s appearance on the political scene in the USA … and so his song obviously does not refer to Donald Trump directly in any way … some of the images created in the lyrics seem to resonate in relation to what is going on at the moment. Worthy of note, we altered the time signature in the tune in our arrangement in the tune from 3/4 time that he used when he played it, to 4/4 time. Here’s our recording of A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall:   She Moves Me is an unusual recording for a couple of reasons. In the first place it is a love song and I seldom write one of those. But it is also one of the first songs I ever wrote back in the 1980’s and in my less than humble opinion it has stood up well and remains one of my better efforts in songwriting … so maybe I should write more love songs. Secondly this recording was made for a rather unusual reason. I had received a financial windfall as a result of a retroactive payout over many years coming out of Pay Equity legislation when I was still a teacher, so our financial consultant called my wife and I in to discuss the matter. At that time, he told me that I had too much money … I said pinch me and please say that again! For much of my life I seem to have had an allergy to money for some reason. He then explained that the payout I had received had pushed me into another tax bracket, that the government would be taking a substantial portion of that money back in taxes and that, as a result we had to find a way to lose some of the money creatively so as to reduce my taxable income in this year. I immediately suggested our farming operation, but he replied that we had lost all the money we were allowed to lose as part time farmers. So, then I said, how about the music business? He said that sounds like a good idea, what do you have in mind? I had been doing some serious singing again at that time and told him I could make a recording in this calendar year and write off the expenses and then hope to make the money back by selling CD’s from that recording session at personal appearances and shows in the next calendar year. He said that was a great plan, go ahead and do that. So the first thing I did was to go out and hire someone to produce the recording … that person was Sam Reid, the keyboard player in Glass Tiger who also co wrote all of their hits with the singer in that band, Alan Frew. I had managed Sam in his teenage years when he was playing in a band called The End from a community just north of Newmarket … River Drive Park. Sam and I often ended up carrying much of the band’s gear back into the basement of his house where that band rehearsed, at 2 and 3 AM in the morning together while all the other rock stars in the group were at home in bed. So I doubled as a roadie as well as the manager and we became good friends. He also had a neat little recording studio set up in his boathouse on the Holland River with very professional equipment where we sometimes horsed around and recorded stuff, so he clearly understood the recording process. And Glass Tiger had many international hit songs by that time so I figured Sam would have some idea how to go about producing a good recording … turned out I was correct. He quoted me a price and we made a deal to record four songs and make a CD.  Sam Reid Then we went out together and assembled a 10 piece band with a 5 piece horn section that included some prominent members of the Toronto music community at the time including … A hero and idol of mine in local r’n b music Steve Kennedy on tenor sax Steve also recommended a colleague of his for the session on flugelhorn … Ricky Waychesko* Two horn players from a band I had been sitting in with … The Raging Butanes … Jim Beck* on trombone and the late Mike Sartor on tenor sax … and both of them suggested that I contact a player who played with them sometimes to do the horn arrangements … the late Steve Collins* on alto sax … Steve had apparently done some wonderful arrangements for George Olliver’s band Gangbusters as well as for their band from time to time. *Above indicates no photo available unfortunately
For the rhythm section I invited my longtime friend and right-hand man in making music and in writing songs at that time, the late Larry Leishman on guitar ... Larry aka Blues had been the guitarist in a prominent Toronto r’n b band from the 60’s … Jon and Lee and The Checkmates. And I also invited another longtime friend of mine in music to play bass … Dennis Pendrith. Dennis and I played together in a Toronto band in the sixties called Livingston’s Journey. I had also helped him get into Bruce Cockburn’s first rock band when he came to Toronto. Dennis has played bass on everything I have ever recorded seriously in a studio … with the only exception being Walk On By back in 1965 with Bobby Kris And The Imperials.
In the meantime, Sam secured the services of Denis Keldie on Hammond B3 and Mark Kelso on drums … Mark was playing drums with Holly Cole at the time and later became the Head of Percussion at Humber College Music for many years. All in all, one hell of a good band I must say!
It was a wonderful experience watching Sam shepherd and produce this whole project. He was the consummate professional at all times and thoroughly understood the assignment. Every musician in the project had a complete kit to prepare for the session, not only with the schedule and all the charts but also with mock up preliminary recordings he put together. We had two rehearsals with the rhythm section of the band on the Tuesday and Thursday before the actual session took place at a beautiful studio in Thornhill … Lydian Sound. Another interesting detail was the sound engineer at the session … Scott Campbell … had been a student of mine in grade six and he became a sound engineer as a result of an experience he had when he played guitar in an extracurricular rock band at our school when I took that band to a recording studio to record them. After he watched the engineer there, he fell in love with that! Scott did a great job for us on the session … it was one of those full circle moments in life. The rhythm section came in and recorded their part of the music on Saturday. I sang with the band as they recorded and we kept all those takes. We also recorded one extra song on the fly that we had not intended to do … Lover’s Question by Clyde McFatter … a song I often use to get warmed up … without any horns. I asked Sam if we could record it for fun while I was warming up … he said … Why not?! Mark Kelso left the studio after the session, went straight to the Lester Pearson Airport and hopped on a plane to go to Japan for a gig with Holly Cole … felt quite exotic! Bottomline, we had an awful lot of fun and enjoyed ourselves immensely! The horns all came in on Sunday to record their part of the tunes … another wonderful afternoon in the studio for all … it was a great experience. A couple of weeks thereafter, Sam and I got together at his small recording studio in his boathouse on the Holland River and I recorded the vocals for all the tunes a few more times just so that he would have many options for the digital editing process. I learned that day that I can’t sing the same song over again because when I do that I don’t really mean it the second time around. It’s like my body is saying … You just sang that … why are you doing it over again? So, I sang each tune once … then we took a break … then I came back and sang each tune again once … etc. … and it worked well. Apparently you can teach an old dog new tricks after all! Once we had completed the vocal session at the boathouse Sam went to work reviewing all the takes from all the sessions for all the songs we had recorded and completed the editing process. Then he hired one of the best mixing engineers in the country … the late Mike Jones … to mix the final versions of all the songs … it was a fascinating process to watch unfold. And the end result of all this work was truly wonderful in terms of the quality and depth of the sound on all the recordings. I have friends who to this day take the CD we created to audio stores when they are buying new equipment so as to test the quality of the gear they’re buying! She Moves Me features … A wonderful flugelhorn solo by Ricky Waychesko A gorgeous, lush horn arrangement by Steve Collins And some great Hammond B3 … especially towards the end of the tune … by Denis Keldie. Hope you enjoy the song … we had a fine time recording it. On this recording, Burrows And Company are …
Drums … Mark Kelso Bass … Dennis Pendrith Guitar … Larry Leishman Hammond B3 … Denis Keldie Tenor Sax … Steve Kennedy Tenor Sax … Mike Sartor Alto Sax … Steve Collins Flugelhorn … Ricky Waychesko Trombone … Jim Beck Vocals … Bob Burrows Recording Engineer … Scott Campbell Mixing Engineer … Mike Jones Recorded at Lydian Sound in Thornhill and at Sam Reid’s Boathouse Studio in River Drive Park Graphic Art … Tamara Green Produced by Sam Reid She Moves Me was written by Bob Burrows … all rights reserved Thank you for taking the time to read this Tale Behind The Tune. And for your interest and support for our music … much appreciated. Gratefully yours ~ Bob Burrows  Watch the Heartbreak Hotel Video here: https://youtu.be/tF_BPNB-Cfw This recording came out of my father’s funeral at The Salvation Army Temple in Sutton. My dad had requested that the small traditional horn band there play at his service. The first organized music I ever heard was a traditional Salvation Army horn band. And it was renowned to be one of the best in Canada … at the Dovercourt Temple in Toronto. As a little kid I used to play along with them on my trombone kazoo … it even had a slide on it! Those bands have been replaced in most Sally Anne temples today by Christian rock bands. But they had a warm rich tone that was quite unique and I heard that sound again at the funeral. I left that day wondering how I could use that horn sound in the bluesy music I like to make. To get an idea what that comforting sound was like please have a listen to a few bars of it here. If you are old enough, like me, you may remember seeing one of these bands playing on the street with snow falling in a black and white James Stewart Christmas movie many moons ago! For some reason sometime thereafter, I started thinking about the first rock ‘n roll song I heard. I was watching the weekly Tommy Dorsey Show one night with my parents on our black and white tv back in the 50’s when Tommy came out