Corin Raymond: 9th IMA Alt. Country Album/Story Song Nominee

THE INDEPENDENT MUSIC AWARDS
Nominee Spotlight- ALT. COUNTRY ALBUM/STORY SONG

VOTE NOW FOR CORIN RAYMOND IN THE 9th IMA VOX POP POLL.
- Alt. Country Album
- Story Song

BAND NAME: Corin Raymond

WEB SITE: www.corinraymond.com, www.myspace.com/corinraymond

SIGNED OR SELF-RELEASED? Self-Released

NAME OF LABEL: Independent

HOMEBASE/COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Toronto, ON Canada

GENRES THAT BEST DESCRIBE YOUR MUSIC: Alt. Country, Classic Country, Singer/Songwriter, Folk

ALBUM NOMINATED SONG IS ON/NOMINATED ALBUM: There Will Always Be A Small Time

ARTISTS ON THIS TRACK/ALBUM: Corin Raymond with Sean Cotton, Brian Kobayakawa, Jerome Godboo, Chris Bartos, Gary Craig, Derek Downham, Treasa Levasseur, Joe Phillips, and Marc Roy.

WHERE WAS THIS ALBUM RECORDED? The Rogue Studios in Toronto, Canada.

WHAT’S GOING ON IN THIS STORY (“BLUE MERMAID DRESS”)? This is a memory song. The story takes place in the mind of the narrator on a sleepless night. His thoughts slip back in time sixteen years and the pieces of the story are what he remembers, between the hours of 4 and 5 in the morning (‘the hours that memories keep’), of a particular summer, a half-forgotten time, the girl he loved then, and her blue mermaid dress.

DESCRIBE THE INSPIRATION FOR THIS TRACK: I wrote most of this song on the night of November 23rd, 2006. I remember the exact date for a few reasons. First, it’s my birthday, and I had bought myself the gift of Tom Waits’ new record, Orphans, which was released the day before, on November 22nd. I lay in the dark and listened to the whole thing– I mainlined all 56 tracks… it was very late when the third CD stopped spinning, and I was so filled with pictures, impressions, and beautiful abstractions that I picked up my guitar and sat in the kitchen and started singing, and as I sang the words for the song ‘Blue Mermaid Dress’ started rising up, and with them the story of a long-gone summertime. So the idea was sparked because I was wide awake and full of the latest Tom Waits, but the song wound up serving as a little time machine.

IS IT BIOGRAPHICAL? Oh yeah.

DO YOU HAVE VERSIONS WITH A DIFFERENT RESOLUTION? The thing about this story is that it doesn’t resolve. ‘Not even the band knows how this one will end… where you are now I can’t even guess… but I remember you in your blue mermaid dress…’ There is only the one version of the story, the one in the recording you hear, and it’s the version that would only get told that late at night. The places your brain goes when you can’t sleep… if it’d been dreamed up in the daylight it would be a different thing entirely.

NAME SOME OF YOUR FAVE STORY SONGS & WHY THEY RESONATE: ‘Highway Patrolman’ by Bruce Springsteen… Springsteen’s got so many great story songs (‘Racing In The Street!!’), but this one comes to mind first, just because it’s such a great STORY, in the traditional sense of the word. He sets the scene, he gets you absorbed in the lives of these people he’s telling you about, and the ending is unforgettable… I love story songs that cause little movies to bloom in your mind. It makes perfect sense that Sean Penn made a film based on this song.

‘Boy Named Sue’ by Shel Siverstein. Shel Silverstein was such a great storyteller. I grew up with the stories in his poems and discovered the songs later, so I was already addicted. Almost every one of his tunes tells a story, and they’re all outlandish and hilarious. You can tell he was having a helluva lot of fun writing those. I love hearing a story so entertaining that you can’t help but feel the writer was giggling all the way.

Tom Waits’ ‘The Eyeball Kid’ comes to mind. There’s a story so joyous and absurd it reminds me of something Shel Silverstein would have illustrated– cackling as he did it… songs like that remind me of how much fun there is to be had. A lot of my favourite story songs are by Tom Waits. There are too many to name, but ‘Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis’ is one of my favourites. I just love how natural it is, how conversational. That gal is just talkin’ in that letter, and it’s a little short story, with memories, dreams, and lies all mixed up together. It’s the way our minds really work. I love that song. I read somewhere that the story she’s making up in the song was originally an idea for a movie script. I don’t know if that’s true but it makes perfect sense. Tom Waits often says that he writes ‘movies for the ears’. I guess that’s why I like his stories so much.

