Celebrating One Year of "Uncertain Country"

Reflections from Tony Dekker on the creation of the album.

Hello and welcome to this instalment of ‘I Tried To Reach You.’ 

This weekend marks the 1st anniversary of the release of our album ‘Uncertain Country’ so this post is a bit of a note about its creation.  

It’s hard to know exactly when the writing and recording for ‘Uncertain Country’ started since we shifted gears on its direction so many times. It felt like we were making demos, but the demos were turning out really well, and as we worked on them they eventually became the album. The idea initially was to explore the northern shore of Lake Superior, tapping into and absorbing some of the mythology of the area and generally being inspired by the natural beauty of that part of the world. 

That’s where the seeds were really planted. There were two collaborators who were involved from that first seed to the final record, videographer Adam CK Vollick, a friend and neighbour who also happened to be an incredible photographer, cinematographer and storyteller. He reintroduced me to the producer and engineer Joe Lapinski, who I actually knew and remembered from my high school band days in the Niagara Region. We bonded quickly through talks of location and field recordings and set out to make an angular, edgy, atmospheric folk album set in some of the remote areas of northwestern Ontario, in the month of July 2019. 

That was meant to be a reconnaissance mission in the area, and the first of many trips to the Thunder Bay area, to start a meaningful connection and create the spark that would lead to reflecting some of that landscape back into the music. Working on songs through the fall and winter, we set up an initial demo session for the end of March 2020, with the intention of going back to Superior to do more recording once the weather allowed us to return.

As we know now, March 2020 was an ill-fated month, and as we got closer to the end of March it became clear that the world was going into lockdown in response to the pandemic which was then upon us. We were supposed to finish the first sessions just before leaving for a European tour in April 2020.
Of course, all of those plans were put on hold indefinitely as we were confined to our homes for many long months.

We finally got together a small group of musicians, along with Adam and Joe, for a socially-distanced demo recording session at the Oddfellows Hall in St. Catharines, Ontario, in September of 2020. The lockdown restrictions were easing up and it looked like it was all going to be behind us soon (that was not the case). From those first sessions in September 2020 we got the basic tracks for the first two songs on the album, ‘Uncertain Country’ and ‘When The Storm Has Passed.’

Very little was added to or taken away from those initial tracks, and I think the incredible energy of being able to play music in a room together again after a six-month hiatus shone through in those tracks.  At that point, we were not making an edgy folk record anymore, we were making sounds that felt cathartic and comforting. And I think that translated into leaning into the guitar, bass and drums combo, playing electric guitars, and maybe tapping into the early 90’s alt and college rock sound of my teen years. Even though we weren’t yet committed to making a record, it felt like we were making music that was a kind of salve or balm in the face of what was going on in the world at that moment.  

Those kinds of sessions continued for the next two years. In between lockdowns, and the subsequent scary waves of the virus variants, we would take over the big empty spaces that were vacant because of the restrictions on gatherings. I think that some of those places, like the historic chapel and wooden barn at Ball’s Falls in Jordan Station, Ontario were happy to have us in after being closed to the public for so many months. The Silver Spire church in St. Catharines was also a really important space for us, where we recorded a number of the vocal tracks, acoustic tracks, a string quartet, and eventually a full band session that yielded the songs ‘Promise Of Spring’ and ‘Quiet Before The Storm.’ 

It became clear by the beginning of 2022 that we were starting to have an album on our hands. I had some ideas for a few songs to have a group vocal on them, and Joe said he knew exactly who to call – a Niagara women’s choir called Minuscule, led by the talented singer, arranger, and songwriter Laurel Minnes. Laurel came in and not only wrote the vocal arrangements for ‘Moonlight, Stay Above’ and ‘Respect For All Living Things’ but also assembled her choir and recorded with us for those songs.

It still gives me goosebumps to think about those voices contributing to the comforting aspects of those songs. Especially on ