Tom Wilson: Press

Ibland hittar man en platta som man faller för pladask. Det är sällsynt, men lika roligt varje gång. Och allra roligast är det när man aldrig förr har hört talas om artisten.

Jag hade aldrig hört talas om Tom Wilson, som trots detta är ett stort och tungt namn hemma i Kanada. Där har han agerat i flera olika band, som inte heller de har hamnat i min skivsamling. Men det är väl inte bara jag som undrar hur det lät när The Florida Razors stod på en scen? Eller Junkhouse (som ändå klingar nånstans längst bak i skallen)? Senast fanns han i Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, supergrupp för rotrockare. Men den har jag också missat.

Detta är hans andra soloprojekt. Dog Years är full av såna där låtar som man gillar redan efter inledningsackordet. Och då är man fast.

Tom Wilson kan kalla sig singer/songwriter om han vill. Eller rockstjärna. Han står längst fram med sin gitarr och han sjunger som en rockstjärna ska sjunga för att man ska lyssna. Och han har säkert sina inspirationskällor, men han låter i vilket fall som helst mest som Tom Wilson.

Några av låtarna har han spelat in i Nashville, eftersom producenten Colin Linden ville att Wilson skulle konfronteras med musiker som inte kände till honom. Så här finns t ex Gary Tallent från The E Street Band och Bob Babbitt
från Funk Brother. I »Talk Of the Town« smyger sig Roseanne Cash in och gör
denna honky-tonklåt blir en snygg duett.
Öppningsspåret »Super Sun Natural« är precis rätt valt för att få in lyssnaren i rätt stämning och lika rätt är det att avsluta plattan med den himmelska balladen »Dreamland«.

»Dog Years« visar att den här mannen har en enorm kapacitet att både skriva
superstarka låtar och att framföra dem. Så jag unnar honom att bli upptäckt
också av publiken på den här sidan av Atlanten. Jag garanterar att många
fler än jag faller pladask för Tom Wilson.

Singer Tom Wilson has too much on the go this year, but he wouldn't want it any other way.

Tom Wilson doesn't bother trying to reinvent the wheel on his current, 10-track outing. Instead, the Hamilton rocker is content to tighten the spokes. The disc, produced by Blackie and the Rodeo Kings cohort Colin Linden, ranges fluidly across the terrain of traditional rock, from the fuzzy, straight-ahead opener "Super Sun Natural" to the low-key, contemplative closer "Dreamland." Apart from Linden, who also plays on the album, Wilson's supporting cast includes Rosanne Cash, whose distinctive vocals add dimension to "Talk of the Town." A couple of hooky, pop-oriented tracks "I'm in Love with the System" and "Little Domino" lend buoyancy to a durable, unpretentious set.Wilson performs April 7 at the Rivoli.

"Blackie & the Rodeo Kings members produce solid solo discs"

New Brunswick Article

PAM TILLIS PROVED IT'S ALL RELATIVE

...Connect Savannah: So, can you see yourself ever getting together with one of these alternative bands and making a raw, Americana album?

Pam Tillis: I certainly wouldn’t hold that outside the realm of possibilities. Those kinds of collaborations are important. I heard one of these groups way down in one of those CDs, they were at number 14 or something. They were called Blackie & The Rodeo Kings, and they were from Canada. It was so hip! It was like Dave Edmunds meets Gram Parsons! I just loved it and it turns out that Colin Linden of that group lives right around the corner and we actually had lots of mutual friends!
He called my producer and joked with him about having me sing on their album. Colin said he and his band had been talking about how cool it would be if I was up for something like that. So, one Sunday afternoon, I went down to the studio and just did it! That’s what keeps you going in this business - discovering cool new music that’s different and challenging...

Blackie and the Rodeo Kings Preview

Original Swedish (english below)

"Borta bra men hemmainspelningar bäst. Bob Lanois (brorsa till Daniel) bjöd in låtskrivaren/sångaren/gitarristen Tom Wilson till sitt skjul på landet, där de under en ganska lång tidsperiod spelade in en samling sånger. Resultatet är väldigt renskalat, nära, rootsy, "enkelt", känslostarkt, coolt och alldeles ... alldeles ... underbart! Wilson har skrivit de flesta låtarna, men de avslutar med en fin tolkning av Dylans Girl from the north country. Skivan har redan fått ett antal utmärkelser hemma i Canada. Nu är det vår tur att charmas av dessa båda gentlemän." (060116)

English Translation

"Studios are good, but home recordings are better. Bob Lanois (Daniel's brother) invited singer-songwriter-guitarplayer Tom Wilson to his shack at the countryside, where they, under a rather long time, recorded a collection of songs. The end result is very down-to-earth, rootsy, simple, stark, cool and very..... very..... beautiful..... Wilson wrote most of the songs,
but they close the set with a magnificent version of Dylan's "Girl From The North Country". This album has already gotten several awards home in Canada, but now it's Sweden's turn to be charmed by these two gentlemen."

