 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 ... 
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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 The Tale Behind The Tune ... Hold On I’m Comin’ ... Memories Of The Brass Rail Hold On I’m Comin’ was written by the songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter. The same guys who wrote most of the big hits for Sam And Dave ... including Soul Man.  The song reached #1 on the Billboard R’n B chart in 1966 and has been covered by many artists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AREppyQf5uw&ab_channel=Inconspicuos1 One evening while they were working on songs together David Porter took a washroom break. Apparently he was gone for longer than Isaac Hayes thought he should be so he went to the washroom door and yelled at Mr. Porter to come out and get back to work to which Porter apparently responded ... Hold on, I’m comin ... and so the idea for the tune was born. However, when the song was first released the folks at the record company were concerned that the title was too “suggestive” so it was originally released as ... Hold On, I’m A Comin’. How that would have addressed their concerns about that issue is beyond me!? My late wife used to say that the song must have been written by a woman ... because it enunciated a chronic frustration women often encounter in those intimate moments with men who seem to care little whether their partner also reaches the summit of the mountain of love! Our recording of this song started as a demo for a duo ... Burrows And Young. The duo didn’t have any luck landing gigs ... but we had a lot of fun recording the demo. And there was something about the recording that reminded me of the old days ... playing bars. As the tune starts one gets the feeling that the band isn’t really sure what song they are playing. Sort of like the beginning of Fingertips by Stevie Wonder ... What key, what key? Until Graham starts into the signature line that pretty well defines the song ... oh, that one! I also love the way Graham approaches playing this tune ever since the first time we played it. And on this particular recording he does a wonderful job of singing the harmony ... Dave’s part. Every Sam needs a Dave, I certainly got one here ... he did a fine job and he doesn’t like singing! So I called in the rest of the band and we fattened out what we had done and finished the tune. We played some nice bars in the city when I was a kid ... but The Brass Rail wasn’t one of them.  The Brass Rail was located on the east side of Yonge St just south of Bloor St. Unlike some other rooms in town, like Le Coq D’Or and The Sapphire who started us at 9 PM and wanted 3 sets a night, the folks at The Brass Rail wanted us to start at 7 PM and then it was 45 min. on, 15 off all night long until 1 AM ... the time at which all bars had to close back then. And unlike today, that was six nights a week ... Mon to Sat ... with a Saturday afternoon matinee. Although a grind in many ways one thing very positive about that was the band played a lot. You really knew your stuff very well after all that playing and the band tended to get very tight. However, at The Brass Rail the nights seemed to go on forever and the management spent a lot of time telling us to turn down ... as if they had expected to have a string quartet or something ... and chewing us out for not going on on time ... which I must admit was a problem sometimes. They didn’t pay us well either but would hire us for two months at a time ... we had bills to pay. So it was a classic trade off ... less money but a constant supply of it to endure the down side. In order to endure the negative aspects of the deal some of us turned to things that would assist in making the experience more bearable ... like smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol! One of the guys used to frequent a wine store down the street and come back with 2 or 3 bottles of a red wine called Challenge ... very aptly named because it was indeed a challenge to drink it! Started with wisps of mustiness finishing off with notes of cough syrup, straight out of the bottle. You certainly couldn’t afford to pay for beer at the bar on our salary at that spot so wine it was. Unless you got lucky and some nice customer offered to buy you a beer ... just part of the job! And back then marijuana came from Mexico ... there were no grow ops around at the time. So it either came from there or some other exotic location or it didn’t come at all ... dry spells! But when we had some it was a great way to get through the night ... we shared joints back then. Often in the alleyway outside the bar ... the smell was an issue so you couldn’t smoke it indoors. And we played and we played and we played ... but we weren’t actually the stars of the show. That would have been the topless Go Go Dancers ... well almost topless but not quite. Back in Toronto The Good they wouldn’t allow dancers to show their nipples for some reason. You could look at the rest of their breasts no problem ... but not their nipples. So the girls used to have to glue pasties over the forbidden area, many of which had tassels.  