Steve McFall week on Facebook – day four: Before I get into my personal interpretation of this CD, I want to give the listener some kind of idea what shaped this CD. This is not an objective review – it can’t be. I got too much personal history as a singer-songwriter and musician and as a friend to be objective. Some things about this album may delight me more than the average guy – some things about this album may disappoint me or frustrate me because I might have a different expectation level than a first time listener. I am a fan of Steve’s music forever – he is a great talent and I must admit I am always expecting him to prove why he is great. That makes this difficult. We started out in much more competitive younger days. I mean, here’s a guy who knows how to turnaround a song with the best of them because he has listened intently to some of the greatest music ever and he has tons of songwriting experience so he knows the tricks of what works and what doesn’t. That having been said he’s a guy who used to be in tune to the musical muse daily once upon a time. When you don’t do this everyday, the upside is you can have a fresher approach – the downside is huge – the artist is not as finely tuned and it can take some time to get back into the groove. Not only as a musician and a songwriter, but especially as a singer. The other problem is that almost every vocalist has a challenge where the pipes are stronger and less damaged in their youth – age doesn’t affect any other musician as much as a vocalist – the musician just has to deal with a certain loss of edge and fire in his playing and that can be identified and perhaps dealt with. An instrument will never deteriorate in quality as much as an older human voice and if the instrument is damaged over time it can be repaired or replaced. The human voice has one go around and that is all. Tip for any old timer (or anybody unless you’re on the road performing all the time) -I have one major suggestion for any vocalist wanting to return to music in their later years after not singing even for as little as a year and it’s fairly simple. Go to kaoraoke at least once a week maybe for a year. Find a good setup where the music is played at approximately a comparable level to a concert level (bar level is fine)of sound, doesn’t have a room that swallows up sound and most importantly, has a monitor system that you can hear what you are singing at that instant so that you can properly guage how close to the note you’re hitting, you can hear your strengths and weaknesses, you can play with dynamics, can guage how well you’re hitting the higher and lower notes, you can hear your timing and sliding from note to note, hold a stronger longer note, get your breathing patterns to help you hold notes better and stronger, and you can clearly guage when you know that you’ve hit your stride or groove. It takes some time and practice. Start off with the easier melodies and work towards more challenging as the night goes along. At the early part of your year, pick easy melodies with one octave range so you can build up your confidence and strength to reach for tougher challenges eventually. By the end, start picking really challenging stuff – it doesn’t matter if you fail on some of these songs – the average kaoraoke singer doesn’t care if you hit a bum note or just don’t sound like Johnny Cash (in my case) – nobody’s paying for a Robert Plant performance here. Myself, I always start testing my falsetto and strength later and have a go with Elvis, Beach Boys, Four Seasons, Roy Orbison, Aerosmith, Animals, McCartney rockers etc. Don’t be afraid to try a Tom Jones song or a singer that maybe you don’t think you sound like – give that guy your best shot at trying to sing in his style of performance – you can build body strength to your vocals. If I fail once at any song, I generally try it again another week (unless it really sucked so bad that it’s better to try something else maybe easier). I guarantee you will always improve. It is amazing after awhile that you can be surprised at how close you can get to singing like your heroes (unless you’re tone deaf – but I could even teach a tone deaf person how to sing on key to a reasonable degree – there is a trick you can develop). After awhile, you’ll know your voice is back in shape. It’s good to keep going back to songs that you think you do well on, particularly towards the near end of the night but don’t just stick to what you do best all night long – you have to try a bit of everything that you like. If I return to record new music one day like Steve has done, I guarantee you’ll find me in the kaoraoke bar for awhile each week – it’s kind of like a batting cage for a hitter to keep practicing on to get his swing back. It’s a great tool. Back to Steve, I remember him being totally in love with the British Invasion of 1964, particularly The Beatles. He also loved The Stones, The Who and The Kinks. All 60’s and some 70’s AM pop hits. Cream and Hendrix, late 60’s FM rock and early to mid 70’s and especially progressive rock such as Jethro Tull, Strawbs and Genesis. He also loved 10CC, Elton John (Tumbleweed Connection in particular), The Guess Who and Loggins and Messina for awhile. This just scratches the surface. He always seemed to be on the lookout for an obscure artist or odd style of music or odd record cover (I remember The Groundhogs “Thank Christ For The Bomb” and a Blodwyn Pig album, which had the great song “See My Way” which The 1990 Time Machine began to cover, as examples of that). These were his young day influences that shaped the garage bands and progressive rock bands that he was in. He had a much more progressive songwriting style that was a little more third person related in its subject matter back then. Steve also had a soft spot for selected folk music and a huge love of Paul McCartney solo stuff in the 70’s. This would spawn a continued love or fascination that would definitely affect his music and that is evident even on the new Steve McFall CD. Oddly, when we started out, Steve had that slight leaning towards liking McCartney stuff more than Lennon’s but sounded a little more vocally like Lennon in his youth and even wore the ”granny glasses” like Lennon for awhile. I definitely leaned much more towards liking Lennon and sang slightly more like McCartney than Lennon when I sang in bands back then. Things changed. Now, it’s amazing how at times Steve sounds very similar to McCartney vocals on his new album. Steve’s roots at developing the style he has today I recall being born sometime in 1969 or 1970. The Beatles were at their peak and were just about to be gone forever. We had just gotten beyond Woodstock. The music was rockin’ hard at the time, but was just about to petre out and mellow out as the folk flavoured singer/songwriter era was coming in. The Beatles were experimenting with unusual solo albums that were very different from their bands pop- rock stuff. Steve wanted to try to release different kinds of music like The Beatles were doing. So, he devised what he considered his own solo project that would differ from 1990 Time Machine rock stuff and set up what was similar to a box set of a series of about 4 five inch reel to reel tapes. Each tape would experiment in a different way in what turned out to be a more intimate folky side of Steve and involved various musicians in or not in The 1990 Time Machine or just Steve as a solo performer.(As a sidenote, I always get a kick out of how youth is so carefree and silly at times – Peter Leclerc who was involved playing and/or hanging out during some of Steve’s recording made a suggestion to Steve when he was thinking of titling each EP (or tape). Pete’s suggestion for one of the tapes was “AssGrabbers” – which stuck as the title and we all had a youth’s chuckle about it. Steve would continue to work on these folk tapes during his work with progressive rock bands and I worked on many of them, sometimes with Daniel Vermette and his brother Alain Vermette. I also played some live folk gigs with Steve sometimes and I’m not saying this with certainty, but it is possible that the song off his new album called “Into Night” may have been performed at a gig at the Transfiguration Church Hall in Montreal . I do remember some highlights from those days “Misty Mornings” (probably his most popular folk ballad), “Dear Mom” (a beautiful song), “Troubador” (awesomely catchy simple melody and harmony chorus) and an odd titled song from the Steve catalogue called “I’ll Never Drink Again” or a title very close to that (which spoke of his mood after a nasty hangover as a youth). Of course, I remember Cold Sweat and Indian Blues from 1990 Time Machine – a song that was something like 18 minutes long but when we recorded it a black guy named Teddy who was a nice guy said he could add some recorder to it and he put down this craaaaaaazeee recorder solo that, well, nearly killed the piece, but it was interesting. Steve also had some interest from a Capitol Records guy for an 18 minute opus called “Over The Edge” by Zebulon Pyke, I think. I might be getting confused here because he was in a band called The Edge for a little while. Problem was it was a piece in a style kinda like Thick As A Brick by Jethro Tull and Canadian A+R guys had very little idea how to sell long progressive rock pieces unless it had a worldwide distribution ,a promise of a heavy touring schedule and perhaps another short piece to release as a single or, perhaps, finally, an edit of the long piece. After Steve left his rock band days behind after Zebulon Pyke, Steve would write a large collection of folk style songs on his 12 string guitar for awhile. The vast majority of his first solo album, although recorded in 2013, is stuff that starts to come out of Steve’s folky days beginning in 1974 and continuing forward until, maybe, the late 80’s(?) – Steve would have to confirm my last statement as accurate or not. (Coming tomorrow the final installment of prep work history to the Steve story which will lead to my Day 6 review and , not only do I provide reasons here why you should buy this CD of Steve’s, but the main logic as to why you should support local talent of any kind etc.)
Posted on: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 05:00:40 +0000
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