Biography
Your Dad was a skyline,
Over streets, electrified stars shine,
All the buildings wear chain-link fences like fishnet stockings
In this whore of a town.
-from “Angry Beautiful”
upcoming electric solo album
The city – its buildings, its density of people living piled on top of one another in squares of air, the unintentional music produced by the machine’s moving parts – is at the centre of Shaun Verreault’s upcoming solo record.
“I moved to Vancouver six years ago and the room I write in overlooks almost constant construction,” explains Verreault. “I was struck by how often a generator or jackhammer or even a siren would start on time and pitch with what I was playing, and some chord changes were suggested by the incidental city sounds. I started to imagine the buildings in progress as a visual counterpart to the songs being erected, piece-by-piece. That seemingly disruptive noise actually laid the foundation for this record.”
Vancouver’s cacophonous downtown is a far cry from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the prairie city where Verreault grew up and formed Wide Mouth Mason, the blues-rock trio in which he plays the role of singer/guitarist/co-producer and primary songwriter. Just as the city has influenced Verreault’s solo work, the boys’ prairie upbringings helped shaped the band’s music. "I hear a lot of the prairies in Wide Mouth Mason. It’s a lot like the midwest or southern states musically, with a lot of guitar playing and blues and roots influence,” explains Verreault.
A band for over ten years now, it is safe to say that Wide Mouth Mason is a Canadian institution. Highlights of the trio’s career include multi-platinum success, top 5 singles, featured roles in the major motion picture, “The Recruit,” as well as tours with AC/DC, The Guess Who and the Rolling Stones, which have resulted in a dedicated live following.
But that dedicated live following need not worry about Wide Mouth Mason breaking up as Verreault pursues his solo career. “The band has not broken up,” Verreault affirms. “We’re just no longer musically monogamous anymore. When I started to amass a group of songs that weren’t Wide Mouth Mason songs, I needed an outlet to present them in a sparse and immediate way.”
The result was 2006’s “The Daggerlip Sketches,” a full-length CD recorded live in a friend’s apartment studio with one microphone, one take and no overdubs. “A few of the songs were minutes old when they were recorded and while I knew there were elements of them that I could clean up and perform more accurately, I didn’t; I wanted to capture and share them in a raw state.”
Share them he did, as he sold the collection of songs off stage for the next year at solo acoustic performances. Besides playing intimate venues and co-headlining two Western Canadian tours with EMI recording artist Wil, Verreault was presented with opportunities to open for well-renowned artists like Peter Frampton, Kim Mitchell and even The Beach Boys. "Facing a rock crowd with just an acoustic really made me think about how to pace a set, how to use space, when to get flashy and when to stay simple... and that the focus is on the song with not much around it. It's totally different than playing with a band."
Far from an earnest, navel-gazing affair, Verreault’s passionate solo sets feature his expressive, seemingly limitless vocals – a Buckley-esque falsetto segueing into Chris Robinson’s mid-range rasp one second and Son House’s whiskey-drenched guttural moan the next – yet Verreault’s voice is entirely his own. Add to that his feverish virtuosic guitar playing that had Ray Charles exclaiming, “That boy can play guitar!” at the 1997 Montreux Jazz festival.
Set loose in the studio as a benevolent dictator as opposed to the democracy that is the Wide Mouth Mason recording process has pushed Verreault into new territory on his upcoming album. Some songs are true solo performances with Verreault playing drums, bass, keyboards and guitar. On others, he enlisted A-list musicians like bassist Doug Elliott (Odds) and Pat Steward (Odds, Bryan Adams, Matt Good). “Sometimes I’d give the guys a demo of the tunes and let them sketch out their ideas in advance, and sometimes I’d throw a newly finished song at them and get it in two takes, relying on their big, musical ears. Either way, I was blown away by the results.”
Other songs feature Verreault accompanied by just his acoustic guitar, capturing the vibe of his solo shows. “Co-producer Jay Evjen (Hot Hot Heat, Odds, Wide Mouth Mason) and I started a lot of songs by recording me singing and playing acoustically and then figured out what we wanted to augment them with. Sometimes it was nothing at all and others it was the most layered and arranged work I’ve ever done.”
So for someone who has braved new territory in his life and in his music, where do Verreault’s real roots lie? “You know the first songs I ever wrote, before I played with any other musicians, were just me with an acoustic guitar,” reflects Verreault. “And this project is about returning to that and dressing up the songs as much or as little as I want. The sky’s the limit, really, without the format of a band to consider or wanting to include everyone on every track. This album really brings me back to my true roots: me, my songs and an acoustic guitar.”
Verreault's music has taken him around the world. Now it's taking him back to where it all began with the perspective of someone who sees home more clearly for having left for a while. |
