We owe a lot to the band Elim Hall for helping this happen.
Elim Hall was a tremendously inventive and awesome band from Ontario, who got a deal with Reunion in the mid 80's. They did their one and only big-label album at Le Studio in Quebec (which must have been a dream come true!!). They often performed at festival gigs with us, and we became big fans of their music and friends as well.
When they were on a trip down to Reunion Records, one of the guys in the band gave a copy of our Two Worlds album to one of the top label execs, urging them to give it a serious listen.
I'm quite sure their recommendation went along way towards Reunion getting in touch with us.
Elim Hall was such an over-qualified, under-rated band. They wrote and performed in a very different way than the Awakening, but they definitely inspired a lot of our later material. They were one of the first bands we knew who did songs in 6/4 time, and thus we started implementing similar rhythmic feels.
They were Ross Teeple on bass and lead vocals, Glen Teeple on guitars and BG's, and Steve Marsh on drums and vocals. Steve wrote most, if not all of their lyrics.
For those of you reading this who know our history, you will know that Glen and Steve ending up playing in the band One Hundred Days in 1996, just in time for the writing and recording of the "Feels Like Love" album. (For those reading who do NOT know our history - One Hundred Days was a band Andy and I started years after The Awakening disbanded. We started out as a 4 piece, became a trio, then got Glen and Steve in the band, and then ended off finally with a modern-rock power quartet in 1998-2000.)
It was such a tragedy when Steve Marsh died of cancer in 1996. He was a great man, a very creative guy, and had one of the most distinctive rhythmic feels of any drummer I've ever played with.
So with that said... We owed a debt to Elim Hall for helping us get some major label attention.
There was a ground swell of Ontario bands getting deals at this same time. Another great band called The Level Heads also had albums and tours on the go. It was a very creative time to be in our seemingly insignificant geographical area!
Ian - June 10/09
Hey, very interesting stuff. Is the big-label Elim Hall album hard to track down? Le Studio must've been way cool; makes me think of the "Limelight" video.
ReplyDeleteI must say "Again," "Wrestling in the Jungle," "Don't Wait for Me," and "Never Say Goodbye" never let me down. Was listening to the album earlier and thinking how surreal it is to be able to reach out, thanks to the Internet, to the rock star behind this classic I've been listening to for nearly 21 years. God bless technology.
Do you happen to have any live Awakening recordings? I'd love to hear a show, no matter how raw the mix, since I never got to see you guys play live. One day I hope to hear the "lost album" too.
In any event, I am really enjoying the posts. Keep 'em coming. I seem to recall reading here or somewhere else that you're on Facebook - I plan on looking you up there.
Best,
Steve (a.k.a. Ernie)
HI Steve! Thanks for the awesome comments. It means a lot, it really does. Look me up on Facebook for sure.
ReplyDeleteI DO have live recordings kicking around, but I'm in the process of trying to clean up some of the awful audio. Many of these tapes were recorded right on stage with a walkman, so fidelity is brutal. I wish I had something that truly represented what we were like live, but thus far, I haven't been able to dig anything up.
I found something recently that is hilarious because the performances are so painfully bad!! I'm not sure the other guys would like stuff like this out in the open.
I'm going to get in touch with everybody and see how they feel about me re-mixing The Lost Album and some un-earthed live stuff and bonus tracks. There is tons of stuff that could be put together, but we all have lives to live and money to make, so spending acres of time on something like this is not really feasible. I'm writing all of these blog entries because it's really been on my mind lately, and I want to get it all out while I'm in the mood!
Enjoy reading. I just uploaded a long posting about the Into Thy Hands album. More to come, but I'm not young anymore and I have to get more than 4 hours of sleep to function in this world!!
Cheers and thanks again.
Ian
Ian, I've got recordings and live footage and also some radio interviews... let's get together and get some of this stuff up...
ReplyDeleteHey - if I can help at all let me know ... Big Al
ReplyDeleteThis is so cool to read. In my collection of music I always had The Awakening, elim Hall and Level Heads in the same "play list". I also had the band, Justus, in there as well.
ReplyDeleteAny plans to re-release The Awakening albums on CD or at least release them to Spotify? I would love hear them again!