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

The Awakening US Tour Part One: Happy Times!

The Awakening US Tour: Part One - Happy Times!

In February of 1989, The Awakening finally was able to hit the road and do some kind of semi-legitimate tour of the US. It was hard booking these shows without the help of an agent or without record company assistance, but Andy and Glenn were able to get enough confirmed gigs in a row, that we decided to go for it. We had been trigger shy back in the Fa

ll of 88', but in early 89', we knew we had to make a run for it regardless of the financial risks.

Most of the dates on the tour were in smaller towns, in small venues, for small crowds. We didn't have huge radio support, and obviously your average Christian concert goer wasn't faithfully reading the magazines that were giving us high praise, so I'm very sure that a great number of people who WOULD have wanted to see us, never even knew we were on tour. A good majority of the audiences we played for had never heard most of our music before.

Some bands tour in a tour bus. We had to tour in a run-down motor home.

Actually... I'm having a serious case of forgetfulness! I'm going to have to wait until Mike, Andy or Al can refresh my memory. I'm suddenly getting mixed up about whether we had an RV on this tour, or whether we just had a Cube Van and a single vehicle. I know that when Andy and I toured the US in 1996 with One Hundred Days, we had an RV, and it was a nightmare - always breaking down on the road. But I also have memories of pulling into town and having Al go investigate parts for the broken vehicle we had. So I'm pretty sure Al wasn't on tour with us in 1996, but I'm obviously drinking the wacky Kool-Aid at the moment, so perhaps I should move onto details I DO remember!!!

Ok... anyway!

Whatever it was we were driving in... we started our tour in the Northeastern States - Maine, etc. In fact, it's possible that our first gig was in Maine at a Holiday Inn. We didn't play a lounge gig, but for whatever reason, our first gig was being held in one of the ballrooms at the hotel. Later on in the tour, we made fun of this fact by doing our "band intros" to a background of cheesy Lounge music!

One strong memory I have of the early tour was stopping in New York City. The band had to make a long trek from the northeastern states down to Nashville. Mike and Al went down separately in the Ryder truck that had all the PA gear. Andy and I took a bus from Maine to Nashville. (which pretty much nixes the idea of an RV. Where did THAT end up going and who drove it?!!!) One of the stops for the 24 hour bus trip was in New York City, at Grand Central Station during the evening. Neither of us had ever been to New York before, and we were going to have 2 hours to kill before our connection bus would leave for the rest of the journey.

I remember being really frightened of the big city. No kidding - when we got off the bus at the station, there was an aggressive guy hassling me - "where you going sir? Where you going sir? Can I take your bag for you sir?" I replied, that my partner was at the back of the bus and that I needed to wait for him, to which he replied, "come this way now sir!" I couldn't believe it. I hadn't even set foot in the city that doesn't sleep and I was already potentially being mugged by some armed thug!! Thankfully, nothing came of this, but I was shaking in my boots.

When we got settled, Andy thought it would be cool to walk around Manhattan together. I was less enthusiastic about this idea because just before we left Mike and Al in Maine, we divided up all of our US spending money between us. So I had $200+ US dollars in my wallet, and here I was about to walk around what I assumed was the most dangerous city on earth! Frankly, it's been 20 years since then, so I don't remember much, but the buildings and the lights were pretty fantastic.

When we came back to the bus station later on, we had a bite to eat and talked to another guy who was waiting at the station. I told him about my brush with crime, and he said that people always hang out at bus stations looking for handouts. He said it would have been smarter for me to throw him a few dollars or let him help me to my station post. Blowing him off like I did could have worked against me, had he saw me wearing a nice watch or something like that. Fortunately, I was poor at the time and had no nice jewelry to entice him with!!

After that, we got back on the bus and drove through Central Park, Washington, Philadelphia and lots of other towns before our bus arrived in Nashville.

I'll discuss the Nashville part of the tour in Part Two - the Crappy Times!

Our tour ended up taking us down into Florida, where we did a number of smaller dates. Most of us had never set foot in the ocean before, so it was pretty exciting. Our manager Glenn Koehler flew down to meet us there and spent most of the rest of the tour traveling with us. Our lighting tech Ted Acorn was also there, and now I'm starting to recall, that his black Jeta was down there with us, so maybe THAT was our actual band vehicle!!!

I have some great pictures of us having fun at the beach. Glenn was (and still is) a conservative, well mannered guy. I have a picture of him with a cigarette in his mouth that is really funny... and of course, lots of pictures of me wearing this stupid hat I thought was pretty cool at the time! I'll scan those and throw them up here eventually. Lots of fun in Florida for sure.

We did a gig in Lakeland or Lake City (I forget), and a friend of the band was going to college down there and offered for us to stay at his townhouse, thus saving us the expense of another hotel room. It's memories like this that make me never want to go on the road with a struggling band again. It was very gracious of our friend to put us up for free, and that really meant a lot to us. But it was having the whole band sleeping in the living room on the floor or on sleeping bags that I look back on with some degree of horror!!

I DO have one funny memory of one of these band sleep-overs though. Andy was, and probably still is, an outrageously LOUD SNORER!! One night when we were all sharing a room together, Andy and Ted were snoring so loudly that none of us could get any sleep. Al got up between their bed and stood on a chair and conducted them! It was a riot!!

From Florida, we headed WAY back up north east, to play some shows in Pennsylvania and New York State. It was this sort of routing that caused so much extra expense for us, but it was the reality.

When we hit PA, we had one of the most memorable concert dates of our career, in a tiny, but beautiful place called Susquehanna. We played in a high school, and I'm not sure if there were too many people there who had ever heard of us, but their reaction to our show was like being at a Beatles concert. *(Well, perhaps I exaggerate somewhat - but it was pretty far out!).

We had an opening act for a few shows up there - an all-girl singing group called The Heartbeats. They were cheesy and played to tracks, but I kind of had the hots for their lead singer, who's name escapes me at the moment, (Kathleen?).

There was a video tape made of this show, and I'm really hoping that one of the other guys has it. I used to have this tape for years, but I've misplaced it. I hope it turns up eventually. The quality would be dreadful, as it wasn't good to start with, but it sure would be nice to see some footage from what could have been one of our most exciting shows.

One other factoid I can point out is: There was a guy at the show that night who had driven hours from Portland to see us play. It was nice to know that somewhere out there there were actually hardcore Awakening fans.

When we left PA, we headed to the Buffalo area and did one final show before heading back into Canada. This final show was pretty depressing. For one thing, we were coming off the huge high of our gig in PA, and then secondly, we were playing at a Pizza place that had entertainment, which was a small place with a tiny audience. I have most of this show on tape, and although some of the performances are pretty good, the spirit of the band was not good at all, and it's obvious from hearing the tape.

