Thom Barker Band Promo Photos

In the Fall of 1995 when Thom was getting serious about promoting the band, he put together a "promo package" which included press clippings, the Forest cd, bios and promo photos. We had done up a couple of photos specifically for the promo package. I don't know what happened to the negatives or any of the prints. I assume they're probably lost forever.

Thom Barker Band, Fall 1995, Regent St., Ottawa

But this was 1995 and there was a new craze sweeping Computer Science Departments. It was called the World Wide Web. It made it easy to publish text and pictures online in a way that was presentable for reading (as opposed to just searching and downloading). Not being immune to the draw of a bandwagon, I started scanning photos and putting them on web pages in my Unix account at the University of Ottawa.

Unfortunately, sometime in the late '90s I accidentally deleted all photos in my musicpix directory whose filename began with the letter 't'. Don't ask me why. So the scanned versions of the Thom Barker Band promo photos (tbb-promo1.gif and tbb-promo2.gif) and a bunch of others were gone.

Fast forward 14 years to April, 2009. Thanks to the magic of the Wayback Machine, I found the deleted photos. Sometime between 1995 and the date I deleted the pictures, the Wayback Machine archived them. I'm sure I've checked the archive before, but if you've ever tried to find old stuff there, you know it's kind of hit-or-miss. Today I got lucky.

Thom Barker Band, Fall 1995, Regent St., Ottawa

Forest: The Recording

We recorded the album at the old Sound of One Hand studio in Ottawa (when it was still in The Market, before they moved to that business park off Innes Rd. and ultimately changed their name to the considerably less inspired Liverpool Court Studios, after their street address). Marty Jones was the engineer.

Despite what I said in an earlier post, I think this was before Sound of One Hand got their Neve console. I'm pretty sure that's not the Neve in the photo. But we did record to two-inch, 24-track tape. You can see the tape machine in the photo below, along with various testaments to Marty's shark obsession.

What other equipment did we use? I'm pretty sure Thom used his blue Yamaha acoustic. I don't remember what vocal mic we used, but it was a large diaphragm condenser. For keyboards I used my Yamaha KX-88 controlling my Roland D-50, the studio's E-mu Pro/Formance (piano module) and the studio's Roland JV-1080. We also used the studio's sampler, though I can't remember exactly what it was... probably an Akai S-series or Roland S-series. I'm thinking maybe a Roland S-550.

For bass I used my old Yamaha TRB-5p direct through an original Sans Amp DI. What a great little box. The original Sans Amp didn't have the knobs on the outside (like its successor, the Bass Driver DI), so you had to unscrew the back and dial in your settings with those tiny little plastic screws. That meant that you'd usually come up with a sound you liked and leave it that way. The sound Marty liked (the sound everybody liked back in '95 when they discovered the Sans Amp) was with the "Drive" cranked. So that's the sound on Forest. It's probably got too much dirt/wool/Ampeg for my current tastes, but it's sure full of character. And I'll be darned if it doesn't sound like we mic'd up a big ole tube amp through a huge cab. I also used my Steinberger XL-2A for the solo on Cuba.

Ok. Enough mumbo-jumbo. Let's get to the music!

The Forest For The Trees

The Forest For The Trees was the third Thom Barker album, and it was our first CD. Marty Jones was the engineer at Sound of One Hand studios in Ottawa, where we recorded it between August 1 and September 14, 1995. I forget how many sessions there were, but I remember there were some longish gaps during the recording and between the recording and mixing while Thom scared up the money to pay for it all. I'm guessing there were at least a dozen sessions. It's probably been close to ten years since I actually listened to Forest, but I remember being pretty impressed by the sound quality at the time. Marty was a good engineer, and Sound of One Hand had recently bought a great Neve console. Also, we were recording to 2-inch tape. So, as you'd imagine, the raw sound was kind of like butter melting on hot asphalt in the summer sun (poetic, no?).

Well, I listened to the album yesterday and two things struck me:

1. In comparison, the quality of Twice the Usual is much better than I've been giving it credit for
2. In spite of some truly cringe-worthy moments, there is some Gold! on Forest

Listening to the album also brought back a flood of memories from the sessions, inspiring me to do a little Forest-blogging. Thom has given his permission for me to bare the skinny and post the audio. Are you guys in?

Update (2/07/2009): Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure Sound of One Hand didn't yet have that Neve console.

Pianoversary

One year ago I was driving a rental from Regina to Saskatoon to catch a flight to Minneapolis where I would end up having to spend the night before flying to Memphis trying to get to Austin.

I was on my way home from the Antonini family reunion where my uncle Marty entertained, my brother and my cousins performed, and my aunts and uncles sang and danced. At one point in the weekend, Uncle Lui asked if I would play the piano. I couldn't: I didn't have a single thing I could sit down and play.

On the long road home I had the chance to reflect. It sucked that I didn't have anything to show for all the lessons, practice, recitals, competitions and exams. I decided I needed to get it back.

The story from then on appears in this blog. After one full year, I've built up a decent repertoire, played some recitals, made some recordings and bought my first piano. And I feel like I'm playing better than ever. So Uncle Lui, next time I'm up north and there's a piano nearby, I have some pieces I'd like to play.

Until then, Happy Pianoversary!

