![]() However, the connection with the rest of the Broken Social collective was never too far out of reach. We were coming in as board guys, but really, when we’re done, there was this moment where it sounded like a record made by a band - and it felt really good.” Of course, when you got that crazy dynamic of over 30 years it was a wild ride at times, but musically I had so much admiration for all of them that Dave and I really put that into the record, into something that was really them, this band. ![]() “There were a few things there with the band that were just classic,” he continues. I felt we really made a great record together and both sides were really open and really on board to come up and mess around and jam. There’s also much history of their music that I knew - it was just an opportunity that I really was excited about. I saw them when I was 13 and got a high five from the bass player Gord Sinclair as he approached stage one time. There was no ‘last record’ - it was just a record. ![]() “And with the Hip, we were just making a record. To be around that energy, I said to Gord ‘We gotta do something.’ And for so long, he wanted to get into the studio with myself and with Dave because he would come and visit us when were mixing my solo record ‘cos we went up to the Hip studios to do it. “…It was so educating being with him,” Drew beams, “and these are guys who pick you up and give you pep talks that people spend thousands of dollars hoping that they can hear. Then, in the summer of 2014, Gord said ‘I really want you to work on the Hip record.'” So it kind of went like Darlings and Andy were worked on at the same time, and then Gord came in and we did that record really quickly, so I had these three records that were surrounding that whole moment. “That’s how I got in with The Hip: ‘cos he wanted to bring my producer partner and I, Dave Hamelin, in with the Hip. Secret Path with Gord Downie,” Drew elaborates. Man Machine Poem, a record that while recorded prior to Downie’s terminal cancer diagnosis, nonetheless was imbued with a great sense of gravity after its release. It was during this time that Drew and another BSS collaborator, The Stills’ Dave Hamelin, started working with Downie on a solo album that ended up being released after the Hip’s ![]() I got such a rush out of spending time with him because of who he was in my life and how much I had listened to all his music and his lyrics.” It’s Decided, “and when I got off the road, I said to him, ‘Let’s just make a record since we’re hanging out all the time.’ His philosophies on life, his looking-back speeches, and his friendship was so dear to me that - I always say: ‘If you’re in love someone, you got to work with them.’ And when Gord started to come into my life on a regular basis back in 2013, it was sort of the same feeling. “Well, to be honest I really loved spending time with Andy,” Drew recalls of working on the Kim record Some have called it a comeback, but others just view it as another stellar set of songs in a discography that has already produced more than one landmark indie rock LP. Like most of Drew’s production work, guitars and pianos are laced with echo and reverb, giving an emotional setting for a song to build off of, and it’s this aesthetic that fans have come to know from all of Drew’s musical endeavors, which is why these crucial collaborations would eventually set Drew on the path back to getting the band back together for at least one more show, this time in the form of new album While he had produced other artists before (see the gone-but-not-forgotten Still Life Still), 2015 saw him stepping up his collaborations, working on an acclaimed solo set for “Sugar Sugar”/ “Rock Me Gently” songwriter Andy Kim in 2015. Libido-driven solo album in 2014, but most crucially finding his home producing other artists. While Arts & Crafts-associated artists continued winning Juno Awards and getting nominated for Polaris Music Prizes since that 2011 break, Drew kept himself busy, dropping a more Of course, for a band whose membership ranks can swell to nearly 15 at any given time, and with each of those members engaged in solo projects of their own (and nearly all of them associated with founder Kevin Drew’s record label Arts & Crafts in some capacity or another), the group never truly felt gone. Shortly after the Canadian collective released their 2010 alternative-pop stunnerįorgiveness Rock Record, the band went on the dreaded “ indefinite hiatus“, a phrase often associated with a group calling it quits. For a time there, Kevin Drew wanted to get away from himself.
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