and said … We have something a little different for you this evening ladies and gentlemen … please welcome Mr. Elvis Presley! This guy then appeared with his rock ‘n roll band and performed a song called Heartbreak Hotel. It blew my socks off … immediately … I loved his music and his sideburns … wanted them too. My parents thought the guy was mentally ill … in some respects retroactively they had a point! However, that night changed the world … and my musical life forever, big time. Elvis Presley after all was just a white man singing the black music he had heard all around him. I began to think of Heartbreak Hotel as a blues song … and that’s exactly what it is. And I then recalled my thoughts and feelings about the Salvation Army band at the funeral. Perhaps because of their traditional work with the homeless at The Sally Anne those ideas connected … after all, what could be more Heartbreak Hotel than the streets of our big cities. If living on the streets of Toronto or New York doesn’t give one the blues, what could? So the idea was born to record a blues version of Heartbreak Hotel with Salvation Army horns. Turns out that idea was easier said than done! When you say Elvis Presley to folks at The Salvation Army their eyes roll into the back of their heads … when they are talking about The King, it’s someone other than Elvis Presley. So my project abruptly ran into a brick wall in terms of the horn section. However, I remembered that my cousin, Maj. David Ivany, was the only Salvation Army officer I knew who loved Herbie Hancock and who went to all the jazz museums in New Orleans! So I gave him a call, described my project and what I was thinking … and he agreed to help me. He took me to an event at The Salvation Army Camp in Jackson’s Point where the Staff Band was playing to celebrate the investiture of their new General … sort of like their pope! The Staff Band is made up of all the best Salvation Army musicians in the country. I had hoped I would be able to get someone to write up a suitable horn arrangement for me. And to entice a few of the more open minded among them to play on my project … to no avail! They played all sorts of Latin style music and big band jazz very well indeed, but I never once did I hear any of that traditional horn band sound I was looking for in their repertoire at all. I was perplexed and discouraged but still determined to find a way to get this project done. I’m not sure why or how but I recalled I had heard that a prominent jazz musician in Toronto, Russ Little had worked with The Salvation Army in some way or other so I gave him a call. I described what I was doing and wondered whether Russ could write an arrangement for me. Russ said he knew what I was looking for that he was not the guy who could do that for me but that he knew who could … a bass player named Duncan Hopkins who played with Guido Basso. So I got his number from Russ, thanked him very much and gave Duncan Hopkins a call. Turned out that Duncan’s wife was involved with The Salvation Army although he wasn’t but as Russ had said Duncan knew what I was looking for and agreed to write me a horn arrangement. I never actually met Duncan at all at that time but did many years later when he played bass with Bob Brough in Port Perry … we just talked on the phone, he sent me charts, I sent him money. But I had lots more to think about than horn arrangements, I needed help to pull things together. So I called a long time friend of mine to help me produce the whole project … Sam Reid. Sam and I go back a long way … I used to manage a heavy metal band from north of Newmarket Sam played with when he was 15 called The End … helped carry his B3 into his house after gigs at 3 AM on many occasions … and when that band broke up he ended up playing in Glass Tiger. Sam had done a wonderful job producing a CD for me in 1998 … very professional guy. One of the best people I have ever worked with in the recording studio and he has great ears. My late music buddy Larry Leishman said about Sam, that although he did not play the kind of blues music Larry and I both cherished, he understood that music completely and had great taste. I roughed out the piano part so we could make a demo for the other musicians on the session. Then I headed over to Sam’s studio thinking that I would show him the piano part and then he could record it since he was a keyboard player … I am not … but when I got there he refused! He said … it’s your project, you play the piano! … so I did and then I sang the song to that. We had to correct the odd part of the piano and I thought I would go back and record the piano part and the vocals again later … but I never did! We had wanted our regular drummer in Burrows And Company, Al Cross to play on the session but he could not do it … he was on an extended live tour somewhere and couldn’t make it. So Sam hired a drummer who he said was a “brushes specialist” … we wanted brushes … Jim Casson … well-known Toronto musician who often played with The Downchild Blues Band. We also called in our regular bass player Dennis Pendrith to play acoustic bass on the tune. And our guitarist at that time, Larry Leishman, formerly with Jon Lee and the Checkmates. Larry was the first guy on the session I sent the demo Sam and I had made to for a listen. He sent it back to me a couple of days later with some guitar he had recorded on it asking if this was the kind of thing I was looking for … gave it a listen and it literally made me weep with joy! We were off to a great start! … I called and asked if he could also play some mouth organ for us. Also thought that pedal steel might work on this recording in that it tended to evoke a feeling of sadness because the instrument is most frequently used in country music “hurtin’ songs”. Discussed this idea with Sam and although he agreed it might work well he also had concerns that it might be a bit over the top and not work out, so he suggested we should record the rest of the band first and then record the pedal steel thereafter … I agreed that was a good call. So I got contacted a very good pedal steel player I had worked with at Cosmo Music, Al Brisco. Al readily agreed to come out on the same day after the rest of the band had finished recording. We had planned to record the horns sometime after the rest of the recording had been done. A good thing because, although we had the horn parts, we did not yet have the horn players! Some people might think that when you make a recording like this, you get all the instruments ready, set up a mic, count in the song, play it perfectly and then say goodbye and go home. But that’s not what happens at all … there are at least 12 mics on the drum kit alone. Most often the band and all the players overdubbing something later play at least 3 takes. We do that so we have lots to work with when we are comping or editing the song later. There are occasions when we don’t have to do any digital editing at all but that is rare. One such occasion for our band was our recording of Morning Hymn. What you are hearing on that track is Take 5 … there is not one edit of any kind on that. We did have someone mix the song, balance out all the instruments and every sound. But that’s not editing or comping … it’s just making everything sound as good as possible. The main session went very smoothly … the band recorded to the piano / vocal demo I had sent. I had planned to go back and do that over again but it sounded very good so I never did that. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Larry stayed when everyone else left to overdub the mouth organ … worked really well. Then Al Brisco arrived and set up to play overdub the pedal steel … Larry also stayed to listen. Like Sam and I he was somewhat concerned that the pedal steel might conflict with his guitar. Within only a few bars it was obvious that it did not … on the contrary it embellished what Larry had played and lifted the whole recording to a wonderful new level … it sounded great. Larry was thrilled with what he was hearing and so was everyone else … it worked really well. Thereafter Sam worked up a rough mix of the track so we could record the horns later. It turned out that my cousin David Ivany played flugelhorn, and he was able to convince two members of The Salvation Army Staff Band to come out and play tenor and baritone horn. It was a brother and sister and those were brass horns rather unique to Sally Anne Bands. When they played together, they produced the wonderful classic sound we were looking for. The horns come in very discreetly in the third verse and continue through the guitar solo to the end of the song and add a special ambiance to the recording as we had hoped they would. The session went very smoothly, the horn players enjoyed the experience, we were overjoyed. It seemed to take forever to get Sam to mix the tune, he was on tour with Glass Tiger. We had recorded everything in June and by September I was getting antsy to get it mixed. We planned to release the recording and a video in early December just before Christmas. When Sam got home from his tour, he got to work on mixing the recording at his studio. Sam has great ears, he is wonderful in the studio and he created a lovely mix of the song. He told me later that it was a shame he had to discard so many great moments on both the guitar and the pedal steel … you can only use so many, the rest get thrown away in “the can”. And although Sam doesn’t play blues music himself he has great taste and understands it well. I was very happy with the final mix and the master he created for our project. When he heard the final mix of the song, Larry, who had been a close friend in music and in life told me he thought Heartbreak Hotel was my masterpiece but he was wrong … it was his! His guitar and mouth organ on that track is the best I ever heard him play on a recording. Sadly he passed away from the scourge of cancer not long thereafter in 2012. In the meantime, I had been working on getting a video made to accompany the song. The whole idea of the project was to elevate the profile of the homeless and to possibly raise some funds for the people who supported them leading into the Christmas season. Those people were Fred Victor … formerly The Fred Victor Mission … and The River Street Café of The Salvation Army … essentially a soup kitchen for the homeless in east end Toronto. Started working on that part of things before we ever got into the recording studio.
