Nothing like a world-wide pandemic to change all the rules. With an anything goes attitude and time to experiment, musicians have been pushing the envelope with all sorts of projects, cleaning their closets and doing work they'd never imagined they'd release. Newfoundland/Ontario troubadour Ken Tizzard (The Watchmen/Thornley) has always had a hankering for cover versions in his solo shows, and figured now was as good a time as ever to get to that album. But it quickly became a whole new beast when his many music friends heard about it. Asking around who wanted in, some 44 guest musicians took part over 13 cuts.
Tizzard asked each participant, who ranged from seasoned pros to talented amateurs, to pick one of the songs on his list, and say what part and instrument they'd like to add. Then he sent the demo to folks all over North America, and got them to record their part. But here's the kicker; they didn't know what the other guests would be playing, and didn't hear Tizzard's works-in-progress. The magic would be created in the mixing.
It's surprising how well the experiment went. Everybody has an idea of what famous songs should sound like, but this process saw each well-known cut take on a life of its own. "Working Class Hero," John Lennon's tear-down of Western society, is stark and scary, but here it becomes a dark rock ballad, with shared lead vocals from an all-star cast of Matt Mays, Ron Hawkins (Lowest Of The Low), Daniel Greaves (Watchmen), Chris Broadbeck (See Spot Run) and Tizzard. With its echoed harmonica (Peter Boag) it's like a gunfighter scene from a Sergio Leone western. Sandy Morris brings the country flavour out of Tom Petty's "Yer So Bad" with his banjo and dobro work. A couple of friends from a North Carolina bluegrass group called Unspoken Tradition punched up the trad element of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice" way up, especially with Ty Gilpin's deft mandolin solo.
The setlist is heavy on Tizzard's '70's and '80's alt-rock favourites, including Tears For Fears ("Mad World"), REM ("Driver 8) and "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats. He veers off-script for a couple of fun surprises, especially the 1988 George Jones hit, "Ya Ba Da Ba Do" (a/k/a "The King Is Gone"), a deft piece of writing that references Fred Flintstone and Elvis. With the cast featured mostly rock and folk rock folks, such as Daniel Adair of Nickelback, Tommy MacDonald of Hedley and Grayden James and Laura Spink of The Young Novelists, its surprising how many of the songs took on a country flavour, but then again, but there ain't anything wrong with that. It almost never drops to mere cover band level (the version of "Brown Eyed Girl" is probably the only case of that), and instead is more like a music laboratory experiment which went very well. .
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