Long Road To One
Harry Bryan
The Canadian Tunes Corporation
1996
11 tracks
As much as for his own music, Harry Bryan is known for his unabashed support of Canadian music and the artists who create it. Bryan has been around the Canadian music scene for a long time, beginning his professional career as a rock and roller when most rock music had strong roots influences. During that time, he shared the stage with some of Canada's top groups: Lighthouse, April Wine, Downchild Blues Band, Five Man Electrical Band, and others. Now, after a longish hiatus, Harry Bryan has emerged as a songwriter who performs his own work with a certain degree of panache.
Avoiding the well-trod singer-songwriter path of voice and guitar sometimes filled out by schmaltzy orchestration or maudlin cello, Bryan brings a tough rootsy folk feel to music that is still at its core rock and roll. Within what some might consider a narrow genre definition, Bryan manages to cover a lot of territory. The result is an interesting eleven song set and some excellent songwriting.
While many of the songs are, by their very pop nature, musically pretty standard, Bryan manages to introduce just the right elements to make these sounds new again. What really makes the songs shine, though, is Bryan's talent as a lyricist and storyteller. His lyrics are tight, well-written bits of pop poetry. Bryan is no Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell writing poems which become song. Rather he writes the sweet poetic stories of the best Fifties rock and roll, stories of everyday people such as we might have expected from Buddy Holly or Carole King or Leiber and Stoller. The listener can judge whether Bryan's writing rises to the level of these greats, but in this difficult arena his songs do stand up, unbloodied and unbowed.
"Where Did You Learn To Dance" is just plain good old rock and roll, right down to the background James Brown screams and soulful female backup vocals. The guitar on this one rocks and the keyboard wails. This is a rock and roll song that's got to make you not just tap your toes but get up and dance until after the music stops.
"Forever More" sounds time-warped straight out of 1961 with its pop stylings and muted rock references. With its laid-back latin rhythm, reverb-laden Santo and Johnny guitar, and Sixties vocal Oo Oo Ooo's, the song starts out sounding like The Drifters (the Sixties line-up, not the great Fifties group fronted by Clyde McPhatter). Bryan's soulful vocal weeps out the lyric like Del Shannon in his quieter moments. And sneaking in behind it all, some real cool organ bits, perhaps Rhodes, perhaps midi, but definitely of the late-Fifties. And for stormy emotional effect, there are those thundering Phil Spector tymps booming in under the rainstorm imagery. Sound overblown? Perhaps, but in a way that actually works in a very Fifties flashback like "Forever More."
Moving ahead in time, "Counting The Minutes" has the vocal feel of romantic songs like Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight" without Clapton's distinctive guitar. Again, this song is an eclectic mix. The almost latin rhythm sounds as though it may have been programmed [okay, maybe it has been programmed]. The minimal piano harks back to the Fifties, evoking a laid back version of Buddy Holly's celeste. Rather than evoking Clapton's Seventies sound, the guitar is straight out of late-Fifties pop rock. Duane Eddy would be proud.
"What Do You Do" is another song where the melody and vocal sounds very Clapton. What's interesting here, is that it shifts between this sound and another vocal sound that brings memories of Gordon Lightfoot circa 1973. It's a strange, entrancing mix of vocal styles.
"Keep on Playing" falls somewhere between Eagles-influenced country music and Valdy's classic "Rock 'n' Roll Song" yet manages to sound not derivative but original and, in some quirky way, very Canadian.
There's a trick track on this release. Often, singer-songwriters will include one of more so-called "hidden" tracks on their releases which are not listed on the packaging. Bryan has gone the opposite way and has a track listed which doesn't exist. The performance of "O Canada" performed by the Grade 4 Class of George Kennedy Public School in Georgetown, Ontario is not, after all, track eleven but an extension of "Canadians, O Canada" on track 10, a song where the vocal style again leans toward mid-career Gordon Lightfoot.
"Canadians, O, Canada" is an epic expression of pride in our nation and our unique, diverse population. The last track on this release, it's the perfect culmination of something I find very special in the work of Harry Bryan and, increasingly, other Canadian artists. No longer do our artists ape the writing and performances of American, British, or French artists. Rather, they find their inspiration in the wonder of our own varied culture.
If you're interested [and I think you should be], you can find information on Harry Bryan and his band at canoe.ca.
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