It’s been 13 years since fans last heard recorded original music from a true Canadian rock music icon, Kim Mitchell. In 2007, he released the wonderfully compelling Ain’t Life Amazing, which showed that the Sarnia native and veteran of the music industry had lost none of his songwriter lustre or ability to kick some serious rock and roll ass.
Long-time fans, those who go back to his days fronting the iconoclastic rock band Max Webster during the 1970s, through is hitmaking days as a solo artist throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, know that there is indeed more to Mitchell as an artist that the raucous hits such as Rock and Roll Duty, Lager and Ale, I Am A Wild Party and Go For A Soda. On his albums, the deeper cuts are often just that – deeper compositionally, emotionally and philosophically. Tracks such as Cameo Spirit, Expedition Sailor and Human Condition hinted at a direction which Mitchell could possibly go in, if he so chooses.
A couple of years ago, already writing more and more songs in this vein, but hesitant to release them, Mitchell was convinced that now was the time to fully explore these other facets of his compositional talents, and release them to the world, thanks to the encouragement of pal and internationally acclaimed producer/engineer Greg Wells. Wells produced the songs which have become Mitchell’s first album in 13 years, The Big Fantasize, set to be released in the fall or early winter, with the first single, Wishes, already out on digital platforms.
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mitchell has stayed busy, with the impact on his career as a musician negligible since, in many respects, he has stepped away gracefully from that career to a significant degree.
“With what’s going on now, there’s no choice but to adapt. I am in the category where I am not motivated. I rarely play guitar and I do other stuff. I am just not really a musician at this point, other than doing interviews about the release. I am not making music. I don’t play guitar, I am not writing, I am not thinking about it a whole bunch, and that’s kind of how it’s been going for a little while now,” Mitchell said.
“I have been sort of preparing myself and even hoping a little bit I my mind that we will get back to some sweaty rock and roll at some ribfests and corn fests and stuff. But I am also preparing myself mentally that that may never happen. So, I am doing a lot of gardening, I am cooking, I am walking my dog, I am visiting a few friends that I have set up safe meetings with, just doing that. I am doing a little bit of tweaking in my house, stuff that gets left behind when you’re a musician and doing other things. I am fixing up things, throwing out and purging stuff, and this can take all day and next thing you know, it’s nighttime.
“So that’s how I have adapted. In a perfect world, this pandemic wouldn’t have hit. I finished this record before it hit, all mixed and mastered and then I did three weeks of gigs, but we stopped because of the pandemic. At one point, we’re all sitting around wondering whether we should hold off releasing anything, what should we do? With the song Wishes, we said let’s just put it out. It’s a sweet tune, it’s kind of comforting, let’s just put that out there. There’s no point holding on to it, so that’s what we did.”
The sentiments about his career and his interests in life are very similar to those expressed in a recent interview with Music Life Magazine, by contemporary Canadian guitarist/singer/songwriter Rik Emmett, who retired from the road last year, and is quite content writing and releasing more personal, introspective, and unique compositions under his Bonfire Sessions banner. (Interestingly, Mitchell, Emmett and Honeymoon Suite guitarist Derry Grehan all share the same birthday – July 10.)
“Doing music is like owning a sports car or something. You might as well drive it. It’s an album that I might not otherwise have recorded and released. It was Greg Wells that told me we should record it. He was my producer and he said, ‘this is a side of you, man, that needs to really be put out there. The fans need to hear it more, because you do it so well,’” Mitchell said.
“I was hesitant because people want to hear Patio Lanterns, Rock and Roll Duty, Lager And Ale, Go For A Soda, and I am fine playing that stuff. I always have a good time walking out on a stage and feeling so grateful that I still get to do that and that an audience shows up to hear it. But anyway, a painter’s gotta paint, man. A dancer’s gotta dance. So, I wrote this album and decided to record it. What are you going to do, buy a fancy sports care and leave it sitting in the garage all the time, so let’s just put it out there?
“I have been chipping away at this record for a couple of years and it was the vibe of the tunes that Greg loved. He said, ‘people know you for your shouty stuff where you walk into a room and you yell and kick a bunch of stuff around and walk out – the I Am A Wild Party kind of thing.’ He said this new stuff was more atmospheric and it’s like there’s more dry ice and different lighting. It’s a different vibe musically: I love the fact that Rik Emmett is doing what he is doing too. Another example of that is when people around Robert Plant are like, ‘come on, are you going to tour Led Zeppelin one more time.’ And he says, ‘f***ing tour Led Zeppelin? In two years, I’m going to need help getting across the street.’ It’s kind of the same thing. We’re all getting older and we’re going to do what we want to do.”
It is apparent that Mitchell has allowed any sense of pretence or the expectations of others to fade away as he wrote these songs, focusing on pleasing himself and enjoying the experience of an unfettered creative process.