I'm not positive, but I assume we headed back into Canada and did our final date at the Alternative Entertainment Club.

Although it was cool that we had been away from Canada for a solid month, and people obviously would have thought we were riding a high, very few people knew that The Awakening was in serious trouble during this time. I doubt this homecoming show was nearly the pinnacle we thought it might have been.

The bad news that we had to share with people back home was - we had been dropped from our recording contract with Reunion.

That happy chapter will be featured in "Part Two - The Crappy Times!"

Ian - June 22/09

The Lost Album

The Awakening - The Lost Album (January 1989)

"The Lost Album" only got that name after The Awakening broke up. It was never intended to be an album. They were writing demos to get Reunion re-energized to work with us in 1989 and to cough up some money so we could do a new album.

Like I said earlier, it proved to be the only time in our history where we performed together in one room, live off the floor. Mike had purchased an expensive Ludwig drum kit before Into Thy Hands was recorded, but then had to wait almost a year to record them properly.

We had 10 songs, some of which were left-overs from before Into Thy Hands. We were very rehearsed and ready to lay down these new tracks at Cedartree Studio. From start to finish, this project was done in less than a month. Not bad, considering Into Thy Hands took 6 months!

The plan was to record all of the core tracks live: drums, bass, guitars and keyboards. The only overdubbing would be for vocals and solos. This was a radical departure for the band, as our entire recorded catalogue is one big overdub after the next!! We set up where we could all see each other in the studio. We were in a basic semi-circle with me in the centre of the room, Mike and Al on my left and Andy on my right. Our live sound engineer Mike Holst assisted in the recording, as did our manager Glenn Koehler.

Rather than spend the big money for 2 inch recording tape (over $400 a reel), we decided to re-use old tapes from the studio vault, and we also recorded at 15ips instead of 30ips. "ips" means inches per second. At 30 inches per second, you get more tape mass per second, and thus better fidelity. 15ips saves tape, but costs you in fidelity. Again, these were just demos and it didn't matter.

This blog posting will give you a small idea of what we did for the demos that became known as The Lost Album. Since virtually nobody has heard these songs, there's no point in going into great detail. At some point, it would be wonderful to officially release these recordings, but for now, here is a broad-points description.

Where Would I Be?

This was a song by Al Powell, which dated back to the early days of The Awakening. We had considered it for Into Thy Hands, but let it slide. It's an energetic rock tune that really showed how exciting The Awakening could sound when we all turned up loud and kicked ass. And on a positive note, because the manner with which we recorded these demos involved little or no keyboard overdubs, there aren't as many annoying keyboard parts on any of these songs. I had a D-50 and my DX7IIFD for the recordings, so if I couldn't play it live with the guys, it didn't get recorded at all. This meant there was more room for guitar parts and bigger, more bombastic drum fills.

November:

This was a lyric by Mike Powell. He wrote the melody too, but the core of the song was written by the whole band. This was a great song, and even after The Awakening broke up, this song got performed live. It contains lyrical cues which first showed up on the song Fireside!

Someone Watching Over Me

This is NOT the Gershwin tune!! This is a lyric of mine that was about my brief and meaningless drug period as a high school student. I never did any hard drugs, so this was a pretty silly song to write, but at the time I thought it was noteworthy. Musically, everybody contributed, and it's pretty cool because the verses are in 5/4 time. Everybody gets to shine on this song, and it was a lot of fun to play live.

Walking The Halls

This was one of my favorite songs we ever did. Andy wrote the words, and it was another multi-part song, sort of like Never Say Goodbye. It started out as a folky ballad, but then goes into a Cajun section, a Prog section and then returns to the laid-back folky sound for the end. We tried playing this song live, but we were never very good at it.

Amazonia

This is the one song on The Lost Album I would reject in a heartbeat. It was a song of mine from the early days of The Awakening. Back then, it was called Escape, and it was some twisted thing about torture ("escape a burning rope, escape a burning sore." Yeah, I don't get it either!)

In very early 1989, the issue of the Amazonian Rainforest devastation was just becoming big news, so I decided to re-write this song and make it about environmentalism. It's dramatic and well played, but it was pretty over the top. The middle section has the sounds of crying babies, "our children choking in the flames." Nice stuff!

Drawing Closer

This song almost made it onto Into Thy Hands, but we decided to re-write it. The re-write was great. The lyrics were much better and it just kicked serious butt. It was a great song live. This was one of the few songs we did where I basically just sang without playing keys, so it gave lots of room to Andy to play some serious Rock!

Hearts In Iceland

This song was originally called "Too Many Chords and Not Enough Lunch!" That title says it all. It really had too many chords and not enough meat in it. Al wrote the original lyrics, and I recall this was one of those awkward times where Andy took issue with the words and caused some hurt feelings and stress as we tried to fix it. Al was not as experienced a lyricist as the rest of us, but he had really good ideas that just needed a little work to be considered finished. God knows my lyrics at the time needed some editing!

But this song was a bit of a problem song. Musically, the chords were all over the place, and a solid melody didn't come jumping out as a result. So when Al took it under his belt to write the words, he didn't have a good sense of how these words would sound when sung over the many chord changes of the song. It led to us having to scrap a lot of Al's original lyric, and I think that really took the life out of him and made him less willing to contribute in the future.

When we re-wrote it, we kept some of his original ideas (and certainly his chorus and title), but with a new melody came new phrasing and new lyrics for the verses.

After The Awakening broke up, Andy and I continued to re-work this song, and actually recorded it for our first independent album of the 1990's, our "Counting By Heads" album of 1992.

Chains

This was a song of Andy's that got re-written over and over again well beyond The Awakening. In its original condition on these recordings, the song basically works best. It was another 4 part song, where there was no noticeable chorus. Every new section seemed like it might be the chorus, but then another one would start up afterwards throwing the listener off. Andy and I were still working on this song as late as 1992 before we finally let it go.

Seven Sails

Seven Sails is possibly the best thing The Awakening ever did together, and of course, few people have ever heard it! This was a remarkable collaboration between the 4 of us. Andy started the song, and it just took off from there. The drum part was outrageously hard to play, and vocally, it was exhausting to sing. Mike wrote the words, and it became a very important song for us live. It was progressive, but stayed within the realm of late 80's rock rather than the excesses of the 70's.

Marble Orchard

This was a stellar and extremely dark song by the whole band. Mike wrote the words and the title, and the rest of us put our ideas into the mix. It is possibly the heaviest song we ever recorded, and lyrically, it was very, very dark. "Roses lay upon this grave. The soul is gone but the corpse remains." and how about this> "in shadows view the hearts intent, to hide this life is death from deep within."

