Fearless

This is one of the newer songs on the record. It was inspired by the news story in 2013 about an Iranian woman, Nina Siahkali Moradi, who was elected to a seat on her City’s council, only to have it nullified by elder councillors (old men) because they said she was “too beautiful”. Sometimes I think women’s rights have come a long way and other times I feel like it’s still the middle ages. I’m pretty tired of assholes not treating and paying women as equals. I guess we still got a long way to go baby!

FEARLESS
Well, it’s pretty clear who my influences were on this one. I’m a big Springsteen fan as well as Bryan Adams and they are both represented fairly well on this song. It’s that Dsus to D thing that is such a signature to so many rock tunes. I love it! I wrote the song as a way of “bucking” myself up when I was scared to attempt something. Also a perfect song to open a set with because it’s powerful but the lyrics are kind of settling. Like, “Okay, just go for it right now!”

LET’S FOOL AROUND
I was in a band called “The Genuines” for many years and wrote a lot of songs for them to perform and this was one of them. It’s kind of a quirky story which on the face of it is about sex but is a little more sinister once you go below the surface. It’s a story about a tall, geeky, glasses wearing, high school boy who is the victim of psychological bullying by a short, little, cheer leader type. For fun she pretends she likes him and whispers in his ear “let’s fool around” which of course drives him nuts. And of course she has no intention of following through. I guess I could have called it “Mean Girl” instead!

THE END OF ROCK AND ROLL
I originally came up with this idea when I was becoming disillusioned with radio and pop music which I felt was being co-opted by rap and hip hop. I thought it was killing rock and roll music. I have since realised that my favourite genre of music will be much harder to kill as there are so many kids who still dig playing drums, bass and guitar. I still liked the idea of the song though, so I then began to imagine a time in the far distant future when people will no longer play rock and roll music (I mean it will have to happen someday right?) because they can generate music just by thinking about it. Weird! I picked the year 2128 and then did it like a news story about the last rock and roller (a woman) dying by herself with just her guitar by her side.

LUCKY DOG
The idea came from a comment a friend of ours made about my wife Susie and I. She said, “Boy, you’re a couple of lucky dogs!” I thought she was right but more to the point, I’m a lucky dog because of my wonderful wife. With out her absolutely none of this music stuff would have been possible. In fact my life as I know it would not have been possible. I owe so much to her it’s impossible to put into words…but I tried. I imagined a Disney-esque dog character talking about its Master and speaking of its devotion to them and took it from there. If I made a video of this tune it would have to be an animation. Anyway, I love this song but I find it a bugger to sing!
WE MIGHT FALL IN LOVE (TONIGHT)
We have an old piano in our living room and sometimes I write on it. That’s where the original idea for this song came from…just messing around. I had been listening to a lot of Meatloaf and Styx at that time and their influences really show in this song. I think if I’d written this 30 years ago it could have been a hit but today…?. I really like it now but I remember the lyrics were very tough to write. I think the recording is one of the better ones on the record…very powerful and emotional. Bryan Knowler played a killer solo at the end. I knew I wanted to have some kind of big intro to it and while searching for that, the chords and melody to Lucky Dog came out so I actually got two songs for the price of one! If I ever write a musical I think this song would have to be integrated into it.

DARK ROOM
I started to write this song in 2007 around the time of the Virginia Tech massacre. That event really galvanized me and certainly the shock of it depressed me for weeks afterward. If you think too hard about all the crap going on in the world you’d just want to go and hide under a rock some where and not come out! Thing is, by the time I got to recording the vocals for this song, a lot of the stuff I had written about had been over taken by more recent bad news. So I had to re-write the lyrics! Even at that I could continue to re-write the words every week or so just to stay current! All in all a very happy little ditty.

