Canadian rockers Glass Tiger are in the midst of a serious resurgence in recent years. Touring more than they have since their late-1980s heyday, when they were topping Canadian charts and getting loads of airplay and video play for hits such as Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone), Animal Heart, Someday, My Town, Thin Red Line and Diamond, the band is currently in the midst of a cross-Canada adventure, opening for a equally resurgent Corey Hart.
The two 1980s icons and former labelmates at Capitol EMI started in St. John’s Newfoundland on May 31 and will wrap up their jaunt on June 25 in Vancouver, with five stops taking place in Ontario, including London, Sudbury, Kingston, Toronto and Ottawa. Vocalist Alan Frew will be joined by long-time bandmates Al Connelly (guitar) and keyboardist Sam Reid, as well as drummer Chris McNeill who has been touring with the band for nearly two decades. Regular bassist Wayne Parker is busy with other business ventures and will skip the tour but is still very much part of the band.
Glass Tiger is also touring in support of their first album of new material in nearly three decades – the opening salvo of a promised creative outpouring that could see many more new songs released in the near future.
“Back in the 1980s, he was out just ahead of us and had immense success with Sunglasses At Night and other songs, so we certainly knew of Corey. We used to bump into him quite a bit. There’s a really old picture on Facebook of Alan and I and Corey back in 1985 or 1986 in Manhattan when he was working the record in the U.S. We were very aware of Corey and he was aware of us, but we have never collaborated on any live shows or tours,” said Reid.
“And there was the fact that Corey took himself out of the business for a while and is now coming back so strongly. It’s a real treat to be asked to be on this tour. He hasn’t been on the road like this for 20 years. We have never played with him live and we’re pretty excited about it. From what I have been reading on our socials, a lot of fans are really excited to see Corey and then they’re like, ‘oh wow, and Glass Tiger is there too.’ So, I think it’s a great package. We tend to do a lot of packages and we love playing with other bands from our era like Honeymoon Suite and Platinum Blonde, who are all great friends.”
It was landing the Corey Hart tour that compelled the band to clamp down and get enough material recorded to release an album of some sort to coincide with the tour. The result is the aforementioned six song EP entitled 33 (commemorating the band’s 33 anniversary as a recording act.)
“Our original plan, after we put out 31 [a re-imagining of Glass Tiger hits released in 2017], a lot of fans said they loved it but wanted new material. We had a bunch of new songs, it was just focussing on them and getting them done, in the midst of collaborating with Johnny Reid on 31 and then touring with him. I said to Alan, ‘while we’re touring this summer, maybe we put out one song and then in another month we put out another song, and by the end of the year, we have enough for an album and just kind of dole it out throughout the year,’” said Reid, who added that the album was released on his own Willow Music Label, with distribution through Warner Music Canada.
“But then at the last minute, an option came up to do this tour with Corey Hart and we felt it would be kind of silly to be on the road coast to coast and not have some physical copies of new music. We needed to take the six songs we were going to release one at a time and go in and do our best to get them done in time and bring that album out on the road and have something brand new that’s at least an EP. So, the tour was what made us giddy up and get it done.
“We were on a timeline because of the tour. And because we have a new working relationship with Warner Music, we told them what we were going to do and they said, ‘wow, we had so much fun working with you guys on 31, we would love to put it out.’ It’s a new family for us and I looked at their schedule and told the guys that we only had six weeks to make this record, because there’s time you have to set aside to prep it and get in manufactured and do all the marketing stuff. I knew we could do the six songs if we concentrated and focused. And I think it’s the right move to release a collection of new songs, because we really needed to give ourselves and our fans an album, as opposed to doling it out, one song at a time. I am really glad that we made the deadline and have something substantial. That’s the most exciting thing I feel right now is leaving to start a tour and knowing we can look the fans in the face and start a tour with new stuff. ‘You asked for it, and we got it done.’”
Reid said that this won’t be the end of new material. In a sense Glass Tiger wants to make up for the 28-year gap between Simple Mission, the previous last album of original material, and 33, as there are ambitious plans for even more recordings in the near future.
“We’ve worked hard. It’s been a 33 year investment for us. We’re very proud of that and we wanted to do this record to show the fans that we have new songs and there’s lots of new things on the way. We still love playing My Town and Someday and we will always do those songs, but we wanted to create new music and we felt the timing was right. We have also talked about this two to five year window, where we’re driving our manager nuts right now. I was talking with him recently and said we might put out a 33 1/2 . I was sort of kidding, because we’re going to be on the road most of this year, but don’t be surprised of 34 comes out next year,” he said.
“And we love this number thing. It started with 31 because we missed our 30th because of Alan’s stroke [in the summer of 2015] and we thought it was cheeky and clever to do 31 – who the hell does 31? When it came time for this new album, we could have called the record This Is Your Life and that would have been a real predictable thing to do. It was Alan who said, ‘hey, you know 31 came out, we toured for 32, the record is out now, it’s year 33, let’s call it 33.’ And we loved it, so that’s what we did.”
Reid spoke of the freedom that the band has in terms of creating music that pleases them, as opposed to trying to fulfill the expectations of more commercial interests such as labels and radio. So, while the songs on 33 are completely recognizable as Glass Tiger, in large part due to Frew’s voice [which actually sounds stronger and more powerful since his stroke], he and Reid, along with guitarist Al Connelly, put few shackles on their writing process.
