Words Falling Slow is a twice weekly blog series written by Michael Timmins in which he writes about the writing, recording, history and inspiration behind some of the songs included in the Notes Falling Slow box set. You can pre-order Notes Falling Slow here. You can listen to a new recording from the box set here.
My oldest daughter was adopted from China. When we adopted her they handed us a very slim file filled with a lot of official looking stamps and signatures but not much information. But there was a police document that said that she was found beneath the Tax Bureau Gate on the morning of September 26, 1997. It was explained to us that these abandoned children are often left outside a government building in the hopes that they will be found quickly by someone responsible enough to contact the authorities.
A large chunk of the Miles From Our Home album was about wading through the adoption process and the frustrations of knowing that your child is out there, but red tape and thousands of miles sit between you and her. A large part of Open was about finding oneself in a whole new world filled with love, hope, fear and mystery: the terrifying world of parenthood. As we got closer to adopting and meeting our daughter, my wife and I would often look up at the moon and wonder if she, too, would be gazing at the same moon tonight, half a world away.
My daughter goes off to college this year, she is a rock climber who competes at the national level, she just finished a 52 day canoe trip above the Arctic circle, she is a wonder. The trajectory of a single life is an astonishing thing.
Words Falling Slow is a twice weekly blog series written by Michael Timmins in which he writes about the writing, recording, history and inspiration behind some of the songs included in the Notes Falling Slow box set. You can pre-order Notes Falling Slow here. You can listen to a new recording from the box set here.
In late 1996 my wife and I rented a beat up old mill house, two hours Northeast of Toronto, idyllically situated in the rolling hills of Northumberland County. It was the most serene little spot. It overlooked a four-acre stream fed pond, which transformed itself hourly with the shifting light. Our days were filled with sound of the hundred or so birds, that made our patch of land their home: our nights with the sound of water splashing over top of the mill’s damn. The locals knew the spot as Maiden’s Mill, named after the family that established the mill over 150 years earlier.
This was in the time-before-children…an easier, simpler time. We rented the house for about twelve months and watched all the seasons pass on through our little slice of paradise. I wrote and she painted. During that time the rest of the band came up and took up residency for a while and we worked on the songs that turned into the Miles From Our Home album. Along with the songs that ended up on that album, I wrote about twenty other songs. One of those songs was One Soul Now.
One Soul Now was written right at the end of the Miles From Our Home sessions and we even worked up a full band demo of the song in order to consider it for that project. We always liked it, but we never felt comfortable with the groove or arrangement that we had come up with. We had a lot of songs on our plate at that time so we decided to shelve it. During the writing of Open we briefly took it out again (along with I Did It All For You, which was written and recorded at Maiden’s Mill and made it on to Open), but that album took on a life of it own and One Soul Now was, once again, put away.
When the songs for the “new album” began to form I immediately thought about One Soul Now and how its main lyrical theme about, all living things on this earth being tied into one overpowering life-force, was an excellent counterpoint to many of the songs that were about disconnection and confusion. And the title of the song began to take on a fresh meaning as the world began to turn itself upside down and splinter into more menacing and aggressive factions and tribes. The phrase One Soul Now almost began to sound like a call to arms (or at least a call to link arms) for these troubled times.
The song was inspired by those magical twilights at Maidens Mill, just as the sun was passing through its last few degrees before disappearing for the day. Everything would become absolutely still. The insects, the birds, the breeze, and even the water on the pond would just stop. And I would sit there on the edge of the pond and for a brief instant I could almost tap in to that life force which mysteriously binds us all. It was always an exhilarating and overwhelming moment. I often think that if we could gather up all of the world’s leading combatants, bring them up to Maiden’s Mill and have them all shut up and sit down on the edge of that pond and then have them all zone in to the energy “that twilight brings”………the worlds problems would be solved before sundown.
Our Notes Falling Slow box set is now available for pre-order. All pre-order box sets will be signed by the four of us and we will be mailing them out on October 12th in hopes of it getting to you before the official, Oct 30th release date. There will also be a digital version of the box set available on Oct 30th and we plan to eventually release it on vinyl (but that is a few months off).
This is a four CD box set made up of newly remastered versions of the three studio albums that we released in the 2000’s (Open, One Soul Now and At The End Of Paths Taken) and a fourth bonus disc that contains newly recorded songs that were written during the making of the three albums. There is also a 34 page booklet included with the box set.