Since most people on Earth have never heard this, it doesn't make much sense to discuss the insane ending of this recording, but I'll say it simply: We had fun in the studio with this one. Even though the song is dark, dark, dark... the ending is simply insane. It's possible that I did the ending, but Andy had no intention of actually releasing it this way! You hear the sound of me feeding a bunch of pigs shards of broken glass!! Yeah... I don't get it either, but it must have made sense at the time!!

Thus ends the 10 songs formerly known as "The Lost Album."

Now, for some updated info:

For those of you who didn't know... after The Awakening broke up, Andy and I continued to write and record together, and by the early 90's, we were on the verge of having a whole new band to play with. A variety of musicians and songs came and went before we recorded a new album together. This is where the story gets confusing!

We did an album called "Counting By Heads" in 1992. Our band was AT THAT TIME called "The Obvious," and this was a totally independent album.

In 1995, we signed a deal with another lousy US Christian label called "Liquid Disc Records" (or as I later dubbed them: Liquidation Discs!). We had to change the name of our band because there was another band already recording under the name The Obvious, so we then became known as "One Hundred Days." This was just Andy and I and our drummer Gord Stevenson.

We released an album in 1995 called "The Obvious." yeah!! confusing!!

Liquid Disc needed another release for its catalogue in early 1996, and so it was decided that we could re-package our "Counting By Heads" album and sell it as sort of a reissue of the past. In doing so, and because Liquid Disc was fully immersed in the US Christian Pop market, we thought it might be interesting to put 3 songs from The Awakening Lost Album on it. We got the consent of Mike and Al, and released "Where Would I Be," "November" and "Seven Sails" on this new album. This is the only official place where anything from The Lost Album ever got released.

There - long story short!!

Thanks for reading.

Ian - June 21/09

Into Thy Hands - The Aftermath

The Aftermath

Into Thy Hands came out in the summer of 1988. We had a few big Canadian shows where we were able to promote the album, and for a short-while we felt like big things were going to happen for the band, especially if we had radio success in the USA. We had a number of Canadian tour dates, and the band got very tight and focused on what proved to be a very busy rest of the year. Even though the 6 month recording period was exhausting, especially for Andy and I towards the end, there now needed to be a renewed sense of direction and enthusiasm from the whole group. Because we were young, we were able to bounce back and go at our summer of 88' with a full head of steam. Ironically, at the start of 88', the band was never closer to implosion, but by the summer of 88', we were all on the same page and closer than ever.

Unfortunately, Reunion Records was not pushing the album the way we had expected them to. When Sanctified came out, there were tons of interviews and press for us to do, and we even made trips down to Nashville to schmooze and make connections. Upon the release of Into Thy Hands, these activities were not nearly as plentiful. In fact, you can pretty much tell from the album packaging that Reunion was already cutting their losses. I don't think we caught that at the time, but it's painfully obvious in retrospect. In a market where the lyrics were supposedly so important, Reunion put all of our lyrics on a single sheet in a font size that even a young child with perfect vision wouldn't be able to make out. They re-used photos from our Sanctified album shoot, and used a bare-minimum of colours for the artwork. I swear that Jeff Moseley went back to Nashville while we were making the album and told his superiors that he smelled a sinking ship. They cut costs wherever they could, and then when the album came out, the marketing dollars were obviously chopped as well. Our radio singles failed to make a mark, and other than rave critical reviews, we had very little helping us sell the new album.

When any normal band puts out an album, a series of well-planned events must take place. First of all, you have a whole bunch of pre-release promo materials ready for all the retailers and magazines and such. Then, upon the release, you do a Press-Tour, where you travel all over the place to do radio interviews and if possible, TV appearances. When all of this is done, and your single is rising on the charts, you hit the road, usually on a pre-packaged tour with a more established artist. This way you play for more people than would come to see you at a normal show, and in the hopes that a year later, you can headline some big shows rather than just be an opening act.

These are all successful marketing ideas. We had none of these going for us in mid 1988.

We did phone interviews and some press, but there never was any talk of getting on a tour. If we were going to tour, it would be up to Andy and our manager Glenn Koehler to book shows. Managers don't book shows. Booking Agents book shows. We didn't have one, so we did it ourselves. When you're in a limited market, where the bulk of your paying audience is thousands of miles away from where you live, it involves a complicated series of phone calls, contract proposals, deposits and infinite other little issues. Reunion was not offering us any kind of tour support. I think their feeling was, "hey, we just gave you $30,000 to do an album. Now it's time for YOU to show US how badly you want success."

When you're 20 years old and single, (and possibly from rich parents!) you can afford to go out on the road and live off canned ravioli, but when you are married, paying rent and holding down a job on the side, you can't just pick up and go. We could do our weekend local concert dates, but taking off for a month of massive money loss on the road was not an easy pill for any of us to swallow.

Andy and Glenn did their best to setup an actual tour of the US for the Fall of 1988. It was a bit late in terms of the marketing time frame from Reunion, but it was still doable, and they seemed enthusiastic about us hitting the road to promote this album.

It was hard to find enough gigs in a row that would justify us being out on the road for over a month. They would book a show on a Monday night, but then find that there were no "pick up" gigs before Thursday, so we'd be scrambling for money, food and accommodations for the Tuesday and Wednesday night. This scenario plagued the whole planning of this tour. There were simply too many days off without pay and not enough decent paying gigs to cover our basic expenses. This doesn't even take into account that we all had jobs back home that we'd have to take a leave from, and then face the reality of not making any money while we were on the road, and potentially coming home in massive debt.

It was a scary time period for the band.

We had one good thing going for us back then, and that was the creation of a venue and regular gig for us in our home town. There is and was a place in Kitchener, Ontario called "Bingeman Park," which was a vacation, camping area that had concert facilities and recreational areas all in house. Glenn had a friend who managed the community halls that were on site. They cut a deal together to allow us to use their facilities once a month for concert events. We called this place "The Alternative Entertainment Club." We held monthly concerts and eventually grew this to a fairly successful concert atmosphere for young, up and coming Christian bands. At first, The Awakening would play there along with bands like Elim Hall and Level Heads, but eventually, lots of younger bands such as The Light Brigade and Rare Design would bring their friends and fans to the club.

Mike started playing with a punk band on the side, and even they performed at the club. Mike played drums and sang, and played a stand-up drum kit. Glennn Pellow played guitar and sang, and Steve Habermehl played bass. For our local music scene, this was a booming enterprise on its way up.

But for The Awakening and the future of our recording career, everything hung in the balance unless we were able to get out and tour the USA.

