 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
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