The OLD SCHOOL album came about quite by
accident. In 2018 I was cleaning out the
basement closet at Planet Helix. What I
found were various tapes I had almost forgotten about-2”, ¼”, and a huge box of
cassette tapes. I was going to throw out
the 2” tapes until I got a frantic phone call from my old friend Greg Godovitz
who realized the tapes’ value. Greg made
me take a serious look at what I had and I realized there was at least a whole
album of unreleased material-and so the idea of “OLD SCHOOL” was born. Incidentally, none of these tracks were ever
released, although some of them might have been on our website as “rare tracks”
in the past. Three of the songs we were able to extract
from 2” tape were recorded for the Back
for Another Taste sessions in 1989:
Games Mother Never Taught You, Tie Me Down, and Your Turn to Cry. Paul Hackman is playing guitar and singing on
these tracks. To “extract” these
recordings from the 2” tape we had to take the tapes to Beach Studios outside
of Goderich, Ontario and get Siegfried Meier to thermally bake them. Upon doing so, the tracks were immediately
transferred to digital. Later they were
mixed by Siegfried; some with minor
overdubs by Daryl Gray. One other
track-“Cheers” was taken from a cassette tape and cleaned up by Siegfried as
well. This song is a live recording off the floor of the studio. The other tracks on the album, If Tears
Could Talk, Whiskey Bent & Hell Bound, Southern Comfort, Closer, Coming
Back with Bigger Guns, and Hound Dog Howlin’ Blues were re-recorded by “tracing” the songs from
cassette tapes. This was done because
the songs were either unfinished or the cassettes were in bad shape. This re-recording was done by Daryl Gray at
Dawghawse Studios in St. Catherines.
Daryl was also the producer of this album. Over the fall and spring of 2018/2019 Kaleb,
Daryl, Fritz, Chris and myself all travelled to St. Catherines to add parts and
advise Daryl on how we heard the songs.
By April 2019 we were ready to take the tracks to Siegfried to mix with
the help of Daryl and myself. The result
is now before you. This album is dedicated to the memory of
Paul Hackman, who played on 3 of these tracks and was a co-writer on 8 of the
tracks. He was/is a Canadian musical
ico n. Shipping discount - $.50 for each additional CD added to your order For discounts please ADD
TO CART your selected CDs, After you pick all your CDs PROCEED TO
CHECKOUT This will take you to your PAYPAL to finish order. USA ORDERS: shipped in CD cases
(factory sealed).