So I contacted Ryerson University because I was aware they had a media program there and asked them if they could recommend a student who had demonstrated skills in video. They referred me to a recent graduate of the course there who had won many awards and excelled in videography named Anne Douris and passed along my contact information to her. Anne got in touch a few days later, shortly thereafter we met at her mother’s house in Stouffville. Turned out I had taught school with her mother for several years at a local school in town. Small world! Anne and I came to an understanding financially and also about various aspects of the video. That it would be shot in black and white for dramatic effect, the length of the video and what we were trying to achieve and portray in the project overall … we seemed to be on the same page. She indicated that she would get to work on the project right away and would keep in touch. Not too long thereafter she invited me to come and view some of the images she had collected. She clearly had a wonderful eye for video and photography and had assembled a great set of images depicting the environment of the homeless … but there were no homeless people in any. When I pointed that out, Anne indicated that she was feeling awkward abut shooting homeless people because she had a concern about being disrespectful of their dignity and privacy. While I was empathetic to her feelings and thoughts in that regard, I responded that I found it difficult to think that we could produce a video here without some homeless people in it. I pointed out that I had on many occasions seen stories on the news dealing with obesity that showed images of obesity in which you could not identify the subject at all, and that we could possibly get images of such people that in a similar way that did not compromise their identity. Or be invasive or disrespectful of the homeless, shots from behind, special lighting. She agreed that might be possible and said she would go out and work on that aspect. Not long thereafter Anne called and told me that she had not been able to get beyond her feelings about shooting any images of homeless people and said she would have to pull out of the project. I asked her if we might be able to use the images she had collected and she agreed to do that. So then I went looking for someone else who would be able to carry the project forward. Saw a sign on a store in Uxbridge advertising videos so I went in and talked to them. Turned out they made videos of kids’ birthday parties and weddings … weren’t interested. But one of the women told me to contact a local photographer named Stuart Blower. I did that and met with Stuart shortly thereafter … he readily accepted the challenge of carrying the video forward to its completion and agreed to incorporate the images created by Anne. Stuart and I then spent many nights driving around Toronto looking for suitable images. We spent many hours downtown in places like Edward Gardens shooting video. The experience resonated deeply within me since I had grown up in central west Toronto in the area of Dundas and Ossington and had seen this environment up close as a youth. Also reminded me of my Uncle Stanley … the black sheep of a Salvation Army … because he was a homosexual alcoholic who lived in the parks and back alleys downtown for years. It was a profound and deeply disturbing experience for me personally shooting the video. Stuart then took all the rough footage of what we had done, Anne’s images and the music back to his studio and got to work on assembling and editing that into the final version of the piece. When he was done he invited me to come for a viewing of the video he had created. It was stunning in every way … a video that would do well in any short film or video festival. It presented a very powerful and moving vision of the homeless and the world they lived in. I was thrilled with the results of his time, his effort and the outcome of his wonderful skills. I dedicated the video to my father, Ray Burrows and to his brother, my uncle Stanley. On this recording Burrows And Company are … Drums … Jim Casson Flugelhorn … David Ivany Acoustic Bass … Dennis Pendrith Tenor Horn … Megan Smith Guitar … Larry Leishman Baritone Horn … Jeremy Smith Mouth Organ … Larry Leishman Piano … Bob Burrows Pedal Steel … Al Brisco Vocals … Bob Burrows Recorded at Chalet Studio in June 2011 … chalet.com Recording Engineers … Theo Posthumous, David Chester Mixing Engineer … Sam Reid Produced by … Sam Reid and Bob Burrows Heartbreak Hotel was written by … Tommy Durden, Mae Boren Axton and Elvis Presley Burrows And Company embarked upon this project to accomplish two objectives … To elevate the plight and the profile of the homeless in our community And to pay tribute to and hopefully raise funds to help the organizations that support them. That being the case we invite you and encourage you to consider making a donation to one of the following organizations … Fred Victor … https://www.fredvictor.org/ … 416-364-8228 x.1332 [email protected] Inn From The Cold (Newmarket) … https://www.innfromthecold.ca/ … 905 895 8889 Or any other organization who provides services directly to the homeless that you prefer or are aware of in your community. Thank you for considering our request and for your interest in and support for our music. Bob Burrows  The legendary jazz sax player Charlie Parker would sometimes wander over to the jukebox between sets and play country songs, for which his friends and colleagues would tease him. What you playin’ that stuff for they would ask to which he would reply because I like the stories. Well surely this song is one that would have appealed to The Bird for that reason. A tale about fidelity to one’s lover within an act of marital infidelity that cost him his life. I have thought maybe he could have told the judge he and she were just playing checkers. Or maybe just having a cup of tea together … who would have known otherwise? But that would not have made for a wonderful song … or for a great story. Long Black Veil was written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin. It was originally recorded in 1959 by a honky-tonk country singer named Lefty Frizzell. The tune was later covered by country music icon Johnny Cash. I first bumped into Long Black Veil when it was included in the album Music From Big Pink, the first and in my less than humble opinion, the best LP ever recorded by The Band. We have approached the song with a slightly more r ’n b feel … less Americana than they did. More reminiscent of Levon And The Hawks than The Band … and although the personnel in those two groups was exactly the same, in some ways they were very different bands. This recording started out as a demo to promote a duo Graham Young and I were putting together so that we could get some gigs … we didn’t get any gigs but we did have fun recording the demos … we used keyboard bass & an automated drummer on my keyboard for the demos. Recently I decided to upgrade the demo to a full band recording … we have done that before. Graham’s guitar playing on Long Black Veil was simply magnificent … wanted to celebrate that. His solo here reminds me of something you might hear on a recording by Jackson Browne. Another song we made a demo of that day was Hold On I’m Comin’ which we upgraded to a full band recording a while ago … and you can listen to that on this site to see how it turned out. https://www.burrowsandcompany.com/home-1/page/2 So we brought in Al Cross to replace the automated drummer, Dennis Pendrith to replace the keyboard bass and we rolled out the Hammond B3 organ so Dave Chester could sit in too.  