It always amazed me how those women could make the tassels twirl in time to the music. Also had considerable empathy for those ladies of the night having to take them off later! Ouch. They certainly were the centre of attention at that bar as it gradually evolved into a strip club. We were playing there at the early stages of that evolution ... eventually replaced the live music. In some ways it was a lot of fun playing those nights there ... but in many other ways, it wasn’t. On this recording Burrows And Company are ... Drums ... Al Cross Bass ... Dennis Pendrith Guitar ... Graham Young Hammond B3 ... David Chester Piano ... Bob Burrows Harmony Vocals ... Graham Young Lead Vocals ... Bob Burrows The recording was made at Chalet Studio ... www.chalet.com Recording Engineers ... David Chester, Drew Chester Mixing Engineer ... Josh Bowman Promo Image ... Mike Raines Caricatures for the Promo Image ... David Flett LISTEN TO HOLD ON I'M COMIN' HERE: Thank you for taking the time to read this tale ... we hope you enjoy our music.
Bob  TITLE: Freedom From The NRA
DATE: February 2013 LOCATION: Wanted S & P Studio … Toronto MUSICIANS: Percussion … Al Cross Vocals … Bob Burrows SONGWRITER: Bob Burrows RECORDING PERSONNEL: Recording Engineer: Scott Campbell Mixing Engineer: Scott Campbell Producer: Bob Burrows NOTES: I wrote this song in response to the response of the American Congress to Barrack Obama’s effort to create legislation to require background checks for prospective buyers at gun shows, that was supported by 85% of Americans yet was still defeated in the Senate because of lobbying by the NRA … after the massacre of twenty 5 and 6 year olds and six of their teachers at Sandy Hook P.S. Unfortunately this horrendous event has been followed by a great many other similar massacres of all sorts of totally innocent human beings in the USA. Because the song was written so long ago the lyric is somewhat dated at this time. But the central theme of the song still has merit and validity in that the NRA still exercises enormous control over any debate or discussion of this topic in government because they fund campaigns for a great many politicians in that flawed country, who then vote as instructed on any efforts to improve the situation. It seems to me that the only way to change this circumstance would be to circumvent the control that the NRA exercises over politicians they own by holding a national referendum to ask the American people directly what they want. I believe that the results of such a plebiscite would be surprising and that the average American would support reasonable gun laws, but no one ever asks them. Contrary to the myth many have of gun loving and gun toting Yankees, Americans likely want what we all want … safer streets for their kids and their families. This recording was a duet between myself and our drummer Al Cross who did not play on a traditional drum kit but used found objects around the studio … like a cardboard box we discovered in the back … bass drum … and a toy tambourine! LISTEN TO SONG HERE  We started recording this song as a whim in 2009. Dennis and I had been working on another tune ... had some time left over at Sam Reid’s studio. So I asked him if he would mind if we did something else before he had to leave. He said sure ... what would you like to do ... I replied Walkin’ The Dog ... in what key, he asked. I said A and counted it in ... in two three four ... and we recorded the song, vocals and bass only. We left a space in the middle for a solo, I was thinking of making my debut on kazoo at the time. And that is the only time in this whole adventure that any two of us were in the studio at the same time ... when Dennis and I recorded the tune together ... everybody else came one at a time. So here it is ... the first step on our musical journey ... Listened to our initial recording at home a few times ... really enjoyed it. And found myself singing an under harmony part to my lead vocal as I listened. Next time I was at Chalet Studio I asked David Chester if I could add the under harmony. Sounds simple enough and it is ... David played back the original track while I sang my part with headphones on so you can hear the original recording and the new part you are singing too. That happens all the time in a recording studio ... it’s called overdubbing. To make it sound good you have to match the under harmony as closely as you can to the lead. And that can be a bit tricky ... nailing the timing down for the new part exactly. You are after all singing to yourself but it can still be a bit challenging getting it just right. But it came together well ... and so now here is that next step in the process ... I had been working on a project for a while called Duets And The Whole Nine Yards. That would include a duet with each member of our band and then tunes by the whole band. With regard to that concept, I had come to think that Walkin’ The Dog was my Dennis duet. I was talking to Dennis on the phone a few months later ... catching up with him. When he said to me that he had to keep practicing every day to keep his lip in shape. Asked why a bass player would need to keep his lip in shape ... he replied that he played trumpet. News to me! ... I have known Dennis since we played in a band together in the late sixties. I told him I never knew he played the trumpet at all! ... and when did he start doing that? He said that he just played trumpet as a hobby and had been doing that for many years. His brother is a professional saxophone player apparently ... so he thought he would try trumpet. When we hung up a notion occurred to me so I phoned him back and asked him if he would be willing to come out of the closet with his horn and play on a song ... he asked which one? I replied Walkin’ The Dog ... he then inquired what key it was in again ... I told him A. He said that puts me in the key of B which has sharps all over and is a difficult key for trumpet. I don’t know why, but some instruments ... like sax and trumpet ... are not made in the same key as most instruments like pianos are ... the key of C ... so you have to transpose for them. Dennis went on to say that he would love to sit in on trumpet but the key was too difficult. When I got off the phone with him I had another thought so I called David Chester. David is the keyboard player in our band and he owns the studio where we record most often. I asked Dave if he could transpose our whole recording up a semitone without having it sound like The Chipmunks ... he replied that he knew it could be done but he had never done it before. I then asked if he would like to give that a try and he said yes he would be willing to do that. So one day soon thereafter I went over to the studio, Dave got out all his manuals, went to work. And after an hour or two he had accomplished our task & had transposed the whole track to Bb. So I called Dennis back and told him what we had done ... he said that was great and that he would play trumpet on the song now, because C was a much easier key for him to play in. A little while later Dennis came to the studio with his horn and overdubbed two parts he created. And in so doing he made his courageous public debut on trumpet ... and here it is ... Recording in a studio is a very different experience than playing live ... not the same thing at all! Many people think that you just walk into a studio, plug in your gear and ... in two three four ... You then just play the song the way you would at a live gig, pack up your gear and go home. But that is not the case at all ... playing in the studio is indeed a very different kettle of fish. And it requires a different set of skills and a very different mindset than live performance. When you are playing live you feed off the audience and often it inspires you to play even better. In the studio there is no audience, so it feels somewhat like you are playing in a vacuum of sorts. Many musicians and singers experience something called red light fever ... a type of anxiety that sets in when you start to record and the red light goes on ... some folks freeze up. When you play live and you make a mistake or go out of key for a moment or something like that, most people in the audience don’t even notice ... it’s the whole show they remember. But when you record, down inside yourself you realize that listeners will be able to hear every single little thing you did and it weighs on some people in a way that live playing never does. Of course the more you work in a studio the less such things are a problem for most folks. And the evolution of digital recording has made a huge difference in that regard as well. Back in the days of analog, we recorded onto tape ... the only way to edit anything was with a razor blade ... techs in studios actually did that and some of them learned to do it amazingly well. However, with digital recording you can edit anything, like a surgeon in the operating room. You can cut an “s” off the end of a word, cut and paste phrases with ease and even tune stuff. So in that sense, modern technology has “taken the pressure off” when the red light goes on. Because if you don’t get what you want you can just do it over again and paste it in place. Once you understand and realize that, you can relax much more easily and perform better. I am very proud to say that we do very little editing when our band is recording. Often what you are hearing is sheer performance with no edits at all with these guys. That was the case completely for the whole band with our