...some new songs recorded at a shack in Waterdown.
“We started a year and a half ago, and as we started recording it, we realized that we needed songs tailored to this unique situation of Bob’s,” explains Wilson on the album’s genesis in a shack—literally. “There’s a line in the music business that ‘you can’t shine shit’ and what’s happened over the years is that they are shining shit and records are put out every day. You can make a real terrible song really good. When you’re recording a song into an old microphone to two–inch tape there’s no chance of doing that. After the first couple of sessions, I realized I had to write songs that suited that kind of style
of recording and the mood of that shack.”

Tentatively titled The Shack Recordings, the sparse tracks showcase a very personal side of Wilson.

“I’ve wanted to make what I call a kitchen table record for quite a long time. The record’s made to be a one– on–one experience. It’s the kind of music that I used to hear around the kitchen table when I used to live on East 36th Street, when I was a kid and people would be playing guitar and singing.

“Nobody understood this record that I wanted to make except for Bob—he had the right facility for that kind of recording. I consider Bob an interpretive artist both visually and musically and he’s got the kind of personality that lends itself to working one–on–one—that deals with you personally and gets his head into what your doing.”

Wilson has invited producer, musician, artist and friend Bob Lanois to join him for this Earth Day performance.

Wilson recently attracted international attention when the New York Times reported what songs President George Bush has on his iPod—apparently, Bush grooves to BARK.

For years, Wilson has quietly worked on his own paintings, even having a charity showing a few years ago alongside Daniel Lanois and REM’s Michael Stipe in Toronto, but his art, whether it be painting or songs, is always meant to be personal.

“The unfortunate thing about the music business, the entertainment business and the world of creating is that people don’t give you credit or merit just for the fact you write good songs or do really good paintings or make good films—you have to have some kind of stamp of approval,” explains Wilson. “Painting is something I’ve always done, and I don’t want act pretentious about it, but I keep painting and people keep buying them…

“The art world is another world where—as good as groups and communities of the arts are—they’re also the most punishing and detrimental to people’s development. If I were to worry about what the art world thought about what my drawings looked like, then I wouldn’t do them. But the fact of the matter is that I’m not trying to communicate with the art world. It’s the same with my music—I’m just trying to communicate to the
people.”

