The Carlisle Sessions

I was between bands when Almost Grown broke up after the long running gig at Kilroy’s ended when a drummer I had recently played with, Dave Klinko that I hung out with some, one day called me about the idea of making our own music. I said I knew how that worked. And I had some lyrics I’d been working on but I needed to interact with some other musicians to move them along closer to song form. Cool! How? Where? When?

Electronic keyboard whiz of the first generation, Keith Lindsay, a former band mate of myself and Dave, when we told him of our idea, was enthused as well. Keith had an idea how we could do something like this and he had a friend, James “Jimbo” Gallard, who would want to get in on this creative opportunity too. Jimbo played amazingly funky James Brown / Jamacian style rhythm guitar and he had a 4-track Sony reel-to-reel recorder he was dyin’ to make maximum use of. Game on! Nothing like a little creative competition to push one’s limits and expand one’s sensibilities, I sez. Choose your poison and let’s blow. It turned out Keith and Jim were good friends with a trio of brothers, Norm, Larry and Harry Thorton who had started out as roadies and sound men for Crowbar and now had their own music equipment store in Burlington, called conveniently, Burlington Music. They owned an old farm up in Carlisle, north of the city. We were welcome to go up there any time and jam our tunes and record. Them being in the music equipment sales and sound-systems-for-rent business, there was always used equipment laying about the farm house. Stuff that we soon made handy in our recording ambitions, especially mixing boards with which we were able to combine several microphones that were also laying around or ones we might own ourselves.

A date was set up to go out to Carlisle and try this idea out. I got busy and pulled a few of my newest lyrics together and worked out some bass parts and basic chord changes. Keith came up with a few lyrics of his own as did Dave later on. Crude though it was,enough good things got down on tape to make us set a date for the same time the next week and we were to all go off and workshop what we had done and learned. I was inspired to come up with what I hoped were very-contemporary-for-that-time new lyrics and grooves. We recorded several of these gatherings over a period of months calling them The Carlisle Sessions with Keith Lindsay on keyboards, Jimbo on guitar, Klinko on drums and myself and for the last couple of sessions Neil Nicafor showed up to play bass while I concentrated on my vocals. And anyone and everyone that happened to be hanging around the house during these session were drafted to perform percussion, background vocals or ambient sound as needed. 

Brilliant! We’ll use that little bit of this, some o’ that over there, a pinch more o’ this and hey! you got anything else? Right away, Dave, drummers being drummers, rounded up a bunch of microphones on his own so he could mike most of his drums, particularly the bass drum and of course the snare the way he would want to hear them recorded. That was one channel. We gave up one track exclusively to the lead vocal. That was an absolute necessity. The other two tracks were given to strategically placed mikes out in the room to pick up the bass amp, the guitar amp and the keyboard amp sounds.

We had also recorded a number of experimental instrumentals that mixed live playing with recordings that we had made out in the world, including a close-up of a train going by. Very percussive. Very industrial. I used a number of the tracks for the sound these experiments had produced and played the tape for a sound track throughout the opening of my first visual art exhibition at Hamilton Artists Inc. on James Street North the summer of 1981. The last complete tune we did, Move to The Moon (takes 1 & 2) is still my favourite of all we created. Well Doin’ The Snake is a very, very close second and I really like how the updated version of Rhythm Rockin’ Shoes turned out as well. All in all we created 15 songs including 2 by Dave and 1 by Keith. Good fun and creativity had by all.

Average Middle-aged Whiteman

Doin’ the Snake

Rhythm Rockin’ Shoes (Version 2)

Move to the Moon Pt. 1 and Pt. 2

All the songs were recorded live and should be considered ‘historical documents’. Best listened to through a sound system where the bass and treble can be controlled.

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