Contracts were signed and commitments were made, but at the last minute, it all fell through. Reality really hit home for Mike and Al, and for me to a lessor extent. Mike and Al both had regular jobs and couldn't just take time off like Andy and I could. In the end, it became clear that they both ran a huge risk of being fired from their jobs if they took their leave of absence. We had rent to pay and a big loan to pay back for the budget of the Two Worlds album, and we just couldn't do it.

I'm not positive, but I suspect Andy called Reunion Records and told them that unless we got some form of tour support, there was no way we'd be able to do our tour. When that didn't happen, Andy had to postpone the whole tour.

This had to be the death knell to Reunion Records. Signing a band that lived thousands of miles away must have seemed like a really dumb idea at this point. Had we all lived in Nashville, we could have done some realistic touring. In Canada at that time, there were probably 50 places to play, and they were scattered all over our massive landscape. It was simply too expensive to tour in Canada. (It still is!)

We continued our monthly events at The Alternative Entertainment Club, but there was no doubt that things were looking grim as 1988 came to a close.

We still practiced regularly and were still writing new songs. Andy figured that since our tour was cancelled and we didn't have a lot of gigs in the area, that we should just head back into the studio and do demos of our new songs. We decided to make that the focus of the end of 1988. We wrote tons of songs during this time period, and figured we may as well do demos to keep Reunion interested in us and keep the possibility of a new album in 89' alive.

Because Andy and I were full-time employees at Cedartree Studios, we decided to record our demos in the studio, rather than on the road, like we had in 87'. Also, because the band was getting more and more tight as a unit, we decided it would a good idea to record together in the studio live off the floor. This would mark the first, and only time in our careers that we would record together in real time. Because these were just writing demos, perfection was not the goal. Ironically, as flawed as these recordings were, they were some of the most exciting performances ever recorded by the band, and sadly, none of them ever saw the light of day.

We went into Cedartree Recording studio near the end of 1988 and began recording the 10 new songs we felt would spark more interest at Reunion. While this was going on, Andy and Glenn started to re-book cancelled shows from our US tour for a possible new tour in the next year. We hadn't given up on the desire to tour, but we needed more guaranteed shows to be able to take the gamble. This would all come together in the early days of 1989.

Ian - June 21/09

Into Thy Hands Song By Song: Song 12: Clear Day

Song #12: Clear Day

Words: Ian Tanner and Andy Horrocks

Music: Ian Tanner

For a long time, this was one of those songs I used to hold up with some degree of pride. It's funny how time can change your outlook! It's not that I think the song is terrible, but it certainly doesn't move me like it did years ago.

I have no idea when this was written. I know that Andy recorded me doing a demo of this song somewhere around this time period. We both used to work at a "christian" music store, (which I referred to earlier in these postings). One night after teaching, Andy and I setup a few keyboards at the store and recorded a demo of this song. It was all keyboards except for the middle section which had an acoustic guitar part on it.

The original lyrics I wrote posed some problems for Andy, who thought they needed a re-write. I think my first version was something like this:

"On a clear day you can see the sun rising sadly over the city top.

On a clear day you can feel the mist dancing gently over your new car."

"over your new car" was pretty lame, you have to admit!!

I think my point was, our human possessions and aspirations mean nothing when compared to the broad expanse of nature. Ironically... I've never been interested in the broad expanse of nature!!! I never go outside. I hate camping. I fear being stung by insects while outside! So I would much sooner sit in a car with the windows up and the air conditioning on, rather than ride my bike out in God's green country!! Oh well... when you're composing a song, sometimes you suspend reality for the sake of the art!! I certainly did that!!

So Clear Day obviously needed a lyrical re-write, because there were problems like this all over it. It was a song where the music came to me first and I tried to stuff some words into it, and with less care than I did the music. Andy helped me get it better so that we could include it on the album.

The recording is pretty much entirely me on this track. It's all keys and vocals, but Andy's acoustic guitar part DID make the final version.

Session singer Wendy Davis sang the middle section "In the sun, in the sky." I'm sure that the only reason we had her sing this was because she was at the studio and we thought it would be cool. But that said... I'm pretty sure that I never performed this song with this middle section included at any show the Awakening ever did. (Actually... when Andy and I put our 90's band together, we actually learned a full band version of Clear Day. Somewhere I have a video cassette from a concert where this full version took place. I'll have to dig that up someday!)

The credits say that Dick Armin played cello on this track, but I don't hear it. I hear one cello part in verse two, but it sure sounds like a sampled cello from the Emulator and not the real thing. It's possible that Dick played on this, but it escapes my memory entirely.

Being fans of classic Art-rock albums and concept albums, I really wanted some kind of circular production approach on this album. This is where the connecting of Clear Day and Remember Me comes into play. We referenced subtle sections of Clear Day during Remember Me, and then added a reference to Remember Me in Clear Day! Ultimately, we ended the album recapping the opening lines of Remember Me. The guitar part that sounds like echoing bells was actually Andy's harmonic guitar, sampled and played in from a keyboard with echo on it. The seagull sounds were done by Andy on electric guitar.

With those fading sounds, we bid farewell to the Into Thy Hands album.

It was 6 months in the making, costing over $50,000 US, which was a lot of money for a band in a small market in those days. I'm still proud of the album and what we attempted to achieve by doing it the way we did it, but I'm much happier now that I can hear the album re-mastered and fixed up where possible. If there were enough people interested, it would be tempting to put an Awakening box set together featuring beefed-up re-masters of our original albums, along with the tons of unreleased material and live stuff that I've found. Something to consider.

Thanks for reading all of these posts on Into Thy Hands. I know already that I've left out certain details, but it's hard to keep track of all of this stuff when I'm frantically typing into my MacBook!

Those people out there (and you know who you are) who have continued to express your affection for this album, have really meant the world to us. That you guys and gals remember this stuff 20 years later, is a remarkable and meaningful compliment to us.

Cheers and thanks again.

Ian - June 21/09

Into Thy Hands Song By Song #11: Never Say Goodbye

Song #11: Never Say Goodbye

Words: Mike Powell

Music: Mike Powell, Al Powell, Ian Tanner, Andrew Horrocks

I have a recording from late 1987, where before the song starts, I said that Mike had just given me the melody and lyrics for Never Say Goodbye on the eve of that show. So that piece of evidence would conclude that Mike wrote all the words and all the melody for this song. My memory is a bit sketchy on the matter. The opening keyboard part certainly sounds like something I would have come up with, but the big question is, would that intro have been the impetus for the rest of the song or was it something I added after the core of the tune was written? Andy's guitar part sounds like it was custom-written, so it wouldn't be too far to assume that the song started with yet another Andy guitar part which the band then started collaborating on. It's also possible that Mike wrote the body of this song on his own and then brought it to the band. Maybe Mike can shed some light on this for me. It's been too long!!