Dave had played one of his portable keyboards on the original demo but we wanted the B3. That was a very good decision because although many have tried to emulate the sound of a Hammond B3 with a Leslie cabinet, in my opinion nobody has been able to pull that off yet. The speakers in the Leslie physically spin inside the cabinet and disperse the sound of the organ in a most unusual way that nobody has quite been able to duplicate electronically. The Hammond B3 revolutionized black gospel music and Dave made it really sing here. I am always amazed at what a difference it makes when we bring in Al and Dennis to do this. In this case, Al had listened to the demo several times and had charted the whole song out in great detail … he backed up and embellished everything that everybody else had already done plus brought many new ideas to the table throughout the song … for instance the open intro in the first verse, love his press rolls in the third verse and his wonderful work on the bell of his ride cymbal throughout the tune. You don’t get stuff like that from a drum loop or programming ever. In a very similar way Dennis also charts everything out in detail before he gets to the session. The two of them are the rhythm section from heaven … one of the best together anywhere. And as a band we are very fortunate to have them back there providing a wonderful foundation. Because without a solid rhythm section, no band is going anywhere … they are crucial. And both of these guys love to play together … you can hear and feel that in this track. I sang Long Black Veil many times in my youth with Bobby Kris And The Imperials and whenever I did, the drummer in that band, Gord MacBain, always sang harmony with me. The last time we performed the tune together was in 2012 when we both sat in with The Cameo Blues Band at a music festival in The Uxbridge Music Hall … I have a video of that somewhere. You can see Gord in this promo photo taken at Queen’s Park by photographer Pat La Croix in 1964 … leaning against the pillar, top right … probably the best promo photo ever of our band. Gord was so proud of this photo, thought it would impress his parents that he was going places.  When he showed it to his father, he said … Gord, if you take this photo and a token to the TTC station, I think they might let you go for a ride on the subway! … a deflating response indeed! I have always thought of Gord as The Cabbagetown Kid … lived in that part of east end Toronto before lawyers and such started gentrifying that part of the city … and he had street smarts. On one occasion in Port Arthur when a club owner was hassling us about being too young to play in his club, he looked at baby face Gord and said … Oh you couldn’t possibly be old enough to play here, you couldn’t be 21 yet (the age required in those days). With no ID to support him Gord responded with a laugh … That’s what everybody says. I’m actually 23! … and the guy believed him! … but we got fired anyway because when the guy got to our guitarist Eugene Martynec and asked how old he was, Gene said he was 18. The guy then said … Well then you can’t play here … to which Gene responded … Who cares! It was a long quiet drive back to Toronto for a bunch of empty handed, broke rock stars! Gord got interested in playing drums when he started hanging around with another Toronto band from those days … Robbie Lane And The Disciples … and especially with his drummer at the time, Sonny Milne … he would go to gigs with the band and help Sonny set up his kit.  Sonny hit the drums real hard when he played … and so did Gord … an agent from back then once asked us if Gord played drums with 2 by 4’s instead of sticks … he had a point!
Gord was about the same size as me so he was the only guy in the band I could borrow a clean shirt from when we were on the road together playing bars … we go back a long way! Always thought of Gord as the heart and soul of Bobby Kris And The Imperials. He certainly was one of the longest serving members of our band back then. Our relationship for over 50 years has had many hills and valleys. Don’t think he will ever really forgive me for burning a hole in the seat of his immaculate classic Pontiac with a cigarette back in the sixties … and I can’t say I blame him for that. But later in life he was the Best Man at my wedding to my soulmate and late wife Judy. After our band broke up, Gord turned his attention to songwriting for which he had a knack. Back in the days before Google, you could call Gord and ask him for the lyrics for any song. Nine times out of ten he could tell you what they were … he was an encyclopedia of lyrics. He joined The Songwriters Association of Canada and learned a great many things. To have a listen to the body of work he created in his songwriting career you can go here … https://www.reverbnation.com/gordneil And if you want to buy the rights to any of his songs, let him know … they’re all up for sale! I particularly recommend Sad Guitar … with some wonderful pedal steel by Burke Carroll. I think of Gord as a brother in music … we frequently talk with each other about music issues. I have consulted with Gord on several occasions about songs our band is working on that both he and I have had some common experience with … like Morning Hymn and Gnostic Serenade. I much appreciate his advice, feedback and counsel … enjoy sharing thoughts and opinions. So this one’s for you Gord … hope you enjoy and approve of our recording of this fine song. And obviously hope the rest of you folks enjoy it too. On this recording Burrows And Company are … Drums … Al Cross Hammond B3 … Dave Chester Bass … Dennis Pendrith Piano … Bob Burrows Guitar … Graham Young Vocals … Bob Burrows Songwriters … Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin Graphic Art … Tamara Green Recorded at Chalet Studio … www.chalet.com Recording Engineers … David Chester, Justin Meli Post Production and Mixing Engineer … Patrick Fockler Produced by … Bob Burrows Burrows And Company have a wonderful time making music together and we love to share it with you … thank you for your ongoing interest and support for our music … deeply appreciated. Bob Burrows 
Catastrophe
Keep your head down … run for cover Big trouble on the way The blond buffoon is in the saddle And we’re all gonna pay Batten down all the hatches Stay deep within your hole Democracy is on the table Now out of our control Bob Dylan once sang out Hard rain’s a gonna fall Well this may be the hardest rain of all Damn Yankees blew it badly When passing on the reins Those Yankee Doodles may be dandy Just a little short on brains Goodbye Nato and the EPA Watch them swagger as they flaunt. Because make America great again Means lettin’ them do whatever they want Bob Dylan once cried out …. Catastrophe … what were you thinkin Catastrophe … my heart is sinkin’ Catastrophe … for you and me So long fairness … decency All hope flushed down the drain What we have here is a land of crazies Being led by the insane There’s a bull in the china shop Carryin’ a heavy load With a tendency to fly off the handle And with access to the nuclear codes Bob Dylan once warned us … Catastrophe … what were you thinkin’ Catastrophe … my heart is sinkin’ Catastrophe … for humanity Written by Bob Burrows … November 12, 2016 Published by Out Of The Wilderness … all rights reserved
The United States of America has just voted their self-declared greatest democracy in the world out of existence … and they can’t say they didn’t know what they were doing … it was obvious!
They have chosen to endorse vulgarity, ignorance, hatred, division, utter stupidity & intolerance. They have also done that deliberately with eyes wide open, fully aware of the consequences. With serious warnings from many people who worked for Trump and many other Republicans! As a result they’ve earned and fully deserve all of the outcomes that’ll flow from their decision. Unfortunately the Ukranians, the Palestinians … and all the rest of us … do not deserve them! Trump’s election is also likely the end of any serious effort to address climate change at all. Because he and his followers regard that problem, the most serious issue of our time, as a hoax. And when the USA … the world’s biggest economy … withdraws from the Paris Accord again and stops making any effort to decrease burning fossil fuels, so will China and everyone else. Making Trump’s election literally a threat to all life on Earth, putting aside nuclear weapons. And all the best to everyone RE health care in America with Robert Kennedy Jr. in charge! They will never get Donald Trump out of the White House again regardless of The Constitution. He and his followers will create a “crisis” towards the end of his “term”, then using the precedent of FDR and WW2, will say they can’t conduct an election in the midst of their “emergency”. And given what we have seen over the past few years, the GOP will support that completely. So democracy is done in the USA … the coup is in motion and will soon be a fait complete. And without any exaggeration, we are all about to descend into Hell on Earth. As it says in the song … Batten down all the hatches, stay deep within your hole. Democracy is on the table … now out of our control! And here’s the other song we recorded in 2017 to bring attention to Trump’s first election. Our version of Bob Dylan’s great classic from his early days … A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall. Many of the images and metaphors in the lyric seem to have merit with regard to this situation. 
