My neighbourhood was the Beach area of Toronto for over 20 years. People who’ve lost loved ones sometimes dedicate city benches to them, and so it was with Cecil’s Bench, where I wrote many a tune on it while watching the crowds go by.
My buddy Nelson Milley and I played this off the top of our heads pretty much as you hear it, into a reel-to-reel recorder (remember those?). How musicians gel with each other is a mystery, but it’s rare, and when it happens it’s very cool.
A demo I knocked off around 1999, I rediscovered going through tape transfers for this album. I wanted to try my hand at scoring so I did five string parts and assorted extras to fill it out. The LSO will have to wait.
A tuning I was in while learning a Don Ross song resulted in this melody, amongst others. Why it’s called Lindy is anyone’s guess. Pat Perez on sax.
I must have composed twenty or thirty songs in DADGAD tuning. This was one of the first, from 1994. Keith Sutcliffe does all the percussion.
I got up early one morning around Christmas time, and did my obligatory Yuletide tune. DADGAD.
I named this after a friend’s first son, a fairly recent effort from 2007. Drop D tuning all the way.
Another instant song with Nelson. I played the chord changes and he made up lyrics. Morning prize is a great phrase, and the main reason I finished it for this album. Pat on sax here too.
What started out as a finger exercise became a vaguely Celtic workout on my classical guitar.
A blues fragment led to this tune which expanded geometrically to include the tale of a serial dater who’s always looking but never finding what she wants. Sometimes you gotta make a decision.
Being an air force brat means you move a lot, so you say goodbye to many people growing up. After a while it’s rendered in your bones that nothing lasts – neither good or bad, just the way things are. Still, once in a while you feel like this. Tuning is EGCGBD. Beautiful sax solo by Pat Perez.
A better player could have done it a lot sooner than I did. Written in the spring of course, in DADEAD tuning. This one was tough to play because I felt the way I had played it before I actually recorded it turned out to be too slow.