recent recording of Morning Hymn. What you hear on that recording is exactly what we played and I sang in one of the takes. In this day and age of digital editing and the manipulation of what you are hearing, that is rare! The next musician to play on Walkin’ The Dog was our drummer ... Al Cross. To be honest it is ass backwards to bring the drummer in so late in the game. The drummer of course sets the time which is critical but in this case we were fortunate. Dennis Pendrith is a consummate professional bassist who must have a metronome implanted. Because when we first recorded together his timing was spot on throughout the entire tune. Less experienced players would likely have sped up or slowed down a little as the song went on. But not Dennis ... critical ... because any variation in the time would be problematic for Al. However in any endeavour Murphy’s Law seem to come into play at some point and it did here. When you record a drummer there are over a dozen mics on the drum kit ... one for every single drum and cymbal he is playing ... there is often a mic inside the bass drum ... and room mics. The recording engineer that day was new to the studio, installed the room mics upside down! So when we were listening to the track later the drums did not sound right at all. As a result we sent the drum track down to our mixing engineer Josh Bowman in Toronto. The mixing engineer plays a critical role at the end of this process when he goes over and massages every single sound we recorded making sure it sounds as good as it possibly can. He then balances all those sounds with each other to create the mix you finally get to hear. On this occasion we asked Josh if he could “fix” the problem we were hearing and he did. It’s still Al playing every whack on the drums etc but he was able to correct the sound problem. Which was great because setting up to record the drums again is a costly proposition! In the studio there is constantly a meter running ... time is money ... literally! Al Cross is a world class master drummer ... he knows what to play and even more importantly what not to play to make a song work well ... and you can hear that in his performance here. His playing on this track is very simple and straightforward ... as it needed to be for this tune. You can listen to the master at work here ... The last member of our band that came in to the studio to join our musical adventure was our guitarist, Graham Young, who was in a rather bad frame of mind on that particular day. This was a young man who thought about and played guitar 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If he wasn’t playing guitar he was going to the music store to buy strings, or listening to records, or jamming with his friends, or going out to play gigs or going out to hear other people play gigs. Guitar was the main focus of his life ... and then along came the pandemic and it was all gone! We all identify ourselves to a great degree by what it is we do and suddenly the universe had pulled the rug out from under his feet ... as it had for all young musicians ... and that had hit hard. To understand other aspects of our session that day some other background is required as well. Graham and I have an understanding that he will play his Fender Telecaster in the studio. Unless he approaches me with some rationale as to why he wishes to play a different guitar. The reason for that understanding is that we have had circumstances in which he recorded some stuff with his Telecaster one day but when I later asked him to come back another day to do some overdubbing on that track he showed up with a different guitar ... which did not match up with his Tele at all ... so we had to throw everything he did on that session in the garbage. In the studio, time is money and his return session on that occasion was a waste of both! So, in order to keep things consistent, we have this understanding with which he fully agrees. Aside from that I must admit I am a bit of a Telecaster junkie myself anyway ... it has been an iconic guitar in country, rock, blues and r’n b for a great many years, especially in Toronto. It was the guitar played by a great many young guitarists from my era in the sixties because Robbie Robertson played a Telecaster with Levon And The Hawks back in the day, so all the young bucks in the city who idolized Robbie ... Domenic Troiano, Bobby Star etc ... all played a Tele. Graham won The Sleepwalk Guitar Festival in Toronto when he was 15 years old ... he took the prize money from that award, went out bought himself a Telecaster and has picked it ever since. While, like many other guitarists he loves to fool around with other guitars and explore them, that Telecaster is like part of his body ... he has a deep intuitive understanding of that guitar. On this particular day however, Graham pulled out his homemade guitar and started playing it in our session instead, which