“There’s a song called The Keepers of Time which was literally written two days before we went into the studio. And then there’s one on the opposite end of the scale called Show Me, which was in our work folder eight years ago at least, when we were talking about recording tracks. So, we resurrected it for that project, and then we have some new stuff. We looked at all sources. We basically put everything into a hat like the old days and then pulled out six things that were really turning our crank. The biggest thing for us these days is we’re not kids any more. We’ve been doing this for a long time and know what we want. We know what songs we want to do, and we know the style we want to do them in. This record was produced by myself and Andrew Cole, but really the whole band has a lot of input,” he explained.
“We’ve made the fans wait from the last studio album, which was 1991. It’s overdue, it’s time. If we had just a little bit more time, it would have been a 10-song record. We have enough material. But we wanted to do it well, we didn’t want to phone it in and rush it. So, we said, let’s just do the six songs really well. It’s an accomplishment for us. We’ve been dragging our heels a little bit for no reason. There were lots of great ideas for songs around, but it needed a focus and we just found a moment when we were ready to refocus and just do it.
“We’re at the stage where you make music for yourself first and then you push it out there and hope it resonates. We really wanted to do this, and I think we would have done it to just please a handful of people. Honestly, it’s not like we will rush this to radio and we’re breaking a band kind of thing. We are so fortunate to be around 33 years later to have a really solid fan base who has been clamouring for new music as well. We’re about to step out and tour coast to coast in Canada again, that’s our stock in trade – our fans.”
There is diversity, energy, vibrancy, a melange of tones and vibes over the six songs and, dare we say it, a maturity in both composition and lyrical content that is more a sign of confidence and resoluteness than a lack of fire and desire. This is epitomized on the lush, powerhouse opening track, Ebb and Flow and the raucous show stopper This Is London.
Another stand-out track, and one that Reid admits may surprise even the most ardent of Glass Tiger admirers, is the final cut – Dying is Easy.
“When we started looking for the sixth song, I said to Al Connelly, ‘go into your spare parts pile and give me everything you have that is finished or almost finished, that is recordable, that you really feel we need to listen to.’ I said the same thing to Alan, and I did the same. And we met in the middle and threw everything into one big metaphorical bucket. Alan has been doing a lot more writing, so there was a lot of stuff, like 30 things at least. Some of it was quite different, and there was this one thing called Dying is Easy and I loved the dryness of vocal and how different the lyric was. I loved the fact that the vocals were bone dry, like he was singing into your ear. It’s not lush at all,” Reid said.
“I asked him what the hell it was, and he said it was something he was working on for a project that was a Bonnie and Clyde thing that ended up falling through, and then it made sense. I know it’s wacky for Glass Tiger, but I love the fact of how different that track is, so I fought for it. I thought it would be a shocker, but that we needed to put it on the record. It resonated with me and I talked Alan into it. When I heard it, I didn’t get the Bonnie and Clyde thing at first. I missed the fact that he sings the name Bonnie in it. I just heard it as a song that was really different and really kind of cool.”
Spoiler alert – wait for the ‘Easter egg’ after the song finishes.
Glass Tiger is also unafraid of bringing in outside players to perform on their records. For 33, producer Cole helped lineup the likes of legendary drummer Kenny Aronoff (John Mellencamp, John Fogerty and hundreds of recording projects), Jane’s Addiction bassist Chris Chaney, and George Pajon Jr., of the Black Eyed Peas.
“When you look back, we have never recorded an album without a guest. We’ve always had fun with those sorts of collaborations. We had Bryan Adams, we had Lisa Dalbello, we had, The Chieftains, we had Rod Stewart. On 31 we had Alan Doyle, Susan Aglukark and Julian Lennon. We love working with other artists, it’s actually a lot of fun. It also introduces a little bit of their flavour into things, and so we will continue to do that,” Reid said.
Like many within the Canadian music industry, the members of Glass Tiger continue to mourn the recent passing of well-respected long-time Capitol EMI Canada executive, Deane Cameron, who played a pivotal part in the band getting its major label deal back in the mid-1980s.
“We played one of the final shows at Massey Hall and Deane of course was the head of Massey and Roy Thomson Hall and a big part of the renovation that’s happening. We were happy last June to see Deane and play Massey Hall. I was excited to send him the new record, but then out of the blue I got a call, actually it was from Jim Vallance, who said ‘did you hear the news.’ We were in the studio and it just blindsided us. Alan spoke at the service, because Deane was such a huge part of Glass Tiger’s early history. I spoke to some people at his memorial about how nervous I was at 19 years old walking in the door at Capitol Records feeling really intimidated and Deane made us feel welcome immediately,” Reid said.
“Deane was the A&R guy when we got signed and then became president. We loved the fact that not only did he become president, but he actually started at Capitol EMI as a forklift driver in the warehouse and worked his way up. If you ever see pictures of us receiving awards in the early years with Capitol Records, they will always be in the warehouse and that’s because Deane never wanted to do anything in the corporate offices. The entire staff who were shrink-wrapping and packing the albums were all given a break and we went into the warehouse and that’s where we posed for pictures and thanked them all. Deane always had this attachment to the workers there, because that’s where he came from.
“And he was a music guy, he knew how to read music, he was a drummer and played in a band with Tom Cochrane called Harvest – so he was the real deal. Deane Cameron had great ears and great instincts and we were so lucky that he was the guy we got connected with in our early years, because we could have had a very different career, or no career without that.”
Glass Tiger’s 33 was not only released on CD and on all digital platforms, but also on special red vinyl and … if you’re a real nostalgia buff … on cassette.
For more information on 33, and upcoming tour dates, including those with Corey Hart, visit https://glasstiger.ca.
- 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.