Piano 101: Ancient History

My mother is a piano teacher, so we've always had lots of piano music in the house. I remember sitting on the floor at her feet under the keybed of her old "Chopin" upright piano while she played. When I was old enough to reach the keys I started plunking out stuff myself. With my mother's help I began to make my way through the lesson books. This informal arrangement lasted for maybe five years, I'm guessing. I had stumbled my way to about a grade 5 level in the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) grading system. We decided that if I wanted to "do it right", I needed a teacher. So at ten years old I began formal lessons with Edith Orton, a great Ottawa teacher.

Mrs. Orton guided me through the Royal Conservatory examinations until RCM grade 10. Along the way she encouraged me to perform in recitals and compete at the Ottawa Music Festival and the Canadian Music Competition. My repertoire was mostly from the RCM examniation syllabi, but also included, importantly, concerti for piano and orchestra. My orchestra was my mother, playing the orchestra parts arranged for second piano. As I advanced through the grades, Mrs. Orton also stressed the importance of occasional lessons with other teachers. I had the opportunity to meet with Jean-Paul Sevilla, Andrew Tunis and Douglas Voice, all three at the University of Ottawa at the time. But more than anyone else, Edith Orton taught me music, and I'm forever indebted to her for it.

After grade 10, Mrs. Orton decided I would benefit more by getting a new teacher. The obvious best fit was Douglas Voice at UofO. I think I must have been about 17 years old and probably starting grade 12 at High School. (High School in Ontario at the time went to grade 13). My two years of lessons with Douglas Voice prepared me for the ultimate Royal Conservatory exam: the Associateship Diploma in Piano Performance. Creative planning of my High School course schedule over the years allowed me to finish grade 13 spending only a half day at school. The other half I could spend practicing.

My lessons with Douglas were completely different from previous lessons. We would often spend our time discussing issues of interpretation or experimenting with different sounds and techniques to decide what might work for a given piece. I took the Associateship exam in the Spring of 1986, the same time I graduated from High School. I thank Douglas for bringing me to the "next level" of performance, and for introducing me to an incredible new world in the piano repertoire -- in particular the Spanish piano works of Granados, Albeniz and Ginastera.

After High School I had a bit of a premature mid-life crisis. I had always assumed I would find some kind of career in music. When I realized I didn't want to get a BMus, it became obvious that my options were pretty limited. I panicked. I got into computers. During the musical winter of my computer studies, I did manage to spend one semester at the piano, fulfilling a Humanities credit by doing a juried recital course in piano performance. It gave me the opportunity to study once more with Douglas Voice, one-on-one for the semester. We remained good friends, but that would be the last time we studied music together. Douglas succumbed to cancer in 1998. I wish I could play for him one more time.

Piano 101: The Next Project

I used to play the piano a lot. Then came the usual combination of distractions: school, work, life. I always made time for music, but the Big Hand and Twice the Usual recording commitments ate up my whole music time budget. In August this year, I finally convinced myself to call the Twice the Usual album "finished", and was starting to wonder what musical pursuit would take its place. The Antonini family reunion would give me the answer.

The Antoninis are a very musical family, my uncle Marty the most conspicuously so. At any gathering someone will eventually say "Hey Marty, go get your piano!", and he'll show up 15 minutes later with a PA. He's probably the most entertaining entertainer I've ever seen. His ability to perform on demand is inspiring, and I realized that I regretted not being able to play when asked. In spite of all the time I've spent in the studio over the last ten years, I didn't have a single thing on any instrument that I could sit down and play from beginning to end. So I vowed to "learn how to play the piano again."

In this next part of the Art Facts blog I'll write about my reintroduction to the piano, and the path back to playing in public. And I'll post some recordings along the way, too.

Twice the Usual

Twice the Usual is my brother Thom’s fourth album. The first was Planet for Sale which we recorded in our parents’ basement on my Vesta Fire 4-track tape machine. It was all Thom on acoustic and vocals, with a few parts added by me. The second album, Regent Street, was recorded at the old Sound of One Hand studio in Ottawa. I had very little to do with that album, though I seem to remember adding a keyboard part or two. Thom had a few other guests on the album. The third album (the first CD) was Forest for the Trees, also recorded at the old Sound of One Hand. Forest was almost entirely Thom and me, with a guest guitar here and there.

2x is by far the most ambitious recording and yet is a return to the “basement studio”. We started the recording in the spare bedroom of my apartment in Austin in the Spring of 2002. I recorded Thom’s Taylor acoustic to two tracks (microphone and direct from the Taylor’s pickups) through an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 at 24-bits, 44.1 kHz. The earliest recordings used an AKG C535EB condensor, but we switched to the large-diaphragm AKG C3000. I don’t remember if any of the 535 tracks survived. I don’t think so. The early months were kind of experimental, recording Thom’s guitar and then adding a few throwaway bass and vocal tracks trying to get a feel for the setup.

In the Fall of 2002, Thom decided to leave Austin to move back to Ottawa. We had to cram all of the remaining acoustic and vocal recording in before he left. We ended up with twelve songs. Eleven survived. The Night Brings is the only one I dropped. I expect to arrange and produce it eventually. Probably for the Borders Bookstore special edition.

I continued recording the album in the attic studio at my new house in Austin: four years of arranging, recording, mixing, erasing, re-recording, listening, reading, purchasing, burning, cursing and starting over. There were some droughts: I completely abandoned the project for several months while I finished the even-longer-ignored soundtrack for Jean-Guy Brin’s short film Let’s Give Him a Big Hand.

Over the next several weeks I plan to post each track and blog its details. And Thom will be posting a songwriting journal in parallel.

Next: 2x: The Album