Mike wrote the words about his grandmother who had passed away at the time. Its more straight-forward approach took us away from our usual "Yes" sound, and pointed the way towards what we would start writing after Into Thy Hands was completed.

Structurally, it followed a pattern we would definitely repeat later on in our careers, that being, having 3-4 sections of music all preceding the actual chorus. Usually in pop songwriting you have a main section, a pre-chorus and then the chorus. Never more than 2 different ideas before the chorus. (of course in today's zero-attention-span music world, you're lucky if you get one stupid idea for the whole dumb song! Anyway... I'm bitter!)

Never Say Goodbye has 4 distinct sections before the chorus hits. Part 1 is the "Windows and pictures" section, which follows the basic chord structure of the intro. Part 2 takes a darker note at the "And there comes a time when all good things must die" part. Part 3 is the instrumental part, which features my life-long friend Darren Walters on violin. Part 4 is really the only logical candidate for a standard Pre-Chorus, as the "the world just keeps on turning" section leads perfectly to the majestic chorus, "to see the burning bush is to feel the burning love."

But then, before you get too familiar with the chorus, we jump right back to the start and do it all over again. On the 2nd chorus, you get a longer version, but then we re-vamp the Pre-chorus over some cool, stacked harmonies by Mike and I. (Actually, on this recording, Mike sang harmonies on the choruses too.)

At the end, we introduced another new section, which was a melody I had from another unused song at that time. Following this, on the final word "goodbye..." we hit the dramatic Bm chord and swirl off into the distance.

This complex arrangement would have taken some rehearsal time, and I think that's where the co-writing credits come from. I'm pretty sure the body of the tune was written by Mike, so Al, Andy and I likely contributed and added sections to the tune as we put the whole arrangement together. The instrumental part with the violin was either written by Andy or Al.

In terms of the recording... yet again, a dated, annoying DX7IIFD sound established the tone! I remember not long after the album was done, one of our long-time Awakening fans/friends had mentioned that there seemed to be a few too many "plunky plunky" things on our Into Thy Hands album. Of course, being the pompous ass I was at the time, I took that as an insult, but again, in retrospect, I wish I could go back in time and burn that DX7 in effigy!! (Actually, I gave the keyboard away a few years ago to a friend of mine who has consistently hooked me up with fantastic VST keyboard plugins for my studio PC!! He's a vintage keyboard collector, so I was glad to unload that DX7IIFD into his more appreciative hands!)

I mentioned in my introductory posting that the ending of this song was supposed to be a Sergeant Pepper moment on the album. I wish I could remember what it was supposed to be, but ultimately it doesn't matter, because we ran out of time and money to make it happen. I'm fairly certain there was to be some form of musical "trip through the cosmos" at the end, which would have cross-faded into the beginning of the song "Clear Day," but there just wasn't time to do it. The effect is still somewhat there because of the wind chimes and echoey guitar part.

What most of you wouldn't know was that we had an actual ending for the song which we used to do live before the album was recorded, and thankfully, that idea got scrapped in the studio!! It was a cheesy thing that sounded like a rock version of Steely Dan!!

Mike was great at writing emotional lyrics that didn't go into the cheese region, and that was hard in those evangelical days of the late 80's. Mike seemed to be able to capture a more indirect way of making his point. "Can't last forever waving goodbye in the pouring rain" is a great example of Mike's poetic angle. When I look over the whole body of the Into Thy Hands record, Never Say Goodbye is my favorite lyric on the album.

Ian - June 21/09

Into Thy Hands Song By Song #10 - Onward

Song #10 - Onward

Words and Music by Chris Squire

This is an uncharacteristically pop-sounding song by Progressive Rock group Yes. It was from a low-selling late 70's album called "Tormato." The album has some great tracks on it, but was a bit of a career-ender for them at the time. After this album, Yes as it existed, came to an end. When Yes would re-form soon after, it was without Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman, and it would be a number of years before Anderson would re-join the flock - just in time for them to have their first legitimate taste of pop success. But on Tormato, this beautiful song by Chris Squire stood out as being a hint of future ventures.

As great as this song is, it really didn't fit in with what The Awakening was all about. If we were going to cover a Yes song, we would have preferred something like "Long Distance Runaround" or even "Awaken" just for the sheer irony!! (actually... what few people know is, I used to start our concerts in the 1987/88 era with a quick keyboard/vocal rendering of the "high vibration go on to the sun oh let my heart dreaming" section of "Awaken!")

Reunion Records really encouraged us to record this song, as they were obviously concerned about the lack of "adult contemporary" radio material on the album. (D'uh!) I mentioned previously that Andy had met Chris Squire at a Yes concert in late 87', and asked his permission to use the song. From there, we started re-creating the song in our image, sort of!

I was glad to play the grand piano at the studio for this song. In the age of senseless technology, we could have easily used some lame piano sample instead of the real thing. Thankfully, that didn't happen!

I'm pretty sure that Mike and Al are not on this song at all. Mike may have come in to play cymbals and hats, but the bass was definitely played on keyboards. Andy did some acoustic strumming and some nice "jazzier-toned" electric guitars. But other than that, it's keyboards all the way. I am really sad, in retrospect, that I chose to use a French Horn sample for the solo sound. It was Horn that was featured on the original, but it might have been cooler to have had a different solo - probably guitar. So the "cheese-factor" starts to go up during the solo, especially during the little "mordent" half way through and the triplets, which all sound like me trying to show off my classical chop(s). Kind of embarrassing to look back at!

The female vocalist on this song was a good friend of ours, who was in a local band called Rare Design. (We used to call them Rare Disease, but they knew we were just kidding around!) Kelly Houghland was the singer of the band. She had a sound very much like Leslie Phillips at the time, and of course, Leslie (once she grew a spine) eventually changed her name to Sam Phillips and became one of the few mega-stars of Christian music in the 80's to walk away from easy, continued success because of artistic reasons. Kelly and Sam Phillips could have been sisters, in terms of musical sound and motivation.

Kelly had never sung professionally like this before and was obviously nervous about it. She did a great job and really added another dimension to the song. She played a dirty trick on her boyfriend at the end of the day though, which I'm sure they still talk about now and then (they later got married). Dave (the guitar player in Rare Design) could not be at the studio during the afternoon we recorded Kelly, so when he called in later in the day to see how things went, she really played it up that it was a total disaster. She summoned up fake tears to make it sound like it was the last time she'd ever set foot in a studio again. When he found out she was pulling his leg, he was understandably pissed off about it! Wouldn't you be?!!

Anyway... good times and fun memories from a beautiful song that may or may not have been necessary on this album. I still enjoy hearing it (except for the solo), but I often wonder how our album would have sounded without it.