Regretfully yours ~ Bob Burrows
Dear Friends In Music, We are formally releasing our full band recording of More Of The Same today. And this may indeed be an appropriate time to do that, given what is going on. This may be a critical and pivotal moment in the Hamas Israel War going forward. We have made this recording in an effort to join in and to contribute to the chorus of voices from all over the world calling for the following … An immediate prolonged and with any luck, permanent ceasefire in this conflict. To allow desperately needed shipments of humanitarian aid to enter into Gaza. To put an end to the urgent humanitarian catastrophe there and in particular the famine and starvation of hundreds if not thousands of innocent children. To stop the carnage in Gaza … the massacre of thousands of innocent Palestinian women and children who had nothing to do with the atrocities committed on Oct 7. While Israel, like any other nation has the right to defend itself, what has transpired in Gaza since then has little, if anything to do with the atrocities of Oct 7. This is not an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth … it has become an eye for thousands of eyes and a tooth for thousands of teeth … of innocent civilians. That Israel immediately open all its border crossings into Gaza and stop impeding and interfering with humanitarian aid shipments into the area in any way. That the United States and other allies of Israel stop funding the massacre, slaughter and deprivation of thousands of innocent women and children in Gaza. While President Biden has made remarks to this effect, he has not done anything substantial to address this issue … talk is cheap, actions speak louder than words. Also while he has cautioned Israel that its current actions may lead to decades of retribution, he should consider his own advice with regard to the interests of the USA. The immediate and unconditional release of all Israeli hostages held by Hamas. That the international community and especially the allies of both sides of this conflict convene a conference through the United Nations to explore and pursue ways in which we can create a long lasting peaceful resolution of the issues underlying this conflict for many decades, that will guarantee and protect the existence, peace and the security of both Israel and Palestine moving forward. Admittedly this may be a very difficult thing to achieve at the moment given the leadership of both sides of this conflict, neither of which seems interested in peace. This is clearly an obstacle to moving forward with ideas like the two state solution. However, there are many peace activists in both of these communities who do understand what kinds of things need to be done to resolve this situation and who are committed to finding ways to accomplish that for both Israelis and Palestinians. Activists who understand the critical need for mutual respect and security for all. We need to find ways to identify such individuals and engage them in this process. We urge you to do anything you can to contribute to this important conversation. Lobby your MP … demand that our politicians stop just talking about this situation and start doing something about it … stop mincing words, demand a substantial ceasefire as many other nations have done … France, Spain, South Africa, Jordan. Post your thoughts on Facebook … and all the other social media platforms. Share our recording with others in any way to provoke thought and discussion. I did not write this song, nor did we record it, for money. We produced this song to make a difference in the world we live in. As a result we have decided to donate any royalties or streaming / download fees from More Of The Same to The International Rescue Committee, an organization playing a pivotal role in trying to get desperately needed humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. To get some idea of the difficulties they are encountering in achieving their objective, please take a couple of minutes to watch this interview with David Miliband, the CEO of the IRC ... https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/a-failure-of-humanity-irc-ceo-on-impending-famine-in-gaza/ We would also like to encourage you to donate to the IRC directly yourself to support their important work at ... https://www.rescue.org/ If you are an activist seeking peace and an end to this conflict and you can use our song in any way to accomplish that, feel free to do so … and good luck with that! Do anything you can to stop this outrageous madness ... the time is now. Bob On this recording, Burrows And Company are …
Dear Friends In Music,
When you are preparing to go into a recording session you do several things to help the musicians get ready for it, including making a rough demo for the song. Usually that demo is for their ears only ... but given what is going on in this situation I have decided to release the demo to everyone as I did with the lyrics. My goal here is simple ... to encourage and stimulate discussion and thought. And to do that as quickly as possible in order to help save lives & limit damage. Moreover this is an important moment in this conflict because of the ceasefire. Indeed the pressure growing all around the world to stop the carnage & to stop the killing of innocent civilians may lead to an extension of this temporary event. This may just be our moment to have a substantial impact on this situation. Carpe diem ... time to seize the day and make the most of this opportunity. In the sixties, the music of the day had a profound impact on the conduct of the Vietnam War and helped lead to a change of attitude towards that conflict. I am a flower child of the sixties so I guess I hoped that model could apply here. Terry Fox taught us one important lesson with his marathon across the nation, that any one person can change the world if they are determined to do so. I wrote this song on behalf and in honour of the 1200 or so innocent Israelis who were murdered on Oct 7 by Hamas terrorists and the over 13 000 innocent Palestinian civilians, including over 5000 children, who have been killed by Israeli air strikes and other military operations ... in an effort to help to prevent any further such deaths of innocent people on both sides of this conflict. Let us all raise our voices in any way we can to put an end to this nightmare. Please share this demo and these lyrics with anyone you possibly can. Let us demand that our government have the courage to stop mincing words lest they offend someone or other, and call for an extension to this ceasefire. Let us encourage them to join with a growing number of other governments around the world in calling for a peace conference to bring this long standing conflict to a permanent end by resolving the issues at hand once and for all. As it says in the song, the Irish managed to achieve that ... so they can too. In doing so we would also be supporting the many peace activists in both Palestine and Israel who have a clear understanding of the need for such. Clearly it is in the best interests of both parties involved here to do so. Let us all take this moment to put Terry Fox's lesson into action together. We can make a difference here ... and we must ... time's a wastin'. I would like to thank David Chester for his sound engineering skills in making this demo and for hosting its recording at his studio ... www.chalet.com I would also like to thank Patrick Fockler for his lovely slide guitar and for helping to obscure my rather clumsy piano playing by sitting in with me! I assault the keyboard more than play it and I do wish to apologize for that. I did enjoy getting to sing my own background parts ... and speaking of those, I also want to thank David Konvalinka for his suggestion for the ending of the song ... no more of the same. Also wish to thank Tamara Green for the wonderful image she created to accompany the song. Spread the word ... let's try to make a difference here ... together we can. And the time is now. Bob
 Gnostic Serenade was originally a beat poem / song written by the late William (Bill) Hawkins who was a highly respected poet and songwriter from Ottawa.  In my less than humble opinion the best recording of the tune was included in a wonderful collection of his material called Dancing Alone ... Songs Of William Hawkins in 2008, sung by Brent Titcomb in a haunting beat type style ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAZ_-a1r1RQ&ab_channel=BillStevenson-Topic Gnostic Serenade was also recorded by several other artists in a more folk rock song kind of style ... initially by a band from Ottawa called 3’s A Crowd in 1968 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDHivPtXlho&ab_channel=3%27saCrowd-Topic Later and probably most successfully by American folkie Tom Rush in 1970 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsB5bQa-dhw&ab_channel=TomRush-Topic And earlier by Brent Titcomb, a former member of 3’s A Crowd, in 1977 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhf6ru2l7nA&ab_channel=CanadianCultClassics There was some reminiscent chatter about the song in media a couple of years ago ... started me thinking about the tune again one day when I was messing about on my keyboard, so I began to figure out the chord changes and to experiment with it. In that process I started playing some of the changes with chords often used by jazz musicians ... ninths ... they worked really well and they seemed to reflect the vibe of Bill Hawkins himself as a human being ... with a beat feel and in that style. Led me to believe we could approach the song as a jazz tune and worked on that. The first time I ever heard the song it was performed by Bruce Cockburn when he came to Toronto from Bytown (Ottawa) in the mid 1960’s and made off with half the band I was in at the time which I obviously wasn’t too happy about ... until I heard Bruce play, at which point I wanted to be in his band too ... and almost was. Bruce was and remains a remarkable musician songwriter ... one of Canada’s best. The band he put together was called Flying Circus ... included my ex band mates drummer Gord MacBain and keyboard player Marty Fisher ...  