“Here’s how different a Kim Mitchell record it is: the opening notes of the record are coming from a clarinet. But it does get rocking. I do have some driving tunes on there. There’s one called 2up2beDown that’s a real positive track. And the song Georgian Bay clips along at a good pace and it’s really upbeat and positive. There’s atmospheric stuff too,” he said from his home in Toronto.
“There’s a song called Old Marriage Waltz, which I just love the lyric from Craig Baxter. It’s about a couple who are just in a shambles, their marriage is in shambles and how it’s all worded is so beautiful. So, we wrote that together, and I think married people will be able to relate to it huge – formerly married people too, they’ll say, ‘yep, I was there.’ Like I always say, there’s good music and bad music. There’s good songs and okay songs. I’ve written a lot of shouty songs, hard-rockin’ stuff. I am starting to age, but I still might write that kind of stuff and there’s actually some of that on the record as I said. 2up2beDown is a lot like [Max Webster classic] High Class in Borrowed Shoes. It’s a full on rock tune.
“I kind of relate to what Rik is doing. He is just being a guitar player and a musician and a songwriter who has a lifetime of experience behind him, and he’s saying, ‘this is what I do, and I am going to keep doing it.’ So, there’s not much I can add to that.”
Mitchell and his collaborator/producer Wells go back more than 30 years, and it’s this history and enduring friendship that can be credited as much as anything with the forthcoming release of The Big Fantasize, and with the more introspective and exploratory nature of the music itself.
“Greg Wells was in my band at 17. He was a pushy young dude, but he had the talent to back it up. He was a great musician and a great keyboard player. Then he moved to Los Angeles and started to get some success, and worked really, really hard. He sort of jumped in with both feet, went into debt and got a studio and gear, and he has said that it was a really scary time in his life. He had just leased a studio and he was buying gear and he said, ‘my phone wasn’t ringing.’ But then all of a sudden, the Hanson brothers [of MMMBop fame] phoned him up and asked if he could produce a record of theirs and since then, it’s been onwards and upwards for him,” said Mitchell.
“Greg’s done number one tunes by Keith Urban, he did Twenty One Pilots first record, he did Apologize for One Republic, he’s worked with Katy Perry, Pink, Otep, so he is a big shot. He is a Grammy Award-winning engineer/producer. He more recently did the soundtrack for The Greatest Showman. With me, he started out as a friend and he was a fan. When he was here a couple of years ago, I gave him a USB and said, ‘please take these songs, and if you can give me feedback on even one of then, that would be great – it would help me out as a songwriter.’ Then he rang me up a couple of weeks later and said, ‘dude, I love these songs. Come down to Los Angeles and let’s record them.’ And I was like, ‘wow, Greg Wells wants me to come down to Los Angeles and record with him.’
“And I did, and we had access to his studio and all his specialized gear that over 20 years he’s accumulated, and which has sort of become the Greg Wells ‘thing.’ It was a fantastic experience. The list of players we used on the record is really long: there were a couple of different bass players, [long-time bandmate/collaborator] Peter Fredette sings on a few, and I have a couple of female singers too. I have a five-piece horn section on one song called Georgian Bay. So, it’s pretty cool.”
Georgian Bay, the song, can be said to be a real insight into where Kim Mitchell the creative spirit is as we pass the halfway mark of 2020, more than 45 years into his career. Lyrically and emotionally it is very much along the lines of the wistfulness and sentimentality of Patio Lanterns or Rockland Wonderland, but has the depth of a song like Expedition Sailor. Interestingly, the song also contains no guitar, yet is still an up-tempo, energetic tune.
“There is no guitar on it, it’s almost like a jazz thing with piano, bass, drums and five horns. And, it’s really funny when you’re in a business like this, you are sometimes reminded that you’re in the music business when people are going, ‘uh, where’s the guitar?’ ‘Oh, there’s no guitar on this song.’ And they say, ‘but you’re Kim Mitchell. You should have guitar in this.’ And I am, like, ‘no, listen to the song, it’s pumping along amazingly, it doesn’t need any guitar.’ I have learned that sometimes you have to do that as a songwriter and say, in order to serve the greater purpose of the song, maybe it doesn’t even need guitar,” he explained.
“This whole album was songwriting focused. I took my guitar playing and sort of put it aside and said to myself that my guitar playing was going to serve the song. There was none of the, ‘oh Kim Mitchell has to do a solo here,’ It was more like, ‘well, here’s an opportunity for me to do a solo that makes sense to the song.’
