Dec. 01, 2010 - Issue #789 : Beckett Shorts

Prevue

Bourne identity

Bill Bourne's latest album a departure caught on film ... sort of

Departing from the worldly folk influences of his past work, venerable Edmonton musician Bill Bourne's latest album, free radio dance Band is a foray into the electric blues, its licks skipping hot out of the speakers with an impressive urgency. For any other musician, such a departure might be a well-planned-out decision, a deliberate effort to stretch into fields not yet entered, but for Bourne it was, as he puts it, largely an accident, the doings of the muse whose fickleness is a fact of life.

"Songs: how do they come along? That's a big mystery for me," he says, mentioning that free radio dance Band came together in the studio with somewhat little rehearsal. "I've sat for two weeks writing and writing and writing and have nothing, and sometimes in 10 minutes have a song suddenly, 'boom!' it's there. I don't know where it comes from. Don't ask me about songwriting, I really don't know that much about it."

After further probing, Bourne admits that working with his son Pat might have had something to do with the harder edge displayed on free radio dance Band. Known for his work in rock 'n' roll outfits like Les Tabernacles and the Get Down, this was the first time Pat Bourne and his father had ever collaborated together musically.

"We were living together last fall and over the winter a bit and so once in a while we got to jam a bit and that had something to do with the songs I brought forward," explains the elder Bourne. "Pat's used to playing in a certain context, a blues-rock thing, so that had something to do with the songs that we recorded. There were some other tunes that were more world-beat influenced that just didn't seem to work out so well and it didn't seem to make any sense to bring them into the picture. So that context that Pat brought to the picture had a big influence on what was actually recorded."

Another curious aspect of the recording process was the fact that it was documented for a film entitled For the Record, which came out this past summer. The experience of having his every move recorded while trying to make this latest album was one that Bourne explains was a bit uncomfortable; the hot lights and the cramped space meant that most of the album was recorded after the film crew went home for the day.

"What happened was they got footage of one song that made it to the album, but they were in there everyday for six hours, but we would record all the takes after they left every day," says Bourne. "It was too distracting. I think part of that, and it was nobody's fault, but I think the studio was too small for that kind of scenario. If you're gonna do that you need a big space so they can do their camera thing and you don't even notice it, but in this case the studio just wasn't big enough and they put the lights up and we proceeded to just cook." V

Sun, Dec 5 (2 pm)
Bill Bourne
as part of SIRENS' Blues for Christmas
Blues on Whyte, $10 plus a non-perishable food item
Tickets at Blues on Whyte or SIRENS (780.439.7460) vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus