I am always tinkering with songs.
I still find myself going back and tweaking them.
Nudging them one way or another.
Running sandpaper over them to smooth out any rough edges that I might have missed.
I can (and often do) change the key and feel of a song from night to night.
The guys in the band like to joke that I don’t even play a song the same once, let alone twice.
“Hey, let’s do If There Ever Was A Fool, but this time, let’s play it in E minor…”
Or sometimes, during a show, I’ll say to the guys something like,
“Hey, let’s do Wind At My Back, but tonight, let’s play it more like it were on Harvest Moon and less Rust Never Sleeps. Alright. Here we go. Heads-up hockey. 1-2-3-4…”
I have countless versions of DiMaggio.
Springsteen’s I’m On Fire meets a Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two train beat kinda thing…
Lately, the guys and I have been playing it as a waltz.
Stay tuned for that one!
He looks at them “not as fixed compositions, but as entities that develop and change with each performance.”
Truer words never spoken.
About five years ago, I started noodling with a new version of 8:30 Newfoundland.
Instead of playing it straight ahead with a Roots-Rock, Springsteen, Mellencamp, or Seger-type beat, I slid it into a shuffle.
I’ve always been a sucker for a shuffle.
Fire Lake by Bob Seger.
Or how about Walkin’ After Midnight?
I mean, come on…
In January, we were recording at Hazy Grove Studio in Hamilton.
I figured we’d release it, and any of you who felt like checking it out would do just that—check it out.
But then, over the last couple of months, the song started to take on a deeper meaning.