Maybe, in some sense, it served as a pause for reflection between the heaviness of Into Thy Hands and the emotion of Never Say Goodbye.

And I have to wonder, after all these years, did anybody from Yes ever get to hear our recording? That would be fun to know.

Ian - June 18/09

Into Thy Hands Song By Song #9 Title Track

Song #9: Into Thy Hands

Words: Ian Tanner

Music: Andrew Horrocks, Ian Tanner, Al Powell and Mike Powell

This is probably my favorite Awakening song. It has so many elements that I'm proud of and it's about a subject that was very personal to me, and still is.

My cousin, Dan Squires, died of cancer when he was barely in his 20's. He was the same age as my brother Rob, and although their age similarity made them very close, my cousin Dan was definitely my favorite cousin. We had so many good times together growing up, and music was a huge part of both of our lives. When we would get together, making music was always on the agenda. Somewhere I have a cassette tape that was made when I was probably about 12 years old of Dan, Rob and me making up a song called "The Out of Order Blues" about a broken vending machine!!

Dan had a very unpleasant last year of his life and passed away in 1985. I have one major regret about this story, and that was, I never went to see Dan while he was really sick. I was afraid of what cancer was and how it had been explained to me, so rather than see him looking frail and possibly not being mentally in his faculties anymore, I took the easy way out and stayed away. I was a scared teenager, but I still regret it very much.

When The Awakening started writing this song, I wanted to write the words for my cousin Dan.

The song would have started from another introductory riff from Andy, and then we all started collaborating. I'm pretty sure I wrote the melody, but everybody was bringing in ideas. The use of the 7/4 time signature was an added challenge.

For me, the guitar solo in this song is possibly the single greatest thing Andy ever played on an album of ours. I know it wasn't an easy solo to come up with. This was another case where Al showed up in the studio to help Andy do his stuff. I wasn't there for any of this, but when I heard it later on, I was extremely moved by it. (It was played on his recently purchased, modified Fender Telecaster). It is such an emotional solo, and I actually like that it is very slightly flawed. Andy wouldn't be happy to hear that, as I'm sure he spent hours and hours to make sure it WAS perfect, but it really wasn't. It sounds vulnerable, and at times unsure, but it is so very powerful.

I'll flash way forward for a second - to our final live performance ever, at Creation Fest in 1989. I do this because, (and I'll elaborate more on this later), Andy and I knew this was probably our last time on stage together as a band. When we performed this song and Andy played that solo, I was almost moved to tears on stage. I'll never forget that moment. It would NOT be like me to lose my composure like this, but the emotion level was unbelievable at that moment, and Andy's solo was almost too much for me to take.

The spoken voice at the end of the song is credited to our producer Rick Hutt, and that may be the case, but I'm almost positive that it is actually Al Powell doing it. I'll have to get a confirmation on this from one of the guys.

The song starts with the sound of me "apparently" saying "Wake up!" How that happened is quite a bizarre and flukey technical story!

Far into the production of this song, I wanted to attempt something very experimental just for the heck of it. I wanted to put the multi-track tape on backwards, and randomly vocalize over the whole song. This meant that I had to sing from the end of the song to the beginning with everything playing backwards. When I reached the end of the performance, which was actually before the beginning of the song, I said "THANK YOU!"

None of my backwards singing worked, so we erased it all, except the THANK YOU at the end/beginning. We couldn't believe that when we heard Thank You backwards, it sounded like "Wake up!" How perfect!!

So that bizarre twist of luck became the opening sound of this intense song.

I can honestly say that there aren't too many songs from our Awakening catalog that I could see myself performing today, but this is a song I would love to perform again someday.

Thanks for reading.

Ian - June 18/09

Into Thy Hands Song By Song: Song #8 Knife Of Life

Song #8: Knife of Life

Words: Ian Tanner

Music: Ian Tanner and Mike Powell

This is on my list of best tracks ever, as far as things we recorded. For all the flaws on this album, we really got most things right on this track. I could write pages and pages about this song, but I'll try to keep it to the most interesting points.

This, along with Where Is Love was started by Mike Powell at home, and then finished off when I met with him to complete the writing process. This song clearly illustrates what can make a band great, and how the whole democratic process of a band can be a wonderful thing when it's functioning properly.

Andy had established the group as being a well-produced, well-focused band. When I got involved, the artsy aspects started to creep into the mix, and by the time we did our first album, there was no denying that Andy and I seemed to have the bulk of the creative material going on. It sometimes made for some tense creative moments when the meeting of the minds would happen.

Mike and Al didn't think the same way that Andy or I did, and that clash and difference of direction had a lot to do with the actual genesis of the Awakening sound. Had Mike been a Bruford fan like I was, or had Al been a Prog fan like I was, or a Pop and Jazz fan like Andy was, our playing style would have been a lot different. Mike and Al were into honest, emotional, rock music. It didn't have to be in some weird time signature to get them going, but for me, it was always about putting something complicated into the music.

Early in our existence, this difference of motivation was a key ingredient in defining our sound.

I can safely say, that had Andy and I been a duo back then, we would never have come up with an idea like The Knife Of Life!

Mike was always into energetic activities, and certainly weaponry and more gothic outlooks were a part of Mike's thinking. He used to have Martial Arts weapons at his house, and I'll never forget him buying a "blow gun" which if used properly could have killed all of us! Mike, of course was harmless, but he loved all of this weird stuff.

It totally made sense that he would come up with left-field ideas like Fireside or Knife Of Life. It's how the less out-there members of the band (Andy, Al and I) interpreted these extremes that made these songs so right for our band.

My explanation is going on and on. My apologies. It's hard to put this stuff into words.

I just believe that Mike and Al's contributions to the band were sometimes hard to measure at the time, and I feel good to know that although I was the singer, and Andy was in many ways the de-facto leader of the band, Mike and Al had a great deal to do with the musical and lyrical direction of the band. I'll move on now before I wander any further away from the topic!

The first thing you hear on Knife Of Life is some silly circus music. This was not an accident. Months of working on this song meant months of recording onto tape and then hitting the Rewind button on the tape machine. When you would rewind the tape, you would hear playback information coming off the playback heads on the machine, but of course this audio would be in fast motion and backwards, as the tape made its way back to the start of the song. There was this peculiar melody that kept playing from the machine. It was actually Andy's guitar part being played backwards at fast tempo. After months of hearing this silly backwards melody, I thought it would be funny to replicate the sound of it using the D-50 keyboard. So that's why that section at the very beginning is happening!

The bass playing on this song is fantastic. Al played 2 different bass parts. One was his newly acquired Fender fretless bass, and the other was his normal bass. The fretless really gave the song another disturbing dimension. We really wanted this to be a weird song, so if there was any technique we could use to "weird it up" we would!