I’ve gotta stop, I’ve gotta get out of here, but it’s hard not to mention Leonard Cohen’s ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ before I go, which is another memory song… ‘Christmas Card’ is one of those too– they’re both letters to somebody, they both slip into the past and come back to the present… I love that. My song ‘Blue Mermaid Dress’ steals back in time the same way… there’s definitely echoes of ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ there. I love the way ‘Christmas Card’ and ‘Raincoat’ both start with addresses… ‘…New York is cold but I like where I’m living… there’s music on Clinton St. all through the evening…’ and ‘Charlie I’m pregnant… livin’ on 9th St… right above a dirty bookstore.. off Euclid Avenue…’ All my favourite story songs place you somewhere right off the hop… they’ve got a ‘You Are Here’ clue, every one of them.

‘Me and Bobby McGee,’ by Kristofferson; ‘Unwed Fathers,’ by John Prine; ‘Desperadoes Waiting For A Train,’ by Guy Clark, for the same reasons listed above. I could go on forever.

WHY DID YOU SELECT THIS SONG TO SUBMIT TO THE IMAS? The song seemed to stand on its own. I have other songs that tell stories, and other songs which occupy their own emotional real estate, but I have no substitute for ‘Blue Mermaid Dress.’ The reaction from fans has been so strong to this particular song– it seems to evoke the first-loves and forgotten-summers hiding in each listener. It’s raw and vulnerable and so specific in its details that it seemed to have the potential of holding something special for a strange audience. Again, it’s hard to choose songs for things like this, and you never really know what’s going to resonate with anybody.

WHAT’S “THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A SMALL TIME” ABOUT? The song ‘There Will Always Be A Small Time’ is about the ways the music industry has changed in recent years, and the cottage industry that it’s becoming, especially for songwriters and roots musicians. Some of the best songs written today are being sold out of the trunks of cars by troubadours on the road. I wanted to give the ’small time’– as I see it today– a new coat of paint. It’s a celebration of the new possibilities, the realities, the triumphs, and of the business at a grass roots level– and of the communities that nurture real music. It’s also a song about having a plain old good time– it’s a party song– the kind of good time that musicians have before they hit the ‘mid-time’… if you’d like to read the forward I wrote for the album’s liner notes, that’ll tell you exactly how I feel about the Small Time. You can find it on the CDBaby page. Just scroll down to the Album Notes… www.cdbaby.com/cd/corinraymond

WHY DID YOU SELECT THIS TRACK TO SUBMIT TO THE IMAs? I thought it was a solid, well-crafted song with a lot of joy and verve in it, and that it was as good an ambassador as any, as far as representing the whole record. It’s hard to choose those things. There are always songs that might get people’s attention quicker, but those songs don’t necessarily contain the DNA of the album the way others do. You could take the song ‘There Will Always Be A Small Time’, and with the right equipment you could clone the whole album from that tune. Of course that’s just a theory.

WHAT/ IF ANY UNUSUAL INSTRUMENTS, SONG STRUCTURE/WRITING TECHNIQUE, RECORDING METHOD DID YOU USE FOR THIS ALBUM? Sam Ferrara plays three slinkies, welded together, on ‘I Wish I Was In Love’. That might be a first. Sam also plays a cheese grater and sandpaper on ‘Better Him Than Me’. Mouth harp makes a comeback on ‘Paid To Party’. I wasn’t expecting to use timpani, but they came in handy on ‘Leftover Tears’. On the same track we used an orchestral crash cymbal at the climax of the song . You don’t hear that much in acoustic music. For the most part the whole album was recorded live off the floor with some appropriate colours added later.

As far as the writing goes, the songs dictated themselves. I find the lyric the hardest thing to be satisfied with and some of them took years to finish. The songs on this album are paying homage to various styles of music– ‘I Wish I Was In Love’ is a soul tune, ‘The Lonely One’ is something Roy Orbison might have recorded. I wanted to do justice, in the writing of each song, to the particular musical/emotional real estate it occupied. I get inspired by titles a lot… ‘There Will Always Be A Small Time’… ‘Leftover Tears’… ‘Better Him Than Me’… ‘Paid To Party’. Those were all ideas I thought were good titles, and when you have a good title it puts you in a brokering position– in the writing of the song you’re just trying to get the best deal for that title that you can. You don’t want to let a good title down.

