Talking To...Stephen Fearing
The Wheelhouse,
Wombwell
October 9
AW: And you have this too. You are obviously a songwriter as well as a guitarist and you've just released your current album which is a retrospective of your career as a solo singer-songwriter, THE MAN WHO MARRIED MUSIC, this is the best of and I notice you've had seven released albums out and I notice on the CD that the first seven songs are from each of the individual albums, so it's quite a democratic choice you've made there to open the album.
SF: (Laughs) I didn't even know that, that's great.
AW: And also, there's a few others obviously that you've put on there including two brand new songs that you've included on here, do you think it's a little bit like choosing your favourite child when you're putting all this together.
SF: Yeah.
AW: You've only got about fifteen songs to choose and you're quite prolific, was that difficult?
SF: It was terribly difficult and pretty much every show, certainly already on this tour I've had people come up to me and say 'why on Earth didn't you put this on or that on?' You might as well put out a box set if you want to put them all out. I resisted the idea even doing a 'best of' for years; True North was started and run up until two years ago by my ex-manager and my dear friend Bernie Finkelstein and Bernie suggested this before YELLOWJACKET came out and I felt that it was way too early for me to consider something like that. I was terrified by the whole idea. When True North was sold I thought okay now's the time to do it, it really marks a line in the sand because it's really the end of an era. Bernie Finkelstein has been in the business since 1969, he's managed Bruce Cockburn since 1969, which is amazing and True North is the oldest independent label in Canada and a very very respected label and when he sold it, that was the end of that. It's now an imprint for another label and I totally understood why he sold it, he should've sold it ten years ago when masters had some coin to them. I really wanted to mark something in the sand and the idea of putting two new tracks on was partly my own neurosis that people would look at it and say oh that's it, he's finished but it's not at all. I wanted to try and mark this end of a chapter and then with the two new ones point the direction I might be going. It was terribly difficult though to come up with them. There's songs that I play every night that aren't on there so I could relatively easily think of an alternate best of. It's a little like putting seats around a dinner table for a dinner party when you think of what song goes with what song. There has to be a flow to the album too, it can't just be some kind of a document, it has to have some highs and lows.
AW: All your favourite songs might be slow ballads..
SF: Yeah, but you can't do that. I couldn't decide on my own. Just as I was really floundering so I contacted Colin Linden who has produced several records for me, he's one of my best pals, Bernie as well and a couple of fans and I said what would you put on this? When I looked at everybody's choices and their reasoning behind it, I started to put together my own.
AW: You've worked with quite a few people over the years, BLUE LINE was produced by Clive Gregson, I hope you don't mind me saying this but I'm a big admirer of Clive Gregson and I've followed him for a number of years. You are both alike in a way, do you both realise this?
SF: (Laughs) Well it's funny I'm doing a gig with Clive coming up in Biddulph towards the end of this tour. I haven't seen Clive, as far as I can recall maybe once in the last two decades. It's just the way it works, you go in different directions. When we worked together and when he produced me I was so green, I didn't know what I was doing. I'd made one record on my own, you know the joke, you get twenty years to make your first record and twenty months if you're lucky to make your second and so BLUE LINE was the difficult second record for me. We got into the studio at Topic in London and the clock started to tick and I sat there not really knowing what the hell I was doing and at some point I think Clive realised that we were running out of time he grabbed the ball and ran and I spent the rest of the record chasing him, trying to figure out what was going on and there was a few technical things but mostly it was an awkward situation for me making that record, so much so that I made the absolutely stupid decision to re-make parts of that record when I got back to Canada, so I wanted to keep things like Clive's parts and all the original musicians but I just got this guitar, I re-did my guitar parts. I had a throat operation and so I re-sang my vocals. You can't undo a record partly and re-make it so I ended up with a slightly different record with different issues than the original. Clive's influence on me would have been that of a way way more seasoned player and certainly a finger-style guitarist that I really admired. His association with Richard Thompson was really important to me, Richard is somebody I admired a great deal.
AW: You've also worked with him.
SF: Yeah I've been lucky enough to work with Richard. Clive turned me onto two really significant artists for me while we were in the sessions, at one point he mentioned The Band and I sheepishly said I didn't know really much of The Band and he was absolutely shocked. He basically sent me out of the studio right away, like stop the session, sent me out to the local record store to buy the box set and similarly with Nick Drake, I didn't know Nick Drake's stuff and he suggested strongly that I get my hands on erm, it was a box set that came out way back then..
AW: FRUIT TREE?
SF: Yeah, it had everything (on it) and Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, the band that I'm in now is so heavily influenced by The Band and Colin actually worked with The Band and they recorded on of Colin's songs on one of their later records JERICO. Robbie was a huge influence on him, he sang and worked with Rick Danko a whole bunch. So it's a small world, the way it goes around, but I'll be seeing Clive in Biddulph and I'll tell him what you said. It'll be interesting to see if we can manage to play anything together because we're supposed to be onstage at the same time.
AW: One song I'm glad you included is of course Expectations; Sarah (McLachlan) is such a fabulous player.
SF: Yeah she is.
AW: Have you ever bumped into her since?
SF: Yes I ran into her at the Junos. I produced an album for Suzie Vinnick, it's one of the few records I've produced and it was nominated for a Juno, which was amazing and I went as Suzie's guest and ran into Sarah in the lobby. Everyone was in the main room, you know the pre-televised awards, a slew of Junos that don't make it onto the TV show and that show always goes ridiculously late, it's just endless awards. So Sarah was pacing around outside and we ended up hanging out and chatting. When she went internationally massive the way she did we lost touch because our circles just separated but Sarah sang at my wedding, she was a pretty close friend and it was really great to run into her and feel there was you know, no time between us.
AW: She has a family of her own now, this takes over as well as the career.
SF: Yeah. She's got a record coming out, first in seven years, so that's pretty exciting.