Singing the C-Sides
The early to mid-70’s music scene was happening in my own coming-of-age years as a singer and musician. I was a fan of rock music and a performer of folk music and then came the eruption of combination-genres that hit a sweet spot for me, along with even more female stars to emulate. Folk rock, soft rock, country rock...it rocked my world!
In high school and then college (where I started at 16), there were many concerts, coffee houses and small venues to play, endless living room jams to play, harmonize and learn from other like-minded, talented musicians.
Those were the days when learning a song meant waiting by the radio with a cassette deck or dropping the needle on vinyl over and over to learn and write down lyrics and chords. I was writing my own songs, but I was always noted for “sounding like” other female singers, not an impressionist but a chameleon.
When my husband Mike and I first kicked around the idea of recording an album of mostly cover tunes this time, it was those 70’s songs that my memory drifted back to, remembering moments of bonding with an audience over a beautiful melody or profound lyric – it was always about that for me, grateful for a voice and early guidance that helped me deliver those moments. He had walked a similar if not parallel path as a singer and musician in those years, but he was fully supportive of my song choices and worked his magic as a player and sound engineer to bring them back to life for me.
As I ran through old favourites, it struck me how some lyrics I had loved in the past were even closer to me now, with a half century of life experience added to the interpretation - songs like So Far Away and The Dutchman, after you’ve been a caregiver to a loved one with dementia. Other songs, like Before Believing and If I Had a Hammer, resonated in their enduring social relevance; the rest drew me in for the feel, the harmonies, the lyrics, and (I hope you’ll agree) for just being an awesome song.
In the cover-band years, there was more pressure to stick with a Top 40 repertoire to please the bar owners, but many of my favourite songs weren’t hits or even the A or B sides of singles. That’s where the “C-Side” comes from, mostly, along with other metaphorical meanings and a play on the word seaside, which speaks to some of the original songs on the albums.
The opening track, “The C-Side” is the only brand-new original, we’re happy with how that one turned out. “For All of Us” (the girls in the bell bottom pants) was written about the 70’s, my old song “Beach Music” fits both the era and the setting, and finally, my Nova Scotia song (A Place for Me) was written in the late 70’s, rewritten and recorded many times since then, but hasn’t appeared on any of our prior albums.
This collection of twelve songs plays in about 45 minutes, as a set of originals and covers, much like I used to play in those concerts and coffee houses back in the day. The songs are available for streaming only on our website, any videos will be linked there and posted on YouTube. If you love a cover you haven’t heard before, please seek out the original versions. You can also listen to individual songs of course, but our hope is that you may find the time to tune out and plug in, and that you’ll enjoy the musical journey to seaside places and simpler times.