RED, WHITE AND BLUES
I had finished recording all the songs for the CD but in putting the songs in order I decided I needed one more up tempo song. I’m an avid fan of American politics (even though I’m Canadian…I know, I know) and around this time the government was shut down because the two sides couldn’t agree on whatever. So it was clearly in my mind when I was looking around for something to write. And then this phrase, “Red, White and Blues” popped out and well, it was too good, I just had to write it. The song is from the point of view of what they call an “independent”…someone who has no political affiliation. He feels like he’s a pawn in the whole election process where politicians woo him for his vote and then forget about him. He also wants everyone to stop fighting so that government will run more effectively. It’s a jab at all sides of the argument. Oh yeah, the NSA phone tapping thing was going on at that time so I had to throw that in as well.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Even though this appears as a separate song, it is really the introduction to The Walls of Babylon. I just wanted to have this kind of moody, spacey thing to contrast to the harder song itself. When I was in “The Genuines” we used to do this live only my friend Artemis Chartier would do the singing parts. It’s based on the same chord changes as the main song.

THE WALLS OF BABYLON
I wrote this song around 2004 when things were going south in Iraq. The insurgency was happening and the troops there were being forced to extend their tours of duty. I think it was before the surge which fortunately stabilized things (temporarily). The title of the song is a metaphor for the Middle East in general. For thousands of years armies have marched back and forth over this territory in conquest leaving behind untold numbers of dead. The battles that continue today are merely more of the same but could lead to even broader conflicts. The lyrics are written from the point of view of your average soldier who is really just a kid and is looking back on the battle and its aftermath. He has a premonition that he will die in battle that night.

MOTORTOWN
The City of Oshawa is Canada’s Detroit. For decades, thousands of men and women have worked in the big auto plants building cars for GM. This song is an anthem to that town, its people and all the times, good and bad they’ve been through. I guess the narrator wouldn’t be necessarily telling his story from today but maybe in the 70’s or 80’s before the introduction of robotics. I remember that the intro lick came to me the day I brought home a new Telecaster guitar. I turned up my amp and this was just about the first thing I played!

BAD WOMAN
I’ve had the idea for this song around since the 80’s. I think I had actually written a version of it back then but then forgot about it until about 10 years ago when I re-wrote it in earnest. The lyrical inspiration comes from the movie “The Grifters” and Annette Bening’s character (kind of). The woman in the story is a socialite type, who wears expensive clothes and jewellery and hangs out with all the chic people but it is all based on gifts she gets from men whom she leads on and then dumps. Pretty simple story really, but also one that has sparked debate with some folks I’ve known in the past.

FIRE IN THE STREET
As an avid watcher of the news, I was completely mesmerized by the events of the Arab Spring that began in December 2010. I remember watching on TV during the Egyptian uprising in Tahrir Square in 2011 with the famous “woman in the blue bra”. This woman was set upon by a large number of helmeted police who basically beat the crap out of her and dragged her away. It was shocking and really got my blood boiling! I think the “Occupy Wall Street” protests were going on around the same time and there was the scene of “Pepperspray Pike” (a police officer) spraying a group of peaceful protesters with pepper spray so I was primed and pissed off and ready to express it. It’s a song of Revolution for sure but I’d like to think that peaceful revolution has as much chance to succeed as a violent one. The trouble is (and I knew this even as I was writing it) that the Governments that replace the Dictatorships are often more oppressive than the original one. And so, on and on it goes.

DANGEROUS MAN
I’m a huge James Bond fan and have always wanted to write a JB theme…just to see what I came up with. So I did. It certainly isn’t a typical one but I still like it. It does have the middle instrumental bridge section with the minor chord and the 5th rising to a 6 and then a sharp 6 which is the trademark James Bond lick. I added the strings there to really give it that feel but I also like the way that gives way to the “heavy” guitar solo which by the way yours truly played. The only solo I played on the record. The solo on the way out was only a demo one but I liked it so much that I kept it, including the feedback and falling apart at the end.

IF TOMORROW EVER COMES
The final song on the record was inspired by someone I knew who was going through some really bad depression. Some days he just couldn’t get out of bed and when he did he could barely function. In this story, the narrator is in bed in his room…probably has been for days and is just praying for the day to end so that maybe tomorrow he’ll have a chance to pull himself together. We realize that in this particular case it is the words of a lover that has made him feel this way. I like to think it is ultimately a song of hope. That when tomorrow does come (and it always does) he’ll finally get himself together and re-join the world.