I decided to just ignore and let him play whatever he wanted. Frankly I was just very happy that he had come to the studio at all that day so I let that go. He played several passes at the song ... we can and do tend to keep everything we record for later ... however as Graham was playing Dave and I kept looking at each other with some dismay. We were not hearing anything in particular that we would want to keep or use on the recording. After he had played 5 or 6 takes ... and we were getting nowhere ... I finally asked Graham if he would get his Telecaster and take a run at the song with that ... to which he objected at first. He said that he hadn’t played that guitar in weeks ... but I asked him if he would do that as a personal favour to me, if for no other reason ... which he then reluctantly agreed to do. He is a real sweetheart and a great guy to work with in music anywhere! ... studio or live. So he went and got his Tele, tuned it up a little, plugged it into his amp, pulled out his slide and played exactly what you are going to hear in just a moment ... there is not one edit in it at all! It was an amazing and stunning performance that immediately blew Dave and I away ... thrilling! If you listen closely you will hear Graham’s mastery of something guitarists call intonation ... his ability to manipulate and alter the tone of his guitar while he is in the motion of playing it. This aspect of his playing is particularly evident and apparent throughout his solo and is something that he constantly does on his Telecaster that is almost instinctive in nature. There is something else that is truly wonderful that needs to be considered and understood here. Not one note of what Graham is playing here is predetermined ... he makes it all up in real time. If he were to have played the song again for us, it would have sounded entirely different. If I were to ask him, what are you going to play this time he would laugh, tell me he had no idea. Until he starts to play and then it just happens ... one of the great joys of making music with him! Whereas, by comparison, Alex Lifeson from Rush knows every single note his is going to play at a gig when he gets up in the morning, including all his solos, not one note of that is improvised. Which frankly flies in the face of what rock music and its forebears ... jazz, blues ... are all about. Graham’s guitar performance is indeed the cherry on our musical sundae ... and here it is ... The final act in this play is to send what we have done to our mixing engineer Josh Bowman. Josh goes over the whole recording with a fine tooth comb massaging and making every single aspect of the soundscape we have sent him sound as good as it possibly can, balancing out all the instruments against each other, placing them to the left or to the right side of what you hear. He is an absolute master of this part of the process and he does a wonderful job for us. Josh is originally from B. C. and worked on the Bryan Adams Team of engineers out there. So here is the end of the road in terms of this musical adventure ... the final mix by Josh. If you compare it with the previous recording shared above you will notice the difference. Thank you for taking the time to read about our musical adventure ... the tale behind this tune.
It’s Earth Day ... the most important day on my calendar. A day we set aside to celebrate our lovely little planet each year. Considering our conduct and the impact we have had on the Earth there is not much to celebrate. And that is indeed a shame because that would not be the case if we understood our place here. It came to my attention when I was writing the song Sweet Mother Earth, that the metaphor I was using at the time ... as if the Earth was our mother ... is not a metaphor at all ... it is reality. At the time I was also taking in several documentaries about the evolution of life. The Earth according to the best information we have gathered so far is approx 4.5 billion years old ... and from what we know, life bloomed on this planet approx 3.5 billion years ago. This data is not just idle speculation, it is based on factual information collected by scientists. And they have gathered an abundant amount of info about when life started ... as simple single celled organisms ... that then gradually over a very long time evolved into more complex beings. Science has over time collected all sorts of artifacts to illustrate this process ... fossils, remains. How life started and why ... if there is a why ... is and may remain a mystery. But the fact that this is what happened and how is indisputable in my less than humble opinion. That being the case it occurred to me that The Earth is indeed our mother and with some help from the Sun ... our father ... our planet is the mother of all living things upon it. If we could only think about our planet in those terms ... in the way we think about our human mothers ... it might go a long way to inspire us to behave in a much more considerate way here. While I consider myself a spiritual person, I do not adhere to a formal religion of any kind. But the one set of religious and spiritual ideas that resonates with me are those of the indigenous peoples of North America who saw the Earth as their mother and to whom they had obligations. They understood that they were part of the community of life all around them, that it was incumbent upon them to show respect for the dignity, integrity of all living & non living things. They gave thanks to all the animals they hunted for giving up their lives so they could live. They regarded things like lakes as living beings ... they had a point as any canoeist will tell you. Every lake has its own ambience, its own character and its own set of living beings within it. They understood clearly that were were only part of this system and not in dominion over it. In my view we have a lot to learn from their vision, their understanding of the nature of reality. In honour of this important day we are sharing a song with you that we have never shared before. I wrote this song ... Who Knows ... with my dearly departed brother in music Larry Leishman. Larry was a very funky blues guitarist but on this occasion his guitar never came out of the case. He had bought himself a new Apple computer, discovered the program Garage Band on it and he came across all sorts of samples taken of real instruments so he started experimenting with them. A while later he sent me a track of the outcome of his adventures which was a series of clips he had put together ... seemed he was also very funky using technology as well ... it was great. But it was a collection of phrases, kind of connected but not something you would call a song. However many of the sections of music he had created really appealed to me and I was listening to his track of phrases one night very late when I was working on other stuff on my computer. At that time a melody to certain parts of what he had done started to occur to me but there was no way I could sing them to what he had sent ... but I was wailing away anyway at 2 AM or so. Then one line of lyric fell down from the sky ... Who knows, somebody tell me, how will we look them in the eye. Who knows, next generation, what will be our alibi ... we don’t have one! So I called a former student of mine who became one of the best recording engineers in the country ... Scott Campbell ... and asked him to help me create something I could sing to. I gave him “the recipe” for the song which he then cut and pasted together seamlessly. Then I took that, went to Chalet Studio where we always record and recorded the vocals. The lyric for this song were inspired by the “final lecture” by Dr. David Suzuki ... who is still on television every week so I guess it wasn’t that final after all ... in which he stated that he felt that the message he had been trying to deliver for many years had fallen on deaf ears about which he was very disappointed and understandably somewhat disillusioned ... how could he not be! He also said that he was always searching for ways to bring his message home to people. The main theme in Who Knows is intended to get folks to understand that what we (they) are doing to this planet will have a profound impact on the world we are leaving for our kids. Surely that would be a message that would resonate with a great many parents I thought. As another line from the song goes ... We tell them that we love them, care for them in every way. While they are watching their world crumble, what are we gonna say? Who knows ... So we decided to send the song to Dr. Suzuki as a gift to be used in any way he saw fit. Eventually got a lovely e mail from him directly thanking us for taking the time to do that. This recording of Who Knows is not at the same level of professional production as the collection of our material on Spotify or iTunes but I think it says what we wanted to say. Every time I listen to it I get a big smile on my face and warmth in my heart and it brings back many fond memories Larry and all the fun we had making music together over the years. I do hope you enjoy the song and that you will give some thought to the message here. We are consuming this planet at a horrific pace, there are far too many of us on it and we are in the process of leaving our children and their children a terrible mess to deal with. We must learn to show far more respect and consideration for our Sweet Mother Earth. And darn quick! ... have a meaningful, transformational Earth Day. Let’s all pull together, turn things around and do better for Sweet Mother Earth. Bob TITLE: Risky Business DATE: June 2019 LOCATION: Chalet Studios MUSICIANS: Drums … Al Cross Bass … Dennis Pendrith Keyboards … David Chester Guitar … Graham Young Piano … Bob Burrows Vocals … Bob Burrows SONGWRITER: Bob Burrows RECORDING PERSONNEL: Recording Engineer: David Chester Mixing Engineer: Josh Bowman Producer: Bob Burrows GRAPHIC ARTIST: Mike Raines NOTES: I wrote this song when I discovered that Alex Lifeson … and for that matter, all the other guys in Rush … know every single note they are going to play at a gig when they get up that morning … every note they play all night is predetermined! Which flies in the face of this music … that is all based on improvisation. All the music from which our music has evolved features improv … jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, gospel … what Rush plays is classical music without the dots. If I were to ask our guitarist, Graham Young, what he was going to play in his next solo he would laugh at me and ask … How the hell would I know?! In fact when he plays a solo Graham makes it all up in real time as he is playing. That takes a great deal more skill and capacity than planning everything out ahead! And by the way, Graham’s guitar work throughout this song is just wonderful. But if we recorded the song again or performed it live it would probably sound somewhat different than it does here … which in some ways is the whole point!  TITLE: Heartbreak Hotel Live DATE: October 2019 LOCATION: Burdock Pub, Bloor St. W. Toronto MUSICIANS: Drums … Al Cross Bass … Dennis Pendrith Keyboards … David Chester Guitar … Graham Young Piano … Bob Burrows Vocals … Bob Burrows SONGWRITER: Tommy Durndun, Mae Axton Boren & Elvis Presley RECORDING PERSONNEL: Recording Engineer: Sound Man at Burdock and room mics Mixing Engineer: Scott Campbell, Dave Chester Producer: Bob Burrows GRAPHIC ARTIST: Mike Raines NOTES: This was our last live performance as a band just before the pandemic set in. I have always loved this song … first rock ‘n roll song I ever heard. Saw Elvis perform it live on black & white tv on The Tommy Dorsey Show. We have often used this song as a vehicle to elevate the profile of homelessness. We originally recorded this version back in 2011 with that in mind. The guitar playing here is simply wonderful … Graham loves this tune. You can hear members of the audience calling out to him at the end of his solo. We really love to play live together and we so seldom get to do that. There is something magical about live music and you can sense that here. And if you really do appreciate this performance please give something to help. The folks at Fred Victor do a wonderful job for the homeless in Toronto. Inn From The Cold … same deal … Newmarket ON And there are lots more … talk is cheap … give something … thank you.  TITLE: Morning Hymn DATE: March 2021 LOCATION: Chalet Studios MUSICIANS: Drums … Al Cross Bass … Dennis Pendrith Keyboards … David Chester Guitar … Graham Young Vocals … Bob Burrows SONGWRITER: Bruce Cockburn RECORDING PERSONNEL: Recording Engineer: Justin Meli Mixing Engineer: Josh Bowman Producer: Bob Burrows GRAPHIC ARTIST: Mike Raines NOTES: I first became aware of this wonderful songnot long after Bruce Cockburn came to Toronto from Ottawa and made off with half the band I was in at the time! When I first saw Bruce perform I quickly understood why they had left our band! Wanted to get into his band myself and almost did … Bruce was and remains a master guitarist and one of the best songwriters this country has ever produced. At one point however, he came to believe that someone else should sing his songs. I auditioned for that gig and actually got the job except that everyone around Bruce at the time, including manager Harvey Glatt, convinced him to sing his own tunes. Nevertheless I got to hang out with the band, eventually accompanied them to New York where they opened for vibes player Gary Burton at Steve Paul’s The Scene. First heard Bruce sing this song in his basement where we often congregated. Fell in love with the song immediately … one of the best songs I have ever heard. This is essentially a live recording … there are no edits on this track at all. It was just one take off the floor at the studio on one magical afternoon in March.  TITLE: All You Need Is Love DATE: April 2020 LOCATION: Chalet Studio MUSICIANS: Drums … Al Cross Bass … Dennis Pendrith Organ … David Chester Guitar … Graham Young Piano … Bob Burrows Vocals … Bob Burrows SONGWRITER: John Lennon, Paul McCartney RECORDING PERSONNEL: Recording Engineer: Justin Meli Mixing Engineer: Josh Bowman Producer: Bob Burrows GRAPHIC ARTIST: Mike Raines NOTES: The guitar playing on this track is magnificent … from one end to the other. The whole band gets into a wonderful groove in the ending. And Dennis gives a nod of respect to The Beatles on our way out. A challenge to sing but lots of lovely moments … reaching for whatever you got. Was going to go back and “fix” this or that but just decided to leave it alone. May not be perfect … but then nothing is. Bob Burrows  |
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