The Awakening Postmortem

The Awakening Postmortem

Sorry to have left you on a pretty sad note. Breaking up is, as they say, hard to do!

Mike had written a comment on my last blog posting that brought to mind something I had forgotten, that being that our manager Glenn tried to get us to play one last gig together at the Kingdom Bound festival in August of 1989. There was no way that would have happened. Perhaps years later, it might have occurred to Mike and Al that they might have liked one more chance to play with the old mates, but when the wounds were so fresh and raw, there was honestly no possibility of us doing that gig so soon after the breakup.

Mike had his other band on the go at the time, and as he's mentioned before, being in that band was so much more fun than it was being in The Awakening. I think I was feeling a similar way about my life outside of the band at that time.

When it all came down, there was a lot of guilt and hard feelings that surrounded us all in the aftermath. I felt bad for Al. He loved being in the band, and quite frankly had to put up with a lot of crap being in it. Besides his obvious role in the band, he would be the guy who would have to deal with a broken down cube van late at night after having worked all day at a gig, quite possibly knowing that he'd be up at some insane hour the next morning working his day job. He certainly held a burden that nobody else in the band had to worry about.

And yet for Al, this must have been a really sad realization for him to confront, that for all the good and bad, he was not going to have this band to play in any longer.

Andy and I already had full-time jobs working at Cedartree Recording studio and even back in those days, Andy had aspirations to one day have his own recording studio. Mike had various other interests musically and had good outlets to explore them. But Al must have felt pretty abandoned by the whole affair.

So as the weeks and months passed after our final "band meeting," there was no shortage of bad will towards each other. Sometimes it would come directly, but more often it would come second or third hand. I used to have a friend who was semi-well known for being a bit of a gossiper and a blabber mouth. On a few occasions, he would share with me the things that Mike was saying about Andy and I to friends in his circle. I would sometimes offer a retort that may or may not have gotten back to him! It gets pretty juvenile sometimes, but that is how most break-ups go. Trust me... I've been married and divorced. It doesn't matter how mature you think you are; when a major relationship implodes, it can bring out the best AND worst in all of us!

I have mentioned before in these postings that leading up to the breakup, Andy and I had no definite plans to work together. It was sort of inevitable that it would happen, but we hadn't really talked about possibilities. We both worked at the studio and had access to it whenever its schedule had a hole, but in terms of starting a new band, that was not on our minds during this time period. We just knew that it wouldn't be long before we started working together on something new.

It might have been all the bad energy that sprang forth after the band broke up, but ironically, it didn't take long for Andy and I to re-group and start the next phase of our career. Andy was never one to sit around and wait things out. I honestly have no memories of us planning anything. All I know is, at some point later on in 1989, we had a new demo recorded at the studio and began the process of creating a new band to play with.

The initial songs Andy and I worked on included some unfinished Awakening material. At one of our last practices, we recorded a run-through of a song tentatively called "Surfin' Tailpipe," but the song never came together before the band broke up. That song would eventually become known as "The Beauty Of The Night." We worked on that song, and probably 3-4 other Awakening ideas before we tried to write new songs.

At some point through all of this, I decided that I did not want to be a keyboard player anymore. Perhaps the years of over-playing with The Awakening had just burned me out!

I switched to bass guitar, and in the studio I still handled the keyboard parts, but we were scaling that sort of direction back a bit.

We did a demo near the end of 1989 or early 1990, which would have been done entirely by Andy and I in the studio.

At some point, Andy began putting together a new band. He called upon our old friend Glenn Koehler (former Awakening manager) to be our keyboard player. Andy and Glenn called an old friend from their Humber College days - Clarke Williams - to play drums.

I remember meeting Clarke for the first time when he came to Cedartree to meet us and do a session. I guess this was his audition, so the pressure for him was on. Clarke was a really laid-back guy and came more from the jazz world than the rock world, so he was pretty out of his element.

Without telling the entire story of the 1990's in this chapter (!!), this nucleus stayed intact for a few years under the name Echo Park, before Andy and I again chose to throw it all away and start again. We did a few gigs as Echo Park, and continued to do lots of recording together, but for guys like Clarke and Glenn, it was pretty discouraging spending so much time in a studio and so little time in front of an audience. They decided it might be best to move on.

So Echo Park ceased to exist by about 1991-92.

The next version of this band was Andy and I with drummer Gord Stevenson, and that provided the foundation for what would eventually become One Hundred Days. This was the band, under various memberships, that would keep Andy and I working together throughout the 90's.

More on those days in another blog perhaps!

So to wrap things up regarding The Awakening - it is safe to say that the 4 of us never regained the kind of friendships we had while we were together. It wasn't so much because of bad feelings, because all of those bad feelings eventually passed. It was more because of our lives all going in different directions. Al eventually got married and moved away from town. Mike moved into various areas using his many facets of creativity, from art, graphic design and music. Andy DID get his home studio going in the early 90's, and to this day, he records a number of album projects for other artists from the comfort of his own home. When my career with Andy came to an end by the year 2000, I also started to move into new areas. I began doing a lot of side-man work for a number of Country Music artists, which allowed me to tour, and for the first time with good income, my own bed to sleep in and good meals!! I started doing a lot of composing and scoring work too.