You wind up and down a tricky road that skims the mountain above Hamilton Bay. Deeper and deeper into the bush you push till you come to what directions describe as “the loneliest driveway in all the world,” and you push on some more, through overgrown thickets of sumac and thornberry bushes, till the track simply exhausts itself. And there, in a tiny clearing, overlooked by dense forest and surrounded by sprawling piles of chopped firewood, it stands in all its rustic humility: An unassuming, one-room cedar shack, its veranda tilting slightly to the west, its small windows blazing in the afternoon sun, offering not a hint of its real purpose, nor of the treasure within. “Amusician’s dream,” beams Bob Lanois, spreading his arms wide inside the door. He’s the quieter brother of the notoriously laconic, internationally celebrated music producer/recording artist Daniel Lanois. Together in the mid-1970s they co-founded Hamilton’s music mecca, Grant Avenue Studios, the renowned crucible of independent Canadian music before there was a name for such a thing. It’s the home of “ambient sound,” the vaporous architectural wash that has become the Lanois trademark on countless megahit recordings by the likes of U2, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Emmylou Harris and The Neville Brothers, among others. But here, in the bush shack Bob Lanois built as his own private retreat, time has slowed to a pre-digital-age crawl. In the centre of the single room is a massive, pot-bellied stove for heat and cooking. In one corner is a big bed covered with Hudson’s Bay blankets, and a rack of clothes, a shelf for vittles, enamel dishes and cups, utensils. Birdsong and a gentle breeze roll in through the open windows high above the rafters. One glance confirms this is no hunter’s den. Across the back wall towers a mighty 24-track Studer two-inch tape recorder. Opposite is a pair of vintage Neve mixing boards, a pair of small speaker cabinets, a couple of ancient microphones and a few other relics of mid-’70s analog recording. On a long couch in a corner near the stove, hovering over a battered acoustic guitar, is notorious Hamilton party boy Tom Wilson, former leader of Steeltown’s still loved ‘80s and ‘90s rock ‘n’roll wrecking units The Florida Razors and Junkhouse, and now a member of the successful, hard-hitting roots trio (with Colin Linden and Stephen Fearing), Blackie & The Rodeo Kings. Not so coincidentally, the band took its name from the title of Canadian songwriting legend Willie P. Bennett’s classic 2001 album — produced by Bob Lanois. In his tailored blue jacket and shades, Wilson looks a tad citified for these surroundings, but after a few minutes of illuminating monologue about the nine intense songs he and Lanois recorded here over the last two years, it’s clear The Shack, as Lanois has prosaically named his studio, is home to him. “I’ve known Bob and Dan since the Grant Avenue days, and in the years between, Bob has been an advisor to me, a mentor,” Wilson says of their collaboration — four Wilson originals, two co-writes with Lanois, one with Jim Cuddy Band/Kathleen Edwards guitarist Colin Cripps, one by Niagara area songwriter Doug Feaver, and a powerful cover of Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country” — in what are primordial conditions by today’s digitally reinforced, computerpowered, effects-driven recording standards. “Whenever I needed a reality check, he was always there to straighten me out with his constant mantra: Keep it honest, let the song do the talking, aim high.” The Shack Recordings: Part One is an exceptionally brave move for Wilson, a formidable songwriter whose work has been covered Colin James, Liam Titcomb, Stephen Fearing, David Gogo, Randy Scruggs and Billy Ray Cyrus, among others. He’s a raucous comic and a natural showman — Wilson attributes those talents to his post-high-school, bottle-dodging days performing folk and country music with Fred Eaglesmith on the rough rural Peninsula pub circuit and Hamilton’s steelworkers’saloons — and you’d think his instincts would run more easily to rough and raw rock ‘n’roll territory instead of the stark and intimate balladry he exhibits on this new recording. It features little more than Wilson’s deep, whispering voice, simple acoustic guitar, Lanois’wistful ambient harmonica, a backbeat played with brushes on a cane stool seat and percussive bell sounds that were elicited by flicking a stainless steel machete blade — honed fortuitously to concert-pitch D — with a fingernail. “I’ve been wanting to make this record for 10 years,” says Wilson, who will launch The Shack Recordings in a performance with Lanois Saturday night at Hugh’s Room. “But I didn’t have the material. The first thing we recorded was the Dylan song, and it set the tone ... it took another year and a half to write and gather songs that would come up to that mark. I got here on Bob’s cosmic star.” Lanois, for whom the mystery of music opened as never before when he started playing harmonica just three years ago, clearly disdains the Tom Wilson others love. “I’m not interested in Tom the showman, only Tom the shaman,” he says. “If I heard him showing off his vocal tricks, I’d shut down the tape machine. I wanted him to perform without the benefit of any effects, to sing from the heart without breaking the spell of the song, to reach into the soul of the music. The only atmosphere on this record is the wind and the rain and the sound of birds “We made this music without a record label, without executive producers telling us what radio needs, without any processing at all. It’s voice-to-tape, unadorned.” Wilson and Lanois even refused to have the CD mastered — an expensive process by which volume and tone levels are adjusted to provide maximum output over the record’s full sound spectrum — in defiance of what is considered common wisdom and an essential step in the modern record-making process. “It’s also the most dated and unnecessary aspect of the music marketing business,” says Lanois. “It means you’re playing the radio game, and not letting the music speak for itself.” At this, Wilson chuckles, and looks around the cluttered shack. But for the recording equipment, it could be 100 years ago. “Yeah, we didn’t set out to make a folk record here. You have to listen to this in a different way. “This is a field recording ...”

Tom Wilson and Bob Lanois
The Shack Recordings: Part 1
(blues,country,rock,folk)

By Jason Schneider
July 12, 2005

When word started going around a couple of years ago that Bob Lanois — the enigmatic older brother of Daniel, and co-founder of their first studio ventures — was getting back into recording at his isolated home base outside of Hamilton, many local musicians jumped at the chance to work with a true innovator. Longtime Lanois family friend Wilson seemed a natural choice for a significant collaboration, as lately he has been hitting another peak in his songwriting career with Blackie & the Rodeo Kings. Wilson has always sounded best in the simplest settings, and The Shack Recordings certainly provides one. The intimacy that Lanois captures is actually quite striking; the feeling of the room is palpable, and Wilson rises to the occasion with perhaps the most unaffected performances he’s ever done. The songs are among his best too, with “Fennell Square” and “Let Your Old Star In” being only two of the standouts. For his part, Lanois shows remarkable restraint in colouring the songs with only his harmonica, back-up vocals and the occasional ambient texture. The Shack Recordings is a thoroughly satisfying collection, and I can hardly wait for the next instalment

TOM WILSON & BOB LANOIS: This dynamic Hamilton duo closed out a series of 50 shows with an intimate performance at The Drake. They deserved a larger crowd, but those in attendance were enthralled by a riveting performance. Tom's talent as a singer/songwriter is well-known via JUNKHOUSE and BLACKIE AND THE RODEO KINGS, while ace producer Lanois (DANIEL's older brother) is relatively new to performance. Together, they recorded the mellow and spare album, The Shack Recordings Part 1, and brought a fresh energy to those songs here. Newer material for a Part 2 was equally strong, with Bob singing lead on the lovely "Under A Stormy Sky." The real revelation of the night was harmony vocalist RUSSELL WILSON, and his gorgeously soulful voice. It can be compared to AARON NEVILLE's, so no surprise to hear he's in increasing demand. He told On The Beat he has a solo CD, Sentimental Fool, ready for release, and we'll definitely investigate that.