“Georgian Bay makes reference to some of the things associated with Georgian Bay. It makes reference to Parry Sound, to The Dardanella, the dance pavilion right on the beach at Wasaga Beach, and it makes reference to The Kee to Bala, and it makes reference to [Barrie, Ontario based radio station] Rock 95 which covers that whole area. It’s my experiences up there and it’s just a driving piano, bass and drums and then this horn section piling on. Listen, for me, there’s good music and bad music and we have to take the word genre right out of it, take all the labels out of it. Music transmits energy, and it’s an energy that reaches into your spirit, it doesn’t matter what kind it is, that’s just awesome.”
The first single from the album, Wishes, was released on Mitchell’s birthday, July 10, and is based on a poem he randomly read one day almost a decade ago.
“I never read poetry as a thing. The only stuff I would read is a lyric sheet from Pye Dubois or someone else I was working with. It was so random how this happened and so random because as opposed to picking up an outdated Reader’s Digest in a waiting room, I saw a book of poetry and picked it up. And literally the first poem I read, not on page one, just randomly opening the book, was Wishes by A.C. Child and I just fell in love with the poem and right there I said to myself I have to write a song to this. And that’s kind of where all this started 10 years ago,” said.
“Have a look at the lyrics. It’s saying it’s okay for us to wish for wealth, it’s okay for us to wish for beauty, we do that sometimes. But there’s also simpler stuff that we can wish for that gives us just as much meaning in life. And I love the way it sums up, ‘if you grant me some of these simple things before I die, I’ll ask no more of life.’ Of course, the song was written and finished before Covid hit. My manager and other people that are involved with the record and the label were like, ‘Wishes is so beautiful, it kind of fits right now. It’s a song of hope, why don’t we put it out and people might dig it.’ I just hope they do and so far, the feedback is saying they seem to be doing so.”
It was announced earlier in the year, before the world-altering Covid-19 pandemic, that Mitchell was to be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, class of 2020. Needless to say, with the lockdown and restrictive pandemic protocols in place, that event never happened, and is to be pushed to next year. Nonetheless, Mitchell admits he was shocked at receiving this prestigious accolade.
“That took me by surprise. In your career you may envision gold and platinum albums coming, you might see the possibility of a Juno Award or things like that. When the person at SOCAN [The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada] contacted me, because she lives in my neighbourhood in Toronto, she asked if I would meet her for a drink over at such and such a pub because there’s something she wanted to discuss with me. I was thinking maybe it’s about royalty payments or whatever the heck is going on with Covid, but she said, ‘we want to induct you into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.’ At first, I was like, ‘you must have the wrong guy.’ I mean, we’re talking about Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, like what, Kim Mitchell? These people probably don’t even know who I am,” he said.
“It got me starting to think, it seems like a group of fantastic, dysfunctional people, so I will feel right at home alongside them. It blows me away, Jim, I am totally blown away by it. And it’s my body of work, she said they were not just inducting a song, it’s my whole body of work, and they’re going to induct [long-time writing partner] Pye Dubois as well, It’s like, what do you say to that? And to be acknowledged by your peers like that is awesome.
“And it happened when I worked in radio too. I remember when I first started, I sucked for the first year, and I know there were other announcers who really wanted that gig. Who wouldn’t want an afternoon drive gig at the biggest rock station in Toronto? And all of a sudden here’s a dude with no experience, no skill and who was never trained, struggling away and just sounding terrible. But then a year and a half or so later, I started getting messages from guys like Stu Jefferies over at Boom FM and this person and that person, and they were like, ‘hey man, it sounds like you’ve really been working hard.’ And I started to win their love a little bit, that really gave me confidence.”
On a final note, we wrapped up the conversation talking about another momentous event that happened in early 2020 which shocked and saddened not only Canadian music community, but music fans worldwide – the death of Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart in January. Mitchell’s previous band, Max Webster, was signed to Rush’s Anthem Records label, and often toured with the legendary trio as an opening act in the mid to late 1970s, with both bands becoming friends.
“I knew he was sick. I had other people around me also die of neuroblastoma [a form of brain cancer] and I heard about Neil about a year before he was gone. Of course, you’re sad. I have memories that, whenever his name comes up, whenever he gets mentioned these days, Jim I have vivid images come up in my head and they’re wonderful images – they’re fantastic,” he said.
“When we were on tour, and Max Webster was opening for Rush all across North America this one time, and whether it was, Butte, Montana, or Cleveland or wherever, Neil would play our set with us, behind his drums. His drums were scrimmed, meaning there’s a big black curtain in front so people couldn’t see Rush’s set up or his kit, and he would come out and we would hear him every night playing with us. His microphones were turned off so the audience couldn’t hear him, but that’s how he warmed up. That was sort of a cool thing that I now really like sharing that whenever Max Webster was on stage opening a Rush show, Neil was playing our set, nine out of 10 times, warming up. And of course, he asked us if he could do that.”
For more information on Wishes, The Big Fantasize, and possible post-pandemic shows, visit http://kimmitchell.ca.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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