The harmonies on the chorus were done by Andy. Most of the background vocals on our albums were done by me, probably because it was easiest for me to do. But there are a few spots on the albums where you can tell someone else is doing the harmonies. Andy's low, breathy harmony in the chorus is great.

The middle section is our Magical Mystery Tour moment for all time! I can't tell you how many hours, days and weeks we spent putting that middle section together. There is so much detail in here, that I'm sure most people have never heard all of the little candies and surprises we put in there. First of all, Mike continued a trend he started during the first album, that being reciting poetry over some kind of creepy intro!! He did this during the intro of Fireside, (where he recited the first verse of the soon-to-be-written song "November,") , and at the start of the bridge to Knife, he does verse 2. He would later do another verse during the actual song November, which we recorded in early 1989.

In addition to Mike's spoken words, there is an endless list of spoken do-dads all over the place. I recall, that we stood around one microphone and said a bunch of random things on a separate piece of tape, and then messed with them later on. At one point Andy said "Elim Hall" (and later, we spliced it up by taking something else he had said earlier and made his statement into "Elim Spall!"). I started saying some kind of insane Russian thing, which was meaningless. (It sounds like "Latenya Nevanya"!). Our favorite line was Mike totally taking a shot at our A&R guy in Nashville, when he say's "Jeff - your Datsun looks like a door stop!"

You can also hear Mike talking about a dream he had about Lorne Green, the famous Canadian actor who was in Gunsmoke! This leads to yet another in-joke..."I looked at him, and he looked at me, and he said.... (whoa...) there go those whoas again!"

So even then, we were well aware that we did too many WHOAS in our songs!!

If you listen carefully towards the very end of this crazy section, you might hear Mike yelling "Stop the tape! Stop the tape!!"

As if this WEREN'T enough to confuse everybody, it got worse!!

Andy's guitar part through this whole section was extraordinarily hard to put together. He wanted the part to sound backwards but it still had to actually be the proper melody. The only way this could be accomplished back in 1988 was to learn how to play the guitar part backwards, put the tape on backwards, and record it while all the music was playing backwards. This is no easy feat. You can't imagine how hard it is to count or know where you are in the arrangement when everything you're hearing is backwards. You can imagine this probably took over a day to complete. In the end, you hear the proper guitar melody, but it sounds like it was recorded backwards, because it was!! (That's also why you hear his last ringing note continuing into the final verse. Andy would have started on that note while the machine was backwards, and then worked his way back to the start!! Are you confused?!!)

Just like on Where Is Love, Knife Of Life builds to an emotional climax as we modulate keys at the very end. This was always a super-emotional thing for me to sing. It hurt and required lots of air in the lungs, but it was also exhilarating to perform.

When we finally hit the end of the song, there is a screeching, fed-back noise that fades into the distance over some unmentionable dissonance under it. I'm quite sure that entire moment was created by recording violin through the 480L processor. Our friend Darren Walters (who is still one of my best friends and, with whom I still perform music with) played the violin on this. When we debuted the album live, Darren came up out of the audience during the crazy middle part of this song playing violin for us.

I'm sure I'm leaving out some major details, so if I think of any, I'll make sure to post a post-script!!

Whew!

Ian - June 16/09

Where Is Love EXTRA!!

On my way to a rehearsal today, I listened to Into Thy Hands, or as I've been calling it lately, "Into Thy Price Range!"

I caught another funny vocal faux pas in Where Is Love that I simply HAD to post here on The Awakening blog!!!

My line about always ending up in a "whore" was funny... but just a few lines later I said another nonsequitor - "Just how long must I wait to find some understanding here?"

The way I sing HERE, it sure sounds like I'm wondering if I'll ever have UNDERSTANDING HAIR!!!

Too much!!

Anyway... back to our regularly scheduled programming!

Ian - June 16/09

Into Thy Hands Song By Song: Song #7 Where Is Love

Song #7: Where Is Love?

Words: Ian Tanner

Music: Ian Tanner, Mike Powell and Andrew Horrocks

The intro to this song is one of the rare times the DX7IIFD had some positive use! The growling sound and the melody line during that intro all came from one patch, so it was nice to be able to do this live and have it sound just like the album. I also really enjoy the feedback that occurs as the intro awkwardly, and intentionally modulates from Db to Dm.

A bit of history.

This song was started by Mike Powell as a home recording of his own. I remember going to where he lived at the time in 1987, and spending an evening on 2 of his new songs, this one and Knife Of Life. We later brought our rough 4 track demo to practice and started making the song happen as a group. It's been too long for me to remember who actually wrote what, but I'm pretty sure the chord structure and the weird bass part were all Mike's invention. The melody might be mine, although it does sound similar to other songs Mike had written melodies for at the time. The chords and melody in the chorus sound a lot like something I would have written, so it's possible that all Mike had when we got together was an intro and a verse. I know for sure that the middle section with those WHOAS again (!) was written by Andy.

The production of this song began what became a somewhat magical second half of the album. It was our intention early on in the production to have the second half flow together without gaps between songs, like the newly released Sgt. Pepper CD. So it added a more artistic overview to every song that ended up on side 2 - (I know, CD's don't have sides! Whatever!)

I'm pretty sure there is grand piano following the bass part in the verses, and it also plays throughout the meandering ending. It was nice using a real grand piano, since it was already at the studio waiting to be used!

One funny thing I can re-tell is something I noticed after I sang the lead vocal. During verse 2, I get all worked up and sing this emotional line, "it seems when things are going great, I end up in a hole!" The problem is, no matter how many times I've heard this song, I always hear the last phrase as "I end up in a whore" just because of my stylized vocal! I'm pretty sure at subsequent live shows, that I went out of my way to pronounce that line clearly and correctly!

The ending of the song was quite a bit of work. The military sounding drum stuff at the end was actually done electronically. Rick Hutt ran Mike's snare through the very expensive processing unit called the 480L, which was THE ultimate studio reverb/effects tool of the era, and upwards of $10,000. Amazing how things have changed! You can get a good reverb out of Garageband these days for virtually nothing!

The vocal collage at the end was a time consuming affair. Andy and I always liked these complex vocal arrangements, where you'd swear 3 or 4 separate pieces were all happening at the same time. I don't think we cared too much whether people could make out which of the lines was supposed to be the focal point. It was just supposed to be dense and then as the song faded out, celestial.