Sometime thereafter I drew Gord and Marty’s attention to the bass player I was playing with at the time ... Dennis Pendrith ... who was much better than the guy playing bass with Bruce then ... and Bruce hired Dennis to replace that guy. Ironically Dennis is the bassist in Burrows And Company today and has played bass on everything I have ever recorded with the exception of Walk On By 1965. As a result I became a friend of the band and hung out with them now and then. I was able to attend and take in a rehearsal or two and sometimes we would gather in Bruce’s basement and just listen to him playing tunes ... lovely memories. Bruce usually brought along a binder of his material, all written out in full music score, which was very unusual in the world of rock / folk music at the time! Having grown up in the nation’s capital he often played gigs in Quebec, so all of the lyrics for all his songs were written out in both English and French. It doesn’t get more Canadian than that! Not long after, for some reason or other Bruce decided that he needed a singer for his band and so they auditioned several vocalists for the gig ... including me. When the auditions concluded Marty and Gord came out to my place and told me that I had won the audition ... that if anyone was going to sing Bruce’s songs other than Bruce it would be me ... but unfortunately they also told me that the people around him had convinced Bruce that he should sing his own songs, a decision with which I reluctantly agreed fully ... but I had really wanted that gig! On the upside however I became a better friend of the band and hung out with them even more ... was eventually invited to go to New York City with them where Bruce and his band opened for American vibes jazz musician Gary Burton at Steve Paul’s “The Scene” for a week ... a magical and wonderful experience. William Hawkins was a mentor of Bruce in some ways and had a profound impact on his development as a songwriter ... indeed one of Bruce’s first experiences writing songs was helping put some of Mr. Hawkins’ poetry to music for him after they met at Le Hibou Coffee House, where Bill and his wife then were managers. They were also band mates in a group called The Children and around that period of time Bruce lived with Bill Hawkins at his house in Ottawa for a while. For a deeper understanding of their connection and relationship please have a look at an article from Bruce’s web site and listen to the interview on CBC Radio there. https://brucecockburn.com/2016/remembering-bill-hawkins-the-poet-who-became-a-songwriter/ For more insight into the turbulent life of William Hawkins have a look at this article in The Walrus ... great read! ... https://thewalrus.ca/how-canadas-bob-dylan-ended-up-a-taxi-driver/ Our band, Burrows And Company gathered together for a recording session at Chalet Studio near Claremont ON on March 15, 2021 in the midst of the pandemic. We planned to record two songs that day ... Morning Hymn and Gnostic Serenade. I had encountered both of those songs in the same period of my life. While for some tunes the guys in the band have come in to record individually or a couple at a time ... like we did for Walkin’ The Dog ... on this occasion I felt it was very important to have everyone in the same room at the same time. We had never played either of these songs as a band so it seemed essential to explore how we would approach and play them together ... to share ideas, the feel. As in the basic notion of Gestalt ... the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Musicians bounce off each other when they play together as a band in ways they would not and cannot do when they are playing to and with a prerecorded track. In retrospect I am very glad that we chose to do that ... played an important role. And besides it was great to just see each other and play together again ... first time we had done that since our last live gig at Burdock in Toronto in October 2019. We recorded Morning Hymn first ... the most magical experience I have ever had in a recording studio ... then we took a break and had some buttered scones and tea. We visited about all sorts of stuff together, caught up with each other personally. Then we went back into the studio to work on Gnostic Serenade and had a chat. The guys had all received a very rough demo of the song with the chord changes. We talked about the overall groove and feel we were after, how to start and end the tune, solos in the song, the extended improvised ending (outro) and stuff like that. Then Al counted the song in and we took a run at it for the first time. When we were done there was absolute silence in the room ... no one said a word! We were all just sitting there looking at each other ... when Dennis finally said ... I feel a bit like a lounge lizard over here ... and we all had a good laugh about it. Some things had gone well, others had not, the overall groove didn’t feel “right”. After talking over a couple of things, Al counted it in again ... we recorded take 2. None of this is unusual in any way ... you seldom get what you want the first time. Then we decided to go to the Control Room and have a listen to what we had done. Thereafter we all agreed that, although there were some nice moments, on the whole the jazz groove wasn’t working as well as we had hoped it would. So Al ... who tends to lead the band musically much of the time ... came up with some suggestions as to how to approach the rhythm pattern in a different way. He was talking about something to do with bossa nova and samba and all that. All the guys seemed to understand where he was going with that ... I just sing! So everyone enthusiastically went back into the studio to give his ideas a try. It did seem to go better but it still didn’t feel quite right ... Al thought he knew why and suggested a couple of tweaks ... and then we took another run at it. Once again we all felt we needed to go back to the Control Room and have a listen. It still wasn’t working the way we all believed it could and you could sense discouragement descending upon us ... indeed I was just about to say something like ... You can’t win them all, sometimes things don’t quite work out as planned. But just before those words came tumbling out of my mouth, Al said he had another idea that might do the trick if we just did this and that differently. To my amazement everyone seemed reinvigorated and we all headed back. However, the underlying understanding at this point was this was our last shot. Al counted us in one more time ... and suddenly, voila ... there it was ... in spades! It was a wonderful feeling of triumph that filled the room at that juncture. We then joyfully headed off into the Control Room to have a listen to what we had. All of us felt very pleased at how the tune had come together ... joy reinforced. So we went back in and did the song one more time in the same groove so we had everything we might need to back us up moving forward through the process. If you find some minor issues or problems with a performance later it’s good to have another similar take you can go back to for bits / pieces you may need to edit. We were all very grateful for Al’s leadership in getting us to The Promised Land! At the end of a session like this the recording engineer usually puts together a very quick rough mix of what you have recorded for listening purposes thereafter. By the time we are finally ready to release any song I will have listened to it a great many times ... dozens and dozens of times ... as we evaluate what we have and what needs to be done to carry the track forward before sending it to be mixed. After listening to that rough mix for a while with considerable pleasure and confidence that it had come together well, I still thought something was missing. That something turned out to be alto sax ... thought it would embellish the feel. Talked to a couple of horn players I admire and have played with previously about sitting in on this track but neither of them was available for one reason or another. Then I remembered a guy I have known of for a great many years ... since I was a kid ... but that I have never heard play or worked with ... Russell Strathdee. Russ is a bit of a legend in Toronto music in the sixties ... played with Dunc and Judy And The Regents, then The Silhouettes with Steve Kennedy and Diane Brooks and later with Shawne And Jay And The Majestics ... he has been around! Although I had never met Russ before we have several mutual friends and he has commented online regarding some of the songs we have released previously. Then I checked out his web site at ... https://www.rstrathdee.com/ Decided to give him a call to see if he would like to sit in with us on this song. What a sweetheart! ... first he wanted to know if I had asked anyone else if they would come and play sax with us ... I replied that I had indeed spoken to a couple of other prominent local sax players ... every time I mentioned who that was he would say ... “Oh man, he’s at the top of his game, you should hire him” etc etc. He finally told me he hadn’t played much during the pandemic ... however, it must be said, neither had anyone else! ... and he didn’t know if his chops were any good. Knowing that he was a very good saxophonist I told him that I thought his chops were probably just fine and made him a deal ... that if I didn’t like what he had done I wouldn’t use it but he would still get paid and that he wouldn’t be offended. He replied he thought that was a great deal and agreed to come and sit in with us. I sent him the rough mix for Gnostic Serenade from March 15 so he could prepare. I asked him to explore the tune but to not try to come up with a specific part as such ... but rather to just become familiar with it and then play in the moment. On May 24, 2021 Russell came out to Chalet Studio with his alto sax to play. From the moment I heard that sax in the intro, a huge smile came over my face. Everything he did embellished the recording it seemed ... worked like a charm! When I later played the tune to my stepson, who had heard it previously, he responded that he couldn’t imagine the recording without the sax now ... me too! We are indeed very grateful to Russell for taking that leap of faith and sitting in. His chops were just fine ... it was a wonderful experience working with him. So, on this recording Burrows And Company are ... Drums ... Al Cross Acoustic bass ... Dennis Pendrith Keyboards ... David Chester Guitar ... Graham Young Alto sax ... Russell Strathdee Vocals ... Bob Burrows Recording Engineers ... Justin Meli, David Chester Mixing Engineer ... Josh Bowman Graphic Art ... Mike Raines Recorded at Chalet Studio, Claremont ON ... www.chalet.com Produced by ... Bob Burrows And finally ... to quote the opening lyric of the song ... here’s the tune ...  The Sun Is Shinin’ and Goin’ To New York
I have been a fan of Jimmy Reed since I was a kid. My girlfriend at the time (much later my wife) and I would put his double LP Live At Carnegie Hall on the record player at her cottage and play it incessantly. It was the soundtrack of our lives all summer up there and like summer that music seemed to go on forever.
