One of Canada’s most beloved, respected and lauded trios, The Good Lovelies have been charming, entertaining and moving audiences to both laughter and tears with their entrancing, enthralling harmonies and evocative original modern folk/pop compositions for well over a decade.
So, when it came time for the producers of a new album of previously unreleased songs by legendary Canadian troubadour Stompin’ Tom Connors to look for contemporary artists to help finish these songs off in their own inimitable way, the Lovelies – Kerri Ough, Sue Passmore and Caroline Brooks – were at the top of the list.
Anthem Legacy, under the auspices of olé Music, released Unreleased Songs From the Vault Collection Volume 3 on Dec. 7, which features 14 tracks of material Connors laid down by himself, with no accompaniment, in 2011 and 2012, not long before he died. 120 songs in all were recorded, and many of them have been released in other collections, with additional tracks on a number of the tunes laid down by a veritable who’s who of the Canadian music industry.
For Volume 3, The Good Lovelies recorded Cruising Down the River, originally written and recorded in 1946 by Big Band leader Russ Morgan. Other acts participating on the release include The Sheepdogs, Royal Wood, The Washboard Union, Human Kabab, and the dynamic duo of Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy.
Passmore said the Lovelies had been in touch with officials at olé for some time about other projects when the Stompin’ Tom enterprise was brought to their attention.
“They asked if we were interested in doing it and yeah, of course we were interested. They had mentioned there were a lot of recordings that Tom had done in the studio where it was just him doing tracks on his own and they wanted to release a few. We learned that he would usually have a band come in and he would do his part and then he would have the band come in fill in the rest after. So, that’s what the producers wanted to do with various different bands or artists. It sounded like a really cool idea to us,” she said.
“And we did just that. We brought in a handful of instruments and worked out what kind of vocal harmony might 
make sense, and that’s what we did. We just came in like his old bands and added our parts to what he had already recorded, as if he was just in the studio the day before. And it was a really interesting experience because it was very different from the way we tend to work.
“One big thing that was different, and I kind of loved this, was that he would go in and he would just lay down his parts. When we go in, we would lay down an original scratch track for the band to play to, and it’s always to a click track, meaning we’ve always got a solid and consistent tempo to record to. Well, Tom didn’t do that. He would just go in and play, so when there were any variations in tempo or anything like that, it would be our job to keep up with Tom. So that was a new thing for us, but it was a very fun challenge.”
In terms of the song they recorded, Passmore said they were given a few songs from which to choose and felt that Cruisin’ Down the River suited their voices and their style best.
“We had several songs to choose from, so we went through the list and it came down to that song because we felt it fit us the best. It suited the harmonies and we felt we could really work with that song best of all the options that we were given. The song felt as though it was really in the world of what we have been doing and what we had down with our own music,” she said.
“I did find it interesting that a lot of the options we were given were covers that he had done as well as new songs he had written. And I don’t think we heard the original version of this song Cruisin’ On Down the River until we were in the studio, and it sounds kind of like a Disney thing. It’s a total Disney vibe is the best way I can describe it, but Tom completely changed it to be this real gentle country folkie thing. I love that too because another really fun thing is to grab a song you know and make it your own. I love what he did because it’s so different from the original.”
Connors career is of near-mythical status in his home and native land of Canada. A steely-eyed, soft-spoken man, he chronicled the personalities and the communities of the Canada he travelled for decades as a songwriter, performer and recording artist, his PEI twang and ever-present ‘stompin’ right foot regaling audiences with songs such as Bud the Spud, The Hockey Song, Sudbury Saturday Night, Tillsonburg, Big Joe Mufferaw and many more.
Never bending to the prevailing trends and tastes, he soldiered on criss-crossing Canada for more than four decades, enjoying a renaissance of the last decade and half of his career as many of the younger fans, and especially younger singer/songwriters were attracted to his lack of pretension, his ‘stick to your guns’ attitude and unwavering commitment to his craft and to extolling the virtues – and often the vices – of his country.
“We all know about Stompin’ Tom. It’s certainly a name we all recognize and respect. And through this project, I know that I really learned a lot more about Stompin’ Tom, how much he has done and especially how he worked. It was very interesting to learn because it was so different from how we would approach writing and recording today. We all got to learn something about another artist who is sort of under the same umbrella, and I did like that a lot. I like projects like this because it does engage you in the life and work of another artist. I knew general things about Stompin’ Tom, but through this, I got to learn some really interesting things about his as an artist. He really did focus in on Canadian things in his songs and so there are a lot of iconic Canadian stories in what he wrote,” Passmore said.
As for the Good Lovelies, by the time this article hits the website, they will have wrapped up yet another extensive, cross-Canada Christmas tour. While their most recent studio album Shapeshifters came out earlier in 2018, Passmore said she, Brooks and Ough are already working on new material.
“Caroline and I were just talking about this and we’ve already got some new songs in the works, so yeah, music is always coming out. How it will sound compared to the last album or our earlier stuff is yet to be seen. We go through the process of each record with kind of a blank slate and just see what happens. And we’re also going to be busy on the road, we’re going over to Europe and the U.K. in the Spring and head out to the east coast of Canada just after New Year’s. We’re still talking about our summer and fall schedule for 2019, but I know we will be out and about somewhere,” she said.
For more information on The Good Lovelies, visit http://goodlovelies.com.
For more information on Stompin’ Tom Connors: Unreleased Songs From The Vault Collection Volume 3, visit https://www.stompintom.com.
– Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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