The song credits say that it is dedicated to "A.K." It took me awhile to remember who those initials represented, and then it finally came to me. There was a Jazz musician I had played with at around this time who was pretty severely messed up. He was insane from being ultra creative, but also from his heavy drug-use, and not just the soft drugs that, even at that time would have been completely blown out of proportion by me. I guess I felt it important to write something about the possible inward story going on inside this guy, how he was feeling lost and confused and was looking for answers in the wrong places. I could now say the same thing about myself back then, minus the drug use!!

All that said, I'm still really moved by this song. Many elements on the 2nd half of the album bring back moments of sincere pleasure and emotion for me, and the end of Where Is Love is one of those moments.

Ian - June 16/09

Into Thy Hands Song By Song: Song #6 - Lonely Place

Song #6 - Lonely Place

Words: Ian Tanner, Rick Hutt, Jeff Moseley (and Ted Acorn)

Music: Ian Tanner and Andrew Horrocks

This is a song I mentioned in an earlier blog, that dates back to my very early days as a Christian. I was still in high school when I wrote this song. It was called "Wait For The Lord." As I mentioned, I brought this song to Andy in the early days and for a little while, it was part of our setlist, but eventually got dropped to make way for better songs.

Our preliminary demos, that Reunion Records heard before production of Into Thy Hands, left them feeling that there was no obvious single in any of the songs we had submitted. (We submitted over 20 songs!) Knowing this, we began to look for existing material that might meet the radio-friendly criteria that Reunion was looking to satisfy. I pulled Wait For The Lord out of the dungeon, and when Reunion heard it, they immediately suggested that we re-think the song and give it a make-over.

Andy was instrumental in getting the song away from its original sound, that being a sappy, Rhodes-laced adult ballad. Putting acoustic guitars in place of the Rhodes really brought the song into a new light, so we pressed on and made it happen.

Lyrically, this song was torture. My original words for Wait For The Lord were as amateur as you'd expect from someone writing their first song as a newborn Christian! I recall, that the bulk of the new words were written in the front foyer of Cedartree Studio in the very first days of album production. Jeff Moseley, the A&R rep from Reunion was with us at this time, so we sat in the front area of the studio brainstorming possible lyrics. The words were credited to Jeff, our producer Rick Hutt and to me, but I'm sure that everybody had a say in the matter. I'm pretty sure Andy and Al were suggesting lines too.

One contribution that was not legally accounted for, but DID make the album credits, was the contribution of our dear friend Ted Acorn. Ted was our lighting manager, and also owned the house that Mike, Al and I moved into as room-mates. Ted was older than we were, and on the road, he had to put up with a lot of annoying immaturity, but he was a great guy. (When he got married in 1989, he of course, booted us all out of his house!!) Ted was the one who suggested one crucial line of the lyric, "till Jesus comes." None of us could think of any appropriate line for this exposed part of the song, until Ted offered his input.

Now, if you remember, I recently mentioned what I consider 2 key ingredients to the success of The Awakening's songs, one being the WHOAS, and the other being a 4 note melody.

Lonely Place is where that lovely 4 note melody started, and I will now attempt to showcase the many places where that 4 note melody would pop up its head!! The notes were G, F#, D, A. Those are the notes of the bridge melody, "His truth can be found, in a lonely place..."

While this song was still corny and called "Wait For The Lord," we began accidentally re-using that theme in other songs, and after awhile, it became a bit of a joke, so we'd throw it in just for fun.

Here's an incomplete list of songs using that exact theme (often in the exact same key!)

Fireside - the keyboards on the outro

The Only Way - the 2nd half of Andy's guitar solo

Wrestling In The Jungle - "you cannot do a thing TO HELP YOURSELF!!"

Again - "evening takes me far away, from the heart I HAD TODAY" and on and on!

Again - The end of the big guitar solo/cello line, right before last verse

Knife Of Life - keyboard line in middle of chorus 2

That's all I can recall, but I'm sure we had later material that purposefully or accidentally borrowed that 4 note theme!!

Anyway... onto the production. One distinct memory of I have of this song was the keyboard solo. I remember being very proud of that solo when I did it. It was not easy to perform, as I was using the "never-cheesy (!!)" pitch-bending wheel, and I made constant mistakes every time I tried to nail it! The sound came from the Roland D-50, which really was, in my opinion, the greatest keyboard invention of the 1980's. I don't have one anymore, but on any keyboard work I do these days, I still call upon those lush sounds originally created on the D-50.

But in regards to the choice of sound for THIS solo, well... time has not been so fair!!

Here's how it went down.

We finished the album, waited for it to be manufactured, and then had a big party at Ted's house to debut the album to some of our closest friends. I'll never forget getting to the keyboard solo in this song and hearing one of Mike's friends, who I'll call Steve H. for posterity (!!), make a fairly harsh statement about that keyboard sound. I have no idea what he actually said, but I was really offended by it. How dare he suggest that my hard-working keyboard solo was "lame" sounding or any other negative word he could come up with?!! I thought it was magical, and he thought it was stupid. I was mad about this for a long time, even after he took me aside and apologized for hurting my feelings. (Years later, we've bumped into each other at Starbucks and I'm sure next time we do, I'll bring this memory up and buy him an over-priced Latte to ensure that he knows all is forgiven!!)

As time changes peoples' minds about a lot of things, time has certainly changed my opinion of this 20 second segment of my recorded life. I hear the solo now with the same embarrassment level that Steve must have heard the first time through. But I was still hopelessly lost in the 80's and in the world of Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson, so I was far too un-cool to see how silly that sound really was. A guitar solo would have been far better, or no solo at all.

Oh well... 'twas the 80's!!

One beef I had with the record company regarding this song had to do with the slight lyrical modification at the end of the song. They didn't like the constant repetition of the phrase "Lonely Place" at the end of the song. Saying that we "believed in a lonely place" didn't make any sense to your typically brain-dead radio listener (No offense!) They suggested that we re-phrase it "I believe in a silent place" because Lonely Place was considered too negative.

This song basically went through an insane amount of massaging, and the production was done very carefully to ensure massive radio success. In some ways, it didn't really fit in with the rest of the album, but with the inclusion of "Onward" on side 2, it at least came close to being relevant. After all of this effort, it was a real shame when the song did nothing at radio. I have to believe that Reunion had somewhat lost interest in us by the time the promotion of this album began. Perhaps they had taken just a little too much flack from me and the other guys regarding creative decisions, or perhaps it was because we went over budget and almost didn't deliver the album at all. Whatever it was, this song did not end up being the huge single that would have assured us a 3rd album in the year 1989.

It's sad because, for all the criticism I can give towards this song, it's actually a very nice production and has some really special moments in it. I love the ending. In the barely out of training diapers digital age of CD's, the concept of A Side and B Side was still important even though the medium no longer needed such categorization. Lonely Place ending as it did, provided the perfect sense of "End of Part One" that the album needed.

Ian - June 15/09