Always amazed me that he could make up so many wonderful songs with such a simple and limited musical structure. There was a sameness that wove itself through all the songs yet each one was still distinct and unique and special.
There was also something very comforting about Jimmy Reed’s music. I had the good fortune of seeing him perform live once back in the early 70’s at Le Coq D’Or Tavern on Yonge St. in Toronto ... Muddy played there back in the 60’s. Throughout the entire evening Jimmy’s wife Mama Reed sat just behind him and throughout his show she kept whispering in his ear all night ... couldn’t figure out why but then it occurred to me ... she was whispering all the lyrics in Jimmy’s ear. Apparently he could not remember his lyrics ... in fairness there are a great many! As his first set was coming to an end Jimmy thanked everyone for coming out and wished everybody a safe drive home ... until Mama started whispering in his ear. Oh my goodness, he said it’s just the end of our first set so please stick around. So I guess he was having some difficulty remembering more than just the lyrics. It was a wonderful evening of great authentic beautiful blues music. David Clayton Thomas was also wandering around the room visiting with folks and giving away tickets to his upcoming show with Blood Sweat And Tears at Maple Leaf Gardens soon thereafter .. got one ... bonus!!! The first time I ever heard a Jimmy Reed song was at The Concord Tavern one Saturday afternoon at one of those great matinees with Levon And The Hawks. As they sometimes did, on this particular occasion they invited a Toronto band to sit in with them and do a guest set between their sets ... great opportunity to play! The band who sat in that afternoon was Robbie Lane And The Disciples. First time I ever saw Donnie Troiano play guitar, Sonny Milne on drums and noticed that one of the sax players ... Bert Hermiston ... was in my class at school. You learn something every day. 
Part way through their show Robbie called up his baritone saxophonist ... a guy named Wicked William (Cudmore) ... to do a song for us with his mouth organ. That song was Goin’ To New York ... wild performance that blew the room away. We were all suitably impressed and gave Wicked William an ovation in response. He was simply terrific and so was the song ... my introduction to Mr. Reed.
I never knew or met Bill Cudmore back in the day except on a couple of occasions when I sang with The Disciples as a guest ... the first time on Robbie’s tv show in the sixties A Go Go 66 and later at a bar in North Toronto. But one day as I was driving to Uxbridge to pick up some feed for my farm animals I noticed a mailbox on a road I sometimes take with the name Cudmore on it. I wondered at the time, could that possibly be Bill Cudmore because Cudmore is a rather unusual surname but then I just forgot about it and kept going to the mill. That happened a few times over the next while but continued to end in the same way. One day thereafter I was invited to come down to the city to be on Robbie Lane’s radio show on 740 AM with Jon Finley to reminisce about the good old days. When the show was over Robbie mentioned that he had had Bill Cudmore come to sit in with The Disciples as his guest performer and that they had a great time. I then asked Robbie where does Bill live? ... His response, just outside Uxbridge! I couldn’t believe it ... had the answer to my mystery ... Bill was my neighbour! The next time I drove along that road I noticed someone sitting on the front porch. Stopped my car, rolled down the window and yelled ... "Hey, are you Wicked William Cudmore?" ... to which the guy then slowly stood up, walked about halfway down his driveway and yelled back... "Who’s askin’?!" ... I replied that my name was Bob Burrows but when I was a kid I sang under the name Bobby Kris ... "Holy shit" was the reply ... "How’s Jerry Shymanski?" Jerry used to play sax in our band from the 60’s ... Bobby Kris and The Imperials. So Bill invited me to come and sit with him on his porch and have a visit. We had a wonderful chat about many things over a beer quickly became friends. He invited me to come back one night and jam some music together which I did. We had a great time singing and playing songs together from such great classics as I Only Have Eyes For You to one of my favourites, Heartbreak Hotel. We both played some piano and sang, Bill also played some sax and mouth organ. It was a very special evening of music and friendship I will remember forever. Once in a while on a hot sunny day Bill would give me a call and say that he had a beer at his place with my name on it ... would be good to see me if I had the time. Bill is truly an old world kind of guy and a bit of a hermit, especially during the pandemic ... went to town to buy food and then went back home ... that was it! One time when I mentioned something about “going online” Bill said ... When I go online that just means that I am hanging out my laundry ... he has no computer, no cell phone, has never watched a video on YouTube ... he has access to none of that. But the man is totally up to date on what is going on in the world .... sharp as a tack. If I want to share recorded music with him at all I have to put it on a writeable CD. He does have a CD player ... probably the most up to date tech gadget he owns. My conversations with Bill are always fascinating ... he is a very intelligent guy. And he knows a great deal about music, local musicians and the music business. I have come to cherish his friendship and his company very much. Burrows And Company messed around with a couple of Jimmy Reed songs as a medley the first time we ever played together in the summer of 2009 at a jam that we recorded at Chalet Studio ... www.chalet.com ... The Sun Is Shinin’ and Goin’ To New York. The players were Al Cross – drums, Dennis Pendrith – bass, Larry Leishman – guitar, David Chester – keyboards, Bob Burrows – vocals. That night I asked the guys to think about approaching these songs as Count Basie or Big Joe Williams might have done, in a swing type feel and style ... and they did. We had finished off the two other songs we recorded that night ... Howlin’ For My Darlin’ and Hoochie Coochie Man ... a long time ago but we had not done anything further with the Jimmy Reed medley at all since we first recorded it. One day recently I asked David Chester if he could find our initial recording of the medley so we could give it a listen again for fun, to see if it might be worthwhile. After listening to the track we both had big smiles on our faces ... it worked well. We both agreed the recording had potential ... worth the effort to carry it forward. I told Dave I could hear mouth organ ... he said he was thinking about saxophone. We decided to start by calling in Russell Strathdee who did a fine job for us on alto sax in Gnostic Serenade ... so we asked him to come back in with his tenor sax. We also sent him a copy of the recording so far so he could listen to it, get ready. In preparation for Russ coming in I listened to what we already had a few times too wondering what exactly we might want to ask him to play on this track. The guitar was already playing a line I had asked Larry to play for the intro of the tune at our original get together and I was wondering if Russ could play that too. Other than that I didn’t have a whole bunch of ideas as to what he could do. In many cases when we call in players for something like this I like to ask them what they think would work well and what they would like to play first. After all, they are the experts at playing whatever instrument they play ... I am not. In this case I thought it best to stick my idea about playing along with the guitar in my back pocket and see what kind of ideas Russ might have about all this first. So I asked him what thoughts he had had about contributing to this track. Russ replied that he thought the guitar was playing a nice line during the intro, he thought it might be nice if he played along with that! Great minds do think alike! There’s another part to that saying ... but let’s leave that alone for now! So Russ laid down some nice sax lines to go with the guitar and then we got him to go back and play a harmony sax part to what he had just played ... worked out well. We went from there and explored the rest of the song ... Russell came up with some nice moves around the vocals, a solo and we came up with sax parts for later. Russ is a fine musician, a gem to work with ... we had a great time making music. But every time I listened to what we had after Russ had played his part I could still hear mouth organ, likely because of both Jimmy Reed and Wicked William. Since Jimmy Reed had passed away in 1976 there was only one of them to call. So I asked Dave to make me a CD copy of our track and dropped it off at Bill’s. Left it in his mailbox ... wanted him to hear what we had done so far. Later I picked up my telephone and gave Bill a shout ... we had a good chat. We discussed Jimmy Reed’s unique mouth organ playing, the sound of his harp. That was because, unlike most of the other well