The pre-order also offers some great bundles. You can buy Notes Falling Slow and add in one or both of our DVDs Open Road and Long Journey Home. Open Road was created while we toured the Open album. It contains over four hours of live concerts (full band and Margo and Michael acoustic performances), interviews and a behind the scenes documentary. The documentary was created from all of the photos and video that we shot while we were touring around the world. It is a true peak behind the scenes through the eyes of those who lived it. Long Journey Home is a full 5.1 HD concert DVD of a performance that we gave at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall at the end of the One Soul Now tour. It’s beautifully shot and recorded and the band was firing on all cylinders. It also contains interviews with all the band members and some behind the scenes footage shot during sound check for the show.
This coming week we’ll be starting a new blog series called Words Falling Slow in which I will be writing about the creation/inspiration/history of various songs found on the box set…so please check back here or Like our Facebook page where we will be posting links to the blog.
We’re back on the road next month and will be adding tour dates throughout the coming year. Please check out the tour dates page every now and then to see if we are coming to your neck of the woods.
I hope everyone had a great summer and had a chance to get away….and breathe. My summer was close to perfect; I caught some bass and speckled trout in the Adirondacks, salmon on the West Coast and some pike in Northern Ontario; spent many hours floating around a lake (on my back and in a canoe); watched my Blue Jays emerge from being just another bumbling, fumbling .500 team, in to World Series contenders; we played a handful of concerts around the country; and put the finishing touches on our upcoming box set release, Notes Falling Slow.
I'll spare you the details about my fishing adventures and stick to news about the box set. We don't have a definitive release date yet, but we are aiming for a late October release and we will have them in hand for our October shows on the east coast. The box set is made up of four discs that include remastered versions of the three studio albums that we released in the 2000's (Open, One Soul Now and At The End Of Paths Taken) and a fourth disc, called Notes Falling Slow. This fourth disc is made up of songs that were written during the making of the three studio albums, but never completed or released. A few of these songs made it to the band demo stage, some never made it past my songwriting demo phase and a couple were completed but were left off the final albums for various reasons. This summer we got together, re-imagined and recorded, all but two of the songs for this special project. The result is a collection of songs that has a touch of our trademark psychedelia with a large dose of our folk roots shining through. For a taste of what's to come, you can stream Cold Evening Wind by clicking here. This is a song that we have made a few attempts at recording, but we never felt that we had properly captured the quiet desperation that the song required, until now. We will be posting a lot more details about the box set on our website and facebook page in the coming couple of months so please check in. Also, make sure you keep an eye on our tour page as we have a few tours that are being put together for the coming year.
Run For Your Life is one of those songs that could easily be left out of The Beatles catalogue and no one would care a wit. It appears at the end of Rubber Soul almost as an after-thought. To be quite honest, its just not that good a song, its the sort of thing Lennon could toss off between waking up and heading down to Abbey Road for the days session. We came across it when we were asked to cover a song off of Rubber Soul to celebrate its 40th birthday. The good songs were already taken so we settled on Run For Your Life and decided to try and test the old silk purse/sows ear saying. We had fun with it, the bass line and bass tone is killer, I like the gang background vocals and Margo does an excellent job at turning the gender tables.
Jerry came in to the studio and tossed off a handful of the dozens of cover tunes that he has in his repertoire. This one popped out with all of its beautifully jagged edges.
Latent Recordings artist, Lee Harvey Osmond's latest release "Beautiful Scars", has been longlisted for Canada's prestigous Polaris Music Prize. The bands previous two albums A Quiet Evil and The Folk Sinner were also long-listed for the prize. All three albums were produced by Michael Timmins. Please stop by the LHO website and take a listen…we think you'll dig the groovy vibe…man.
This month's free Under Cover downloads are takes on a couple of traditional-ish folk songs: The Water Is Wide and One Grain Of Sand. The Water Is Wide is a true traditional. I think it has been traced back to an 17th century Scottish folk song. It was brought to us by the director Curtis Hanson (8 Mile, LA Confidential, Too Big To Fail) who asked us to record a version for the closing credits to his film The River Wild. The first version that we sent to him (the one available as one of this months Under Cover downloads) was sent back to us with the comment that it was too sad, too downbeat. I guess Hollywood wasn't quite ready for us (or maybe it was the other way around). So we recorded another version that stepped it up a bit and it was accepted and we got paid. But we've always preferred the slower version, it just seems to bring out the sentiment of the song in a more powerful way.
I was first introduced to Ivy Mairi when she was just about to graduate from high-school. A mutual friend, Anne Bourne cellist-to-the-stars, brought her in to my studio. Anne had heard her singing at a couple of community gatherings and was completely taken by her, as was I. One Grain Of Sand was the first song that she played for me on that day and this is the recording. The song was written by Pete Seeger and Ivy was excited for him to hear it, so she sent it off to him. To his credit, the old-axe-wielder responded to her note, but he snarked something about folk music being something that the masses are supposed to be able to sing along to and not something to be interpreted from the heart (I'm paraphrasing, but he wasn't too keen on Dylan and that electric guitar either, so I think I'm capturing the sentiment of his note). It's a beautiful recording, completely naïve and open, exactly what folk music should be.