These days, Andy has been hiring me to do keyboard parts for the albums he produces at home. Because of modern technology, I can do these parts from my home studio and then send him the finished files. So we see other a lot more often these days, but we honestly hardly saw each other from 2000-2006.

I have bumped into Mike at various places over the years, be it the local mall or a Starbucks. We are really looking forward to re-connecting regarding all of these old Awakening memories in coming months. I haven't seen Al in years, but thanks to Facebook, I can keep tabs on him and wish him well, even if just in a virtual sense. I think the last time we were all together at the same place was in 1990 when I got married to my first wife. There might have been one other time shortly after that, but I don't recall for sure. Mike asked me to play piano at his wedding, and I assume that was in the mid 90's, so that's probably the last time I saw Al.

I hope when this is all said and done, that we can all get together and catch up on years and years of old times.

Good friends, each one, and although our journey ended early and shifted the course of our futures, I have no regrets.

I want to take a second to thank you all for reading these blogs. It really has been therapeutic for me to write them. I know that I've been writing these from my own recollections, and nothing in here should be consider a definitive Awakening history. It's just one of the 4 accounts of it. I have spent many years of my life looking back at that time period with varying degrees of regret and even embarrassment. I don't live in the same world that I did in the 1980's, and musically, intellectually and spiritually, I am not at all the same person (and let's not kid myself... I put on a few pounds!) But allowing myself to go back and remember has been a wonderful thing for me, and I thank you all for indulging me in this opportunity.

I'll write more as I think of more to write, and I hope at some point soon, we can pool all of our resources together to put some unreleased Awakening material out into the universe, and perhaps bring together some of the old masters and make them sound beefy and wonderful.

For those of you who carried our music with you through your lives, we thank you.

Thanks so much. You are all wonderful people and should be given awards or at least ice cream sandwiches!

Cheers and salutations...

Ian - July 17/09

The Final Chapter - perhaps!

The Final Chapter

Well here it is folks... the happy ending you were all waiting for!!

It's been many years (20 exactly) since all of these events took place, and that is long enough that I've forgotten a good chunk of them. I can recall the albums and some of the concert stories and such, but small details of what caused the band to implode are somewhat hard to recall. So this chapter of the blog will be somewhat surface level. Really, even if I remembered all the gory details, I'm not sure that it would be appropriate to air the dirty laundry publicly.

When we arrived back home from our US tour in mid-March 1989, we were pretty beaten up. Our tour grossed around $7000, but that would never have covered the many expenses incurred from being out on the road for a solid month. Before the tour had started, we assumed we'd be spending the rest of 1989 in the studio doing a new album. Coming home broke and without a record label was pretty devastating.

We still had upcoming concerts though, so as much as we wanted to hang our heads in shame and walk away, we still had commitments and a reason to continue. As with most terrible situations like this, it's human nature to try to see the crisis as an opportunity for better things. Homer Simpson called it "Crisitunity!"

For awhile, the band considered going "secular" since it was clear our direction musically and lyrically was never going to be a hit in the US Gospel market. But the reality was (and probably still is), the US Gospel market is pretty small when compared to the flood gates of the mainstream. Getting signed by some major label was not going to be as easy as getting signed by a relatively-speaking, tiny Gospel label.

March and April of 1989 were probably spent thinking about how to proceed. Andy was always the task-master, and I don't mean that in a negative sense, but he was pressing on with new songs, insisting on regular rehearsals, and ideas on how to get out of the Gospel scene and into the mainstream. Ideas like playing in music clubs and bars entered the equation. Standing on stage at a local church and preaching between songs is a far cry from playing for drunk people who don't care what you think but just want to hear Brown Eyed Girl!

I recall this time period being one of great frustration on a personal, musical level. As I had stated earlier, while we were writing songs for what we called our Lost Album, I acted a bit more like a secretary than a co-writer. It seemed easier to hear the other guys' ideas and offer my input rather than bring my own songs in to teach them. I was increasingly getting into more advanced song structures, and in reality, I was starting to lose the plot somewhat. I began writing and recording my own stuff at home to compensate for my inability to bring my songs to the band, or my unwillingness to deal with the arguments and opposing viewpoints.

It was an era where I think my ego started to get a little out of whack. I can see it in some of the YouTube videos I've posted from this era. There is an over-confidence that was partly due to my youth, but also some pretty obvious showing off. This may have been the apex of this negative quality in myself.

I remember writing this long, rambling thing called "The Epic." Andy liked it and encouraged me to bring it to rehearsal, but I was against the idea. The whole song was full of odd time signatures and very specific parts. I was sure that none of the band would be able to play it properly, so I really resisted the idea. Sure enough, I brought it into rehearsal and immediately saw how wrong it was for the band. Mike and Al were not the rhythm section for early 70's Yes band, and trying to make them play like that was a really stupid idea.

In truth, had I not been such a dick, this song might have worked in The Awakening style, but I would have none of that. I wanted it the way it was, and thus, it never got off the ground.

When I hear my demo now, I hear how there are core elements that are really good about it, but with a whole lot of unnecessary filler.

I have a number of these badly recorded home demos from this era, and everything was this out of control and unfocused. In a sense, I felt like I'd outgrown the band and seriously began to ponder life without them.

Tensions were pretty raw in the group at this time too, as our live shows were dwindling, new songs were slow to come, and expenses and debt continued to be an ongoing problem.

I remember we had a rehearsal scheduled for our usual time, (which I recall was every Monday night), and on this occasion, we showed up for practice, but Mike never came. It turned out he went to see a Prince concert. I don't know if he thought he told us or whether he just didn't care. But I remember it being pretty dark.

This was a time when my relationship with Mike started to suffer, and that was really odd because I always seemed to get along with everybody. It was more often Andy and Mike who would clash on issues, because they were both pretty dominant creatures. But at this time, while The Awakening was starting to disintegrate, Mike was having success of his own with a new band he formed, where he played a stand-up kit and sang. It was Punk music mostly, but they were actually really good. Mike wrote most of the songs and was clearly the leader of that band. Getting a taste of control and leadership filled Mike with a different kind of confidence back with The Awakening. In a similar way, I was now having more fun doing my home recordings than being in the band. Probably due to these many changes, I started to have real conflicts with Mike.

This was, of course, awkward because I lived in a house with Mike and Al! When things started to get really uncomfortable, I would stay working all night long at Cedartree Recording studio and come home just as they were getting up for work. There were weeks where I never saw Mike or Al at the house, because I was on a completely different clock to them. This was often when I would write and record my own stuff. Going to bed at 7am and waking up at 5pm became a really unhealthy routine for me!

I wish I could remember where I was when I decided I wanted to leave the band. I know I was with Andy and we were talking about all the problems going on at that time. We weren't conspiring to dump the Powell brothers, but Andy and I shared a bit more of an intimate friendship than I had with the other guys, so I would tell him more personal stuff. At some point, and I assume it was in early May, I told Andy that I was seriously considering quitting the band. To me, it just seemed like there was no future in this, and I didn't want to waste valuable years of my life trying to revive a corpse. When Andy revealed to me that he was also ready to call it quits, it gave me the courage to seriously consider this option.

For a short time, I did a lot of soul searching and a lot of hiding from Mike and Al. It was clear to me that it was over, but it was going to be very unpleasant letting them know that fact.

Ironically, we had one of our biggest concert dates coming up in June. We were booked to play Creation Festival, which was and probably still is, one of the biggest drawing Christian festival concert events in the US. We were booked to play the main stage during an afternoon spot. It was Thursday, June 22/1989.

What is sad about this event, was that Andy and I had decided secretly that this would be our final show with The Awakening. If there was only a way we could have let Mike and Al know that before the show, it would have been so much more fair to them. I don't know if they suspected that Andy and I had been talking mutiny behind their backs, but it really wasn't fair that they did this gig under entirely different circumstances than Andy and I did. What's worse is, I remember telling our sound man Mike Holst not long before showtime, that Andy and I were calling it quits and that this would be our last show together. It really was horrible that we let that information get out to anybody before the two most important people found out. But that's the way it goes when human emotions are a part of the equation. What if Mike would have said "screw you" and refused to do the gig? What if Al might have done the same thing?

We couldn't take that risk, so we kept our mouths shut (mostly) and did the gig just like it was any other gig.

But it certainly wasn't any other gig.

I've said it before, that I have very few tangible memories of doing any Awakening concerts. I remember seeing videos of the shows, but I barely remember actually being there. But THIS show was different. I remember being there. I remember how emotional I got, especially during the guitar solo for Into Thy Hands. I remember thinking to myself, "I'll probably never play this song again, and it certainly won't be like this ever again" and at times I was almost moved to tears.

We had a huge reaction and response from the crowd, and I remember one other significant memory from playing Creation 89'. It was a backstage memory. In the schedule, we were tucked in between a few larger American rock bands, and I remember the crew guys and roadies at the festival being blown away by the fact that we were helping load and unload our equipment. I don't think we even realized that it was not common for touring musicians to do the "shit" work. We always loaded our own stuff, so this gig was no different. I remember the crew guys thinking we were saints for not being the usual, "Hey moron... get my guitars in tune while I do this interview" kind of swagger that most musicians seem to have!! We of course said that this behaviour on our part was due to the fact that we were Canadians, and as you know, Canadians are so damn nice!!

The show ended. We packed up and came home. And then reality really had to set in.

I'm pretty sure that it was less than a week later when we called a band meeting at our manager's house in Galt. This was D-Day.

Fortunately, the events of that night were so traumatic and emotional, many of the details have been locked away somewhere in my sub-conscious. I don't think I want to remember.

I seem to recall that we started the meeting by asking everybody where they thought things were heading. Perhaps this was an easy way out, in the hopes that Mike or Al might say that they were getting pretty depressed about the band. That didn't happen. Al talked about us trying harder to get into clubs and going secular, and I think Mike agreed with that concept.

I'm pretty sure that I was the one to deal the big blow of the night. I'm not saying that so that I can take credit for ruining the band, but it was just not my style. I was quite happy to let Andy be the bad guy, because he often took that roll whether he liked it or not. But for whatever reasons, I decided to be the guy to speak up. I don't remember what words I used, but I basically would have said that I thought there was no future for the band anymore, and that I was particularly disillusioned with the whole thing. I said I wanted to leave the band, and right away Andy backed me up. It must have seemed like a well planned out event when Andy and I spoke almost as one person. To Mike and Al, it seemed like Andy and I were going to continue on without them, so in a sense, we were kicking them out of The Awakening. This was NEVER the plan or intention, but it's hard to deny that it sure looked that way to them.

I remember Al being very quiet and was probably trying to suppress the emotion. Mike was more noticeably angry and felt betrayed by us. I think the question of whether Andy and I were going to continue working together came up, and we were unable to wiggle our way out of it. We had already discussed starting a new band and going a whole new direction, but we didn't want Mike and Al to know that. In total honesty, at that time, although we had talked about future plans, there was so much emotion and confusion going on, that Andy and I really had no idea how it would all go down. We knew that at some point we would do work together again, but we didn't know when.

So that was it. Obviously bad things were said to each other at this meeting and we didn't part as friends. It goes without saying. How could Mike and Al have felt anything other than betrayal? In reality, the decision to quit had less to do with them than the whole organization. I wanted more creative control and I wanted to make music that The Awakening wasn't able to make. We had no record deal. We had no believable opportunities to make it in the mainstream. It was time to get out before the ship sank.

The sad postmortem of all of this is, we as an organization still owed a great chunk of money to our bank loan, as we were STILL paying back the recording costs of our indie album "Two Worlds." We parted somewhat as enemies, but we still had to make our monthly payments to the bank, and this would continue for another year or so after the band was broken up. It was like child-support! The Awakening really was a divorced couple.

We had one other major concert booked, that being Kingdom Bound festival in New York in August, but we were able to get out of it. Doing that show with us not talking to each other would have been impossible.

So that was it. The Awakening was put to sleep.

God, I hate ending this thing on such a downer!!

I'll continue the postmortem in the next blog entry!

Ian - July 11/09

The Awakening on an 80's Blog

Hi there friends!

Sorry for the lengthy delay in getting to the really depressing part of The Awakening plot! I'll get to it, I promise. I think I need a few more margaritas to set the mood!

In the meantime, my friend Joe recently purchased an un-opened vinyl copy of our Sanctified album off of E-Bay. On his 80's blog (see the link below), he has posted a download for the album. He took the original vinyl and did his own re-mastering job of it. I'm really excited to hear what he did. He said that he will also send me the un-altered version so that I can have a stab at re-mastering it myself.

The only digital version I've ever had of this album was one done by Andy back at least 10 years ago, where he did much the same thing - he ran the virgin vinyl through some outboard gear (now we would just use VST plugins for the computer) to beef up the sound.

I can't wait to hear Joe's remastering job.

If this sounds interesting to you, and would like to hear what Joe has done, check out his 80's blog at the link below and download the album for yourself.

That's right folks... here I am in the new age, urging you to go steal our album!!

I can't get angry about such a thing. If you only knew how many audio files I have on my computer that came from similar sources! (I have 83 CD's of audio from the original film stock that was taken during The Beatles' Let It Be sessions. Yes folks... 83 CD's of them learning songs on the fly and talking and arguing and not being very good. You can't buy stuff like this... you just find it online and download it!!)

So that said... I have no reservations about encouraging Awakening fans to download this album free of charge. I'm quite sure that if we ever were able to put out some kind of a box set or collector's release, you would all gladly cough up some coin to buy it. Studies show that people who regularly download music off the internet are more likely to purchase music than those who don't. I'm living proof of this. I would never have discovered The Kinks if it hadn't been for illegal downloading, and thus, when I was in Scotland (at the world's greatest record shop - FOP), I bought a truck load of Kinks CD's!!

Here is the link: Enjoy the album. I plan on it too!

http://rare80sdownloads.blogspot.com/

Ian - July 10/09

A Quick Update About the 89' Tour

The Awakening Concert Dates 1988-89

I was just downstairs pooling through a huge box of stuff from The Awakening days. It has bank statements, record company press info, and all sorts of boring stuff that should have been shredded years ago!

Well... amongst this array of paperwork was a tour itinerary and Union contracts from 1989. Actually there's info on our 88' gigs too. I guess I should start there.

In 1988, while still working on Into Thy Hands, we had a number of local gigs. One gig in particular somehow skipped my memory, but wow... it was a significantly bad event in our history!

It involves a 'festival' date we did in Haliburton, Ontario on May 21st, 1988. I'm assuming we would have JUST finished the recording of Into Thy Hands, so we anticipated a great outdoor gig to kick off our finished work (even though we didn't have product yet!). I remember this gig well, because the lady who was putting it all together had never promoted a show before, and she was going into some serious debt to pay for us and an established US big-name artist. (So big, that I completely forget his name!). Being that it was going to be an outdoor, un-covered event in the middle of May (when you never know what you're going to get weather-wise), we asked her if she had looked into an alternate venue, should there be rain. She repeatedly told us that "the Holy Spirit will not allow rain." She had faith that everything would work out perfectly.

Well... we all know where this is going, right?!!

It poured rain the whole day of the event. It was so bad, that there was virtually no music during the day-time leading up to our evening slot on the Saturday night. The 25,00o people she said this festival would draw ended up being literally, 50 or 60 people. It was a total disaster. We still did our show, kind of... but the few people that were there for the show, were seated inside an equipment truck watching it from quite a distance away. The so-called big-time American celebrity guy may or may not have even performed. If he did, he played to tracks, so it made no difference.

Well... our contract shows that we were to get around $1000 for our show. At the end of the nightmare, she could barely pay enough money to get the US guy flown home again. She ended up owing us all the money, and it literally took her over a year to pay us back. I'm pretty sure she never promoted a concert again! (and may have switched religions too!)

How could I have forgotten that one?!!

Anyway... on my sheet of info, I saw the Freedom Festival info listed, so I can now confirm that our performance at Blowfest took place Saturday, June 25th, 1988 at approximately 3pm. We got paid a solid $1000 for this gig, which for us was pretty great.

It's amazing to look back to these days and realize just how little we got paid to play. In fact, I think we even had some degree of reservation about calling our income - "payment!" Most of the sheets I found have this term listed as "Honorarium." Pretty sad.

(And on a side note... I also found a contract we signed with American singer/songwriter/bassist Rick Cua, who was a moderately successful Christian artist in the 80's. We hired him to come up to Canada to play at our Alternative Entertainment Club. He came up with his bass and played to tracks, so he had virtually no expenses. But I was shocked to find out how little we paid him (or more specifically, our MANAGEMENT paid him) for his work. We would have paid his travel expenses, but I think he drove up to Canada rather than fly. We had to provide him with a meal and a hotel room, and after all of that, we only paid him $500 in CANADIAN funds, which was at that time probably around $420 US! Wow... that a guy who actually had a track record was doing a crappy gig for lousy money is a really sad thing. I get paid more money now to show up at a gig with just my bass and play for an hour!!)

Ok... I also see that we played the Kingdom Bound festival at Darien Lake, NY on August 26th and 27th of 88'. Apparently, there was also a promotional trip to Nashville in early August, which I don't recall at all, but it makes sense. Into Thy Hands got released in July or the end of June.

OK.. onto the 1989 tour.

According to the itinerary and contracts I found, our trip began on Thursday, February 16th of 1989. In almost a full month away, we performed 10-12 concerts, possibly a few others that weren't clearly marked. Here's where we played:

Feb 18: Portland, Maine (at the Holiday Inn!)

Feb 19: Peterborough, New Hampshire (I have no memory of this!)

Feb 22: Belmont Church in Nashville. (We played for free)

Feb 23: WE GOT CANNED FROM REUNION (and had we been drinkers, we would have gotten plastered! Oh well!)

Feb 24: Atlanta, Georgia (We played in Georgia??!!)

Feb 25: Ocala, Florida.

Feb 27: Sarasota, Florida

(one of these two shows was at a Roller Skating Rink!!)

Feb 28: Coral Springs, Florida (club 777)

March 3: Pace High School in Pace, Florida

March 4: PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA (MORE ON THIS IN A MOMENT!!)

March 10: Susquehanna, Pennsylvania (best gig and best paying gig of the tour!)

March 11: Somewhere in Pennsylvania.

(this is odd. I remember our final date of the tour being at some pizza place in Buffalo, but I just found a contract for this exact venue and it was from 1988! Interesting. Anyway.. I'm still fairly certain that this final gig of the tour was in some tiny venue, and it's the place where my live recording came from.)

March 12: headed home.

Ok... so Panama City.

As you might recall, this was the place where the pastor made an emotional plea for more money from the audience to help us out, something lovingly referred to as a "love offering." As the record shows, he never paid us a cent of that offering money, and thus we left Florida hoping that someday a member of the Bush family would go there to really finish the place off for good!! (Just kidding. Am I?!!)

Well get this!!

On the contract with this place... which I'll just go ahead and name by name:

Living Word Fellowship in Panama City, under the wise leadership of Hayward Miller. (Obviously with a name like Living Word, you know they take their WORD seriously!!)

Ok... I'm heaping it on pretty thick... but seriously if this guy is still in the God Business, it would be great if someone would go collect our love offering from him by force, and maybe sit him down and make him watch Benny Hinn shows while listening to Fergie music!!!)

Ok... kidding again.. trust me.

Here's the good part. According to our contract, he was to provide us with a whopping $300 cash payment. (Wow... I used to make more money playing at the friggin' German Beer Hall in Delhi Ontario playing polka's and waltz's with a crappy, weekend bar band!) And according to the contract, he agreed to pay us extra from the OPTIONAL LOVE OFFERING!!

Wow... so even his contract said that if he had a love offering, that he would pay us that money. So he doubly lied to us!

God bless you Hayward Miller. Your mother would be proud!!

Ok anyway... to conclude this fairly ironic episode of the blog... I will let you all know that I found the contract for what would be the final Awakening live performance... at Creation Festival 1989 in Pennsylvania. Our show was Thursday, June 22, 1989. We played the main stage during the afternoon and got paid $500 US for it. This was our final show. We were booked to play at Kingdom Bound in August of 89', but by that point, the band had broken up, so we had to break the contract and refuse to play that gig.

So there you have it. Anybody want to come over to my place and go through all of our record company income and expense reports?!!!

Oh, by the way... I've now uploaded 3 concert videos from the 1988 Freedom Festival to YouTube. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/roxxytans

Take care.

Ian - June 25/09

Blow Fest 1988

Freedom Festival - Kitchener, Ontario, Canada - Summer 1988

This is what we lovingly referred to as "Blow Fest" because the winds were so strong we had to have friends on stage holding down the drum equipment!! I recently found an old video tape of this live concert, and now that I'm in the process of transcoding them for internet uploadle (!!), I'm realizing that the name Blow Fest has a double meaning!!

We had obviously just released Into Thy Hands and were pretty pumped to play a big stage festival show in our home town area. Sadly, there were so many problems with the festival gear and the people running it, that this proved to not be such a great concert. Ironically, it was being filmed with multiple cameras for the local TV station in Kitchener. I don't know how I ended up with a video copy from the 3/4 inch video source, but I did!

I won't upload the whole concert, because it really isn't good, and I'm sure Mike, Al or Andy would object to me uploading anything that they'd be embarrassed to see. I'm throwing a few segments up here at the blog, so that at least, these clips are for those who really want to see them. I'll post a few of the better clips at YouTube at some point too.

Andy had a particularly bad performance. This show is a demonstration in why Andy liked to tour with his own PA system and his own people running it. He was, and is, a perfectionist. It was not uncommon for us back in those days to be still doing our soundcheck with a house full of audience members. Andy wanted everything working properly before the show would start, so if that meant he was tweaking his guitar gear 5 minutes before showtime with a full house watching him, he'd do it. As was usually the case, he would work all day on the PA setup and then while the rest of us were putting our acres of hairspray on or eating, he'd still have to setup his guitars and amps.

At Freedom Fest, we had a tiny window with which to setup after the previous act had finished. By the time we started playing, no monitor levels had been set and half of our stuff wasn't audible on stage, and there certainly was no guarantee that any of it was coming through the house PA. Mike, Al and I just played anyway whether we could hear or not, but Andy was visibly flustered by the typically half-assed crew looking after our monitors. Watching this concert in its entirety, you see a gradual disintegration in Andy's playing and attitude. He is so stressed out and angry during one guitar solo that he just gave up and threw his hands in the air. Ironically, this happened at the precise moment the front of house PA went dead!! It was one of those kinds of shows!!!

I've been through many gigs like this now that I'm a touring side-musician. I've played a number of Country Music Festivals across Canada and in the States where you walk out on stage to set up your gear, while some jerk from a radio station is on stage warming up the crowd. You never get a proper chance to make sure you can hear yourself, and often times, you're 3-4 songs in before anything is working right. Of course, the big, marquee stars don't have this problem because they have people there to make sure everything is the way they want it.

For us at Blow Fest, we had no such clout!!

I remember after this show was over, Andy was so distraught, he took off with his wife for quite some time. The rest of us wanted to hang out with the fans, but Andy was out of there.

Anyway... it's all pretty funny to me now in retrospect! I can't get over all of our hair cuts and outfits!! Andy and I were well into our Mullets and Al had some great pleated pants!!

I sure wouldn't mind being that skinny again!!

Anyway... enjoy the videos for what they're worth.

Oh, on stage and in the crowd you'll see a variety of Awakening friends. That's Harold and Dwayne holding down the kit. The guy with the mustache by the drums is Ted Acorn. And in the audience were Glennn Pellow and Steve Habermehl, who were already playing in a punk band with Mike Powell!!

Knife Of Life - Test Video Clip (1988)

Knife Of Life - Low-quality Live Video!!

Hiya folks! I found a video tape downstairs today that I feared was lost to the ages. It's very late right now, and I've literally spent hours trying to figure out how to get DVD footage saved in a way that can be viewed online without bizarre audio synch issues. This version here is not nearly as good looking as the master DVD, but it's the first clip I've worked with where the sound and picture line up when uploaded to the net!

More info on this video, and better quality video clips to come soon.

Enjoy!

The Awakening US Tour Part Two: Crappy Times!!

Part Two: Crappy Times!!!

Yes folks... hope you've had some good things happen today, because this post will be a real picker-upper!!

Ironically, last night I went through some old photos and found a bunch from our 89' tour. It brought a lot of memories into finer detail... sadly, many of the crappy memories are in these pictures!

Ah, where to begin!!

Well.. I guess the worst news should be first.

After we finished in the Northeastern States, we headed down to Nashville for a gig we had booked there, but also to have a meeting with Jeff Moseley at Reunion Records. We were anxious to get some idea of when we might be starting a new album and also to get their general take on our new demo package. I have no memories of the actual gig we did there or whether we even HAD a gig. But I DO remember our fateful meeting with Jeff in his office.

After the informal BS that accompanies all business meetings, Jeff began to tell us the bad news. Our Into Thy Hands album was selling less than our Sanctified album did. We had no success at radio either. He expressed Reunion's concerns about lack of forward momentum. Basically, he was displaying his case for why Reunion had decided to drop us from the label. We must have seen this coming, but it certainly was a huge disappointment. Here we were on an extremely modest first US tour, potentially losing our shirts as a result, and yet Reunion had no intentions of doing another album with us. Had we known this ahead of time, we might have saved ourselves the hassle of doing the tour in the first place. This was early into the tour, so we still had another 2-3 weeks to go.

It started to get nasty when we basically told Jeff that we really felt Reunion did jack shit for us on the 2nd album. I think once we realized there was nothing to lose, we felt like it was ok to tell Jeff exactly how we felt about the company. In doing so, we basically told him that we were going to start shopping our new demo to other labels and not let this ruin the band. Jeff was quick to point out that although Reunion would not support us in a new album, we were still under contract and would not be allowed to shop our new material to other labels!

We couldn't believe this. First he tells us we're being dropped, and then he basically tells us we're stuck in limbo until Reunion decides whether or not to let us be free agents again. It was the classic, "if I can't love you, nobody can" concept!! Reunion didn't want us anymore, but they weren't going to let us walk into a rival company and get a new deal. I believe at this point, somebody may have threatened a lawsuit (which of course, Reunion would have won because they had the money to hire enough attorneys to wipe us out of existence!) It's safe to say that our goodbye to Jeff at Reunion that night was not full of hugs and handshakes!

In the end, Reunion must have seen the end of The Awakening coming before we did, because they quickly let us out of our deal and made no restrictions against us looking for a deal elsewhere.

So what a night that was in Nashvegas! We left the office and walked around Broadway Street and felt completely defeated. I think Andy took it worse than the rest of us because he was never one to look at the bad side of things. This was pretty bad. The rest of us of course did what anyone else would do - we tried to use this as motivation to get a whole new thing happening for the band. It's easier to NOT look at how grim your situation is and believe that somehow Santa Claus will come off his sleigh and make everything better!

While we were walking around town that night, a homeless guy was trying to cross the road, but his legs were shot. He might have been a US Vet. I remember Al carrying him across the street. It put our bad fortune in some perspective.

So that bad news infected the rest of the tour. We had some good times in our travels and had some good shows, but there was no shaking the fact that once we got home, we were going to have to do some major soul searching and potentially start the band over from scratch.

Part Three: The Awakening Discovers The Bible-Belt!

In looking through my photos last night, I was reminded of a few not-so-good memories from our time in Florida.

We played a church in Pensacola, and encountered our first Christian con-artist. The pastor of the church went up on stage during the intermission and really talked up the fact that we had come a long way from home to do this concert for them, and that we had a lot of equipment with us that cost a lot of money. This was what we normally dub a "Love Offering," where, although the customers have already paid their ticket price or may even have spent some money on a T-shirt or a CD, they should reach deeper into their savings to help out those responsible for their evening of entertainment/enlightenment! It's the classic Altruist slogan: "From each according to their ability to each according to their need!" Don't get me started!!

We were touched by this display from the pastor. We could certainly have used some extra money. I'm sure we weren't making a fortune at our shows.

At the end of the night, while our gear was being packed up, the pastor settled up with us. He paid us exactly what our contract said he had to pay us - and no more!! Fortunately, Glenn, our manager, was there to represent us. He asked about the love offering money, since he made it clear that this money would be given to us. The pastor said that he made no assurances that we would be getting that love offering money, and that he was under no obligation to give it to us. He said that the love offering would help keep things afloat for the church!

We couldn't believe that he lied to his congregation about this money. For all we knew, he was pocketing the whole amount, because honestly, how would they find out?!

This was my first encounter with what I later would refer to as "christian businessman!" I can't tell you how many times in my professional life, there has been some kind of financial issue when working with Christian clients. I got hired once to perform worship music for a guy who made it clear he wanted to "hire" "only the best" musicians for this gig. Nice of him to flatter me, telling me that I was one of the best musicians out there. After the first unpaid rehearsal, he said that money was tight and that perhaps I could do the gig as my "sacrifice to God."

These sorts of things happen all the time, but our deceptive pastor in Pensacola was our first shining example!

So are you having a good time reading this today?!!

Oh boy! Maybe I should make this a 4 parter!!

While in Florida, I remember also having some clashes with the people. We were and are from Canada, which is a pretty laid-back country. The so-called Bible-belt is a world none of us had experienced except on TV. While we were touring in Florida, we hung out with some of the fans and supporters of The Awakening down there. Many of these people were wonderful, but a few were really from some other planet.

In 1988-89', I had first discovered the music of Brian Wilson. The Pet Sounds album was pretty much all I was listening to during that whole tour, and I was anxious to buy some more Beach Boys cassettes while at the various record stores in the USA. On a day off we had in Florida, some of the volunteers from the gig we had just done offered to drive us around town for the day. I'll never forget the response I got when I asked where the local record shop was. When they found out that all of the guys in the band listened to "SECULAR" music, they were shocked and disappointed! A Christian should only listen to Christian music. Being the arrogant guy I am, I was quick to point out that 95% of the music put out by Christians is unlistenably bad!! I guess the Devil really DOES have the best music! They were so offended by this, and I was so upset about being judged by people who didn't even know us. It was a real wake-up call about the viewpoints of your typical Bible-belt Christian.

We also had a bizarre encounter at a Florida radio station. We were booked to come in for a live interview, and for fun, we decided to listen to the station on the way there. The segment that preceded ours was a call-in show about how dangerous SECULAR music is. There were countless callers calling in to say how they used to like Zeppelin, but that the words to that music are so evil, that they encouraged drug use, sexual sins and any other host of horrible outbreaks! We were shocked to hear this stuff. We thought this was insane mind control by a bunch of very hung-up Christians.

When we arrived at the station, certain members of our group (I'm suspecting Mike and me especially!) could not keep our mouths shut about what we had heard on the previous program. Fortunately, or UN-fortunately (!), we didn't mention any of this on the air, but as soon as our segment was done, we started a lengthy debate with our interviewer and told him how narrow-minded they all seemed. I'm pretty sure they weren't going to be having us back anytime soon, and I'm sure they came away with this attitude that Canadians are all socialist-pigs and humanists!!

We even had altercations with some of our fans. I remember being outside during our intermission, and having a guy come up to me in front of tons of people and ask me, "Hey... yeah you... how do you know Jesus loves you?" There was a long pause, because I wasn't sure why he was asking me this, and then he quickly answered his own question..."Because the Bible tells us so." Oh, very cute! Nice guy!

And then there was an after-show dinner with some of our fans from the show. I have no idea what I said, but obviously something funny happened and I made a joke. It might have been somewhat off-colour, but it certainly wouldn't have been dirty. This guy looked right at me and said, "and you call yourself a Christian saying something like that?!!"

So safe to say... I couldn't wait to get the Hell out of Florida!!

We headed back up to Pennsylvania and finished our tour before heading home.

There were some great times on the road, and despite what I've written above, we DID meet a lot of great people. But as the tour came to a close in early March of 89', the grim reality of what happened at Reunion began to overshadow everything else. Maybe our weird encounters with the Bible-belters explained a little bit about why our band was not eating up the radio market in the Christian music business. If those kinds of people were our target audience, perhaps we were in the wrong marketplace. One lady we met in Florida was starting up her own radio station. She had a slogan already picked - "God's music for God's people." What a nice way of saying, "you fornicating sons of Satan can listen to something else!" It just all seemed other-worldly to us. Going home to Canada meant taking some time to process all of these events and decide whether or not The Awakening should even continue to call itself a Christian band anymore. Next to these sorts of people, we really seemed like devil worshippers. We were just too far out of their idea of mainstream to make it work.

You have to remember too, that in the late 80's, the scandals of Jim Baaker, Jimmy Swaggart and Oral Roberts were making non-church people think that the single most plentiful ingredient in a Christian is hypocrisy, and the second ingredient being stupidity. It was going to be harder to sell somewhat watered-down Christian music to mainstream America, so the labels started pulling away from a mainstream sound. The words to the songs would all become overt and aimed at the already converted. This was not a good sign for The Awakening, who had made a conscious effort to tone down the preachiness of our earlier material. Meeting some of the worst examples of christianity made us seriously consider getting out of the scene all together.

We got home from the tour, and yes, we were in huge financial debt. I don't remember how bad it was, but it was bad. Fortunately, Andy was the only one who had marital obligations, but it certainly wasn't that much easier for Mike, Al and me. Ironically, when I would tour America again in 1996 to a similar financial outcome, it WOULD have a tragic effect on my marriage. The rock and roll world is not an easy one to stay alive in, especially if you have a wife, a house or kids in the mix. It's a career best lived by young people with no obligations and nothing to lose. Fortunately for us in 1989, we were all able to bounce back from the large debts we incurred during the tour.

Well, my friends, I'm sorry to say that the plot line doesn't get much brighter from here on out! Things within the band really started to come apart as 1989 continued. By early summer, the band would call it quits. Between March and May of 89', we continued to write songs, rehearse and do shows, but we were definitely coming apart as a group.

More on those wonderful days coming up soon!

Thanks for reading, and sorry for being a downer with this one. Go have a nice coffee or desert and don't let it get you down.

Cheers my friends.

Ian - June 23/09