known mouth organ players like Little Walter from Muddy Water’s band and guys like Paul Butterfield, who cup the harp in their hands while holding a Green Bullet microphone giving it a smoky musty dark distorted sound, Jimmy Reed played his mouth organ on a neck stand all the time, like Bob Dylan and John Lennon, because he was playing guitar too. So Mr. Reed’s harp sound was much thinner, higher and sometimes even squealed. Bill said he understood exactly what I was talking about, explained how to do that. When he had finished I asked him if he had a chance to listen to the CD I had left. He said he had enjoyed listening to it and wondered what we were up to. I explained that we were working on a medley of Mr. Reed’s songs and invited him to come to the studio and sit in with us on mouth organ as a tribute to Jimmy. Bill said he couldn’t possibly do such a thing ... his chops were no good any more, he would likely run out of breath and his mother wouldn’t let him do that etc. He had more excuses for why he couldn’t play than Carter’s has little liver pills!!! So I was quite disappointed and crestfallen when I hung up the phone from that conversation ... but two important things quickly came to mind as a result. The first one of those was baritone sax ... I guess because Bill’s primary role with The Disciples was to play baritone not harp ... but there was no way I was asking Bill to do that ... if he wouldn’t play mouth organ there was no way he would play sax because that’s a much bigger challenge for a player who isn’t playing sax a lot. It has to do with keeping your mouth muscles in shape ... your embouchure. I later found out that Bill no longer owns a baritone saxophone anyway. But I did know a guy that did, who was still active playing baritone ... John Crone. John played sax with Bobby Kris And The Imperials when I first joined the band. Had seen him at a reunion luncheon the summer before the pandemic arrived. He told me at that time he was still playing with a couple of local Big Bands. So I gave John a call and made him an offer to come and sit in with us on this recording project that he readily accepted and then I booked a session with Dave. 
The other thing that occurred to me after my conversation with Bill was that he did not really understand what I was asking him to do, the nature of recording today. He seemed to be under the impression that we would put him in front of a mic, turn on the recording and then expect him to deliver an immaculate performance from one end of the song to the other ... but that’s not really what it would be like at all! He could run out of breath until the cows came home and it wouldn’t bother us any ... we would simply stop, wait til he got his breath back and then keep going! There was no way we would be recording his playing on the whole song in one go anyway. We be would working on it in sections until we finally got to the end. And as for his chops being no good any more, I knew that was simply not true because he had played mouth organ the night we jammed and he sounded great! Despite all that however I did realize that if Bill really didn’t want to play with us then I would be obliged to respect and accept that was the case ... and move on.
So I decided to call him back, go over my thoughts, then invite him to sit in again. When Bill picked up the phone he said ... If you are calling me back to ask me to sit in on that recording again, you can forget it and save your breath. I persisted and said that if he would hear me out and still didn’t want to play I would readily accept that, that I would stop bugging him and wouldn’t ask again. He agreed to listen so I went over my thoughts listed above with him ... in addition to saying that if he didn’t like what he played we wouldn’t use it and finally that this whole project was one of those closing the circle of life moments for me. He was the first person I had ever heard play the song, so I wanted him to be on this recording ... that for me it was a personal favour I was asking for that reason. Bill stopped me at that point and said ... Bob, you are a good salesman, I will do it. But I am going to keep you to that promise of never asking me to do it again! You could have knocked me off my chair with a feather at that moment ... I was thrilled and filled with joy that he said he would come ... and to be honest I never really believed that he would ... one of those moments when it’s nice to be wrong. So I called Dave and we booked a date to bring one of the real icons of our music from the sixties, Wicked William, out of retirement and back in front of a mic. On Tuesday February 21 John Crone came in to the studio to play his part. We all had a great afternoon together making music and telling stories. As he was leaving John thanked me for inviting him to come out because he had had a lot of fun getting to play some r’n b / blues music again instead of big band.
The next day we brought in Bill Cudmore to play some mouth organ for us. He brought 2 mouth organs with him .. one for that Jimmy Reed harp sound we were after for the intro ... as a tribute of gratitude and respect for Mr. Reed and the great songs he wrote for us to play ... and the other one for the rest of the song. To get some idea what Jimmy Reed’s mouth organ playing sounded like, here are links to both of these songs by the master of such himself ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qC87Uwc6HA&ab_channel=TheBluesfan12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6MRdFjvjXw&ab_channel=TheBluesfan12 At this point it is important to realize and understand that while we deeply respect and appreciate Jimmy Reed writing these songs it’s not our goal to sound like him. After all that’s already been done and very well by Mr. Reed himself ... no point! But in the world of music there is a long and honourable tradition of arrangements. That means playing a song in a different style with a different approach than the original version, while still using the same chord changes, melody and lyrics. And that is what we have done here and frankly is what we usually do with covers. On this particular occasion we were after the ambiance of a smokey bawdy after hours speakeasy, women jitterbugging with skirts spinning and having a real good time. As mentioned above with a swing type feel like you might hear from Count Basie. Despite his remarks about not having the chops and all that, Bill gave us wonderful performances on his mouth organs throughout the entire afternoon. His chops were just fine and he is a very easy and humble guy to work with.
When he was done playing, I offered Bill $100 for taking the time to come out and play for us ... he replied ... What would I want that for? ... give it to the food bank. And that’s exactly what we are going to do, give that money to them in his name. As he was leaving Bill thanked Dave and I for inviting him to come out, said he had a great time, really enjoyed himself ... but that he was never doing this again!
Dave and I then went to work “comping” the track ... which means that we listen to all the performances we have recorded from each of the players, look for their best moments, keeping in mind how their playing fits in best with all the other players and then digitally cut and paste together the best possible performances for each. It is actually painstaking work that takes a long time and involves a lot of listening. When we are done we make a quick board mix that I take home and listen to more! Sometimes after a few days we notice issues we need to fix and then refine them. Dave can actually saw the “s” off the end of a word ... we have in fact done that! It is indeed a labour of love ... and I love doing it! When Dave and I are finally done, we send the final assembled track to our mixing engineer in the city ... Josh Bowman ... who then goes over the entire recording with his sonic fine toothed comb and makes each instrument and voice sound the very best it can be and then he balances everything out and gives it a final polish. He sends his first mix back to me ... I do a lot of listening and thinking that we discuss later and he goes back to work on whatever aspects of the track are needed. That usually happens two or three times until we feel we have it right ... and voila! On this recording Burrows And Company are ... Drums ... Al Cross Acoustic Bass ... Dennis Pendrith Guitar ... Larry Leishman Grand Piano ... David Chester Tenor Sax ... Russell Strathdee Baritone Sax ... John Crone Mouth Organ ... Bill Cudmore Vocals ... Bob Burrows Recorded at Chalet Studio, Claremont ON ... www.chalet.com Recording Engineers ... Scott Campbell, David Chester Mixing Engineer... Josh Bowman Graphic Art ... Mike Raines Thank you for taking the time to read this story and for your interest in and support for our music much appreciated. Bob |
musicians for hire
Look forward to hearing from you. Have instruments will travel and play. To book us, get a quote or for more information please call 905-473-6591 or e-mail us [email protected] Archives
April 2025
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed