About / Bio |
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I started playing music in Halifax, Nova Scotia when I was 13 with my two
good friends Ian McGettigen and Rob Benvie. It was 1988. We formed a band
which eventually came to be known as Thrush Hermit. We still play together
today, making records and touring fairly regularly.
In 1996, Thrush Hermit bought a 1/2" 8-track reel to reel recorder with
money we got from a recording contract with Elektra. The record deal fell
apart, but the 8-track still works.
In my spare time I began recording "In Need of Medical Attention." I've
always had a surplus of songs and I wanted to do something with them. I
enlisted both family and friends to play on certain songs, but for the most
part I played the instruments myself. The record took about 2 years to
complete. It was finally mixed in April of 1998 with Rick White from the
band Elevator to Hell in Moncton, New Brunswick.
The medical theme throughout the record was due in part to the death of my
grandfather, a doctor, in 1996. Running the risk of being too
autobiographical and borderline pretentious, I decided to make a "mildly
conceptual" album, inspired by records like John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band,
Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska and the theme from M*A*S*H, "Suicide Is
Painless."
The album cover is a woodburn by Rebecca Kraatz. I link it so closely to
the recording that I often feel as if the music was inspired by the artwork
and not the opposite.
Most of the songs were written and recorded in my parent's basement or the
Thrush Hermit rehearsal space. Both environments were often either too cold
or too hot, but they did set the mood and provide a few mysterious sounds
that I still cannot explain.
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