James Paul engineered this record. He runs The Rogue Studios here in Toronto. The Rogue is like The Millennium Falcon– you know, ‘the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy’. Some studios are more like The Starship Enterprise. The Rogue lives up to its name– it’s a pirate vessel. James Paul has fantastic gear but he does things with that gear you wouldn’t think were possible. I was right there in the cockpit with him. I don’t know what he did when things got turbulent, but he always did the right thing. I only know we survived and that he piloted us to a record on which I love every moment.

WHERE IS YOUR MUSIC AVAILABLE? At all shows, on CD Baby, and soon on iTunes and other standard digital distribution sites.

DID FANS HELP FUND THIS PROJECT? Yes, they funded a third of the total budget by buying it in advance. The other two thirds were from an angel investor, and from an inheritance I received from my grandmother (my mother’s mother), to whom the album is dedicated.

DESCRIBE YOUR AUDIENCE: My audience are discerning listeners, the kind of people who choose their DJs carefully and are their own DJs the rest of the time. My audience are people for whom music– especially a good song and a good lyric– is a life-changing thing. These are people who connect and commune with themselves through music, who celebrate with music, and who like it joyous and honest. They want their favourite songs performed with abandon. I think they’re probably a lot like me. They like to dance but they come to music more for listening than for dancing. They use songs to illuminate their secret selves or to put words to things there were previously no words for. I think they’re like me also in the way music inspires them at every level of their lives. Music is there for them when they want to party, and it’s there for them when things fall apart.

WHAT MAKES YOUR FANS UNIQUE? I suppose their individual tastes make them unique. I don’t know. They tend to be good tippers.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE PLACES TO PLAY? I’ve had house gigs that have been as good to me as any girlfriends. The Cameron House here in Toronto, where I still play on Thursdays– The Tranzac, also in Toronto, where I used to play and where I formed my current band. I love playing in Australia, where I’ve toured twice with my duo The Undesirables. I’ve played a lot of fantastic festivals. Some absolutely magical house concerts. Killer venues in various cities. One of the great things about this job is that every gig is unique, so that’s a tough question. My favourite places to play are those places where music is King, where the audience who I described above have gathered for the express purpose of being moved and entertained; places where the money is good and the crowd is better than the money. I read that when Sam Cooke was four years old he used to go out in the back yard and make a pile of sticks and sing to the sticks. I get that. I love singing that much. I’m gonna leave you with that one.

WHAT HAS BEEN THE BAND’S MOST MEMORABLE ACHIEVEMENT TO DATE? My most memorable achievement was simply the year of 2009, because I came out with two records– There Will Always Be A Small Time, my solo album, and Travelling Show, by my duo The Undesirables– both of which I’m equally proud. They are the kind of albums I was dreaming about making when I was a teenager– they’re both the kind of albums I want to listen to, the kind I’m inspired by. Collectively they’re the best work I’ve done so far on this planet and they were both made– and released– last year.

WHAT’S IN THE WORKS FOR 2010? Some touring in Holland and Germany, hopefully a little Texas and Arkansas. Some festivals in Canada and some touring in the western provinces. A lot of writing and preparing for the next couple records.

FINISH THIS SENTENCE: THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IS… a-changin’ fast.

WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF SUCCESS? To make a decent living doing a job which nobody on earth could step up and take my place doing; to know that people are singing my songs in their living rooms and around their campfires, not to mention that artists I respect are putting my songs on their records; to watch my dreams coming true and to keep dreaming; to have never lost the original impulse I had to do this in the first place; to live out loud and to celebrate my highest highs and lowest lows, often in the same song; to have a job which never requires me to comb my hair… that’s pretty good right there.

WHAT’S ON YOUR IPOD THAT WOULD SURPRISE YOUR FANS? What would surprise my fans is that I don’t have an iPod. Or a cellphone. I don’t like CDs as a format but I have too many of them anyway. I still listen to cassettes!! I’ve got a record player in the kitchen. It might surprise my fans to find so much classic Van Halen in there, or the Broadway cast album from Guys and Dolls… or Night Flight To Venus, by Boney M… but I wouldn’t even admit to that.

NAME SOME ARTISTS YOU’RE CHAMPIONING: Jonathan Byrd, C.R. Avery, Raghu Lokanathan, Jaxon Haldane (The D. Rangers), Hoots and Hellmouth, Scott Nolan, A.G. Olmstead, Claire Jenkins, Scott Cook, Doug Norquay, Jack Marks, Matt Epp, Andrew Neville and The Poor Choices, and Romi Mayes. There are many more but those are the ones that pop to mind.