You can download The Water Is Wide and One Grain Of Sand for free until June 15th off of the Latent facebook page.
When we were planning out the various themes that we wanted to include on The Nomad Series we decided at a very early stage that we wanted one of the albums to be made up of cover songs. We knew that we wanted there to be a theme that held the album together but were stumped as to what that theme would be….and then, on Christmas day, Vic died and our direction became obvious. The Demons album, (Volume 2 of The Nomad Series) was dedicated completely to Vic Chesnutt's songs. We recorded over 15 of Vic's songs and used only 11 on the album, one of the songs that we left off was "Marathon", which is now available here through the Under Cover Series. It is a harrowing song, set at a funeral reception, a song about the bitter battle that is life. I love this version, with Margo and Andy Maize sharing the lead vocal. "In training to run a marathon / miles and miles and mles / with your Sunday shoes on".
Bonnie Prince Billy is a truly unique voice on the contemporary music scene. He kind of sits outside of it and does what he wants to do, makes the sort of music that he is inspired to make. As a result he has written some truley idiosyncratic songs that take the listener on journeys that they may not want to go on, but are more often than not enlightening and inspiring. Here is a version of his song "I See A Darkness" recorded by Skydiggers during the "Angels" session, with Pete Cash on lead vocal.
You can dowload Marathon and I See A Darkness for free until May 15th off of the Latent facebook page.
This is our newly launched Under Cover feature. Every month we will be offering free downloads of two cover songs: one recorded by Cowboy Junkies and another recorded by a Latent artist. We are running this feature off of the Latent Recordings Facebook page. All you need to do is go to the page, click the Under Cover link and follow the prompts
If there is one person that acts as the glue that binds all practisioners of so-called Americana Music, that person is Bob Dylan. It doesn't seem to matter what "version" of Bob that you grew up listening to, he invariably finds his way in to your music. I came of Bob-age during his third rebirth, the one that took place in the early seventies and produced Blood On The Tracks and Desire. Those two albums found their way further in to my soul than any nun or priest that I had the misfortune to come up against in my childhood. I don't now if I could ever attempt to cover one of those songs, they are too special, too sacred in many ways. But it is necessary to express your inner-Bob every now and then and for this recording we took a little known gem, If You Got To Go, Go Now (at least it was little know when we recorded it) from early in his electric period and had some fun with it.
Jerry Leger would have become of Bob-age during Dylan's fifth, six or seventh rebirth. He was exposed and opened to some of Dylan's work that probably past me by. Shot Of Love was definitely an album that I ignored when it came out (I kind of got in to Slow Train Coming, but that was it for his Christian period for me). But the album found a place in to Jerry's musical DNA and here it is represented by his version of Heart Of Mine. Enjoy.
This is part three of our newly launched Under Cover feature. Every month we will be offering free downloads of two cover songs: one recorded by Cowboy Junkies and another recorded by a Latent artist. We are running this feature off of the Latent Recordings Facebook page. All you need to do is go to the page, click the Under Cover link and follow the prompts.
Lost My Driving Wheel is quite possibly my favourite recording of all the cover songs that we have recorded over the years. We recorded it in a short session that took place between the making of Black Eyed Man and Pale Sun Crescent Moon (I think we also recorded the song Pale Sun and also a version of Bob Dylan's If You Gotta Go, Go Now during the same session). I'm not sure why I like it so much, but I remember listening to the playback in the studio and thinking that, as a young band, we had finally caught on tape the simple majesty that we occasionally brought to our music on stage. Everything just sounded right….we were helped along by Ken Myhr's beautiful, tasteful guitar lines and the wise and wordly playing of the late great Kevin Bell on B3 organ who, during the session, regailed us with tales of his days in Janis Joplin's last band….and Margo's vocal performance is just so darn awesome.
Tom Wilson and I first bonded over the work of Canadian singer-songwriter David Wiffen (who wrote Lost My Driving Wheel). David is a shamefully under appreciated artist. When Tom and I went to record the first Lee Harvey Osmond album, A Quiet Evil, it made sense for us to include a David Wiffen song. Tom brought in Lucifer's Blues and laid down a stunning interpretation of this great road song. Different in feel and attitude to Driving Wheel (which is another great road song), but another excellent showcase for the talented Mr Wiffen. If you want to explore David Wiffen's music, check out his Coast To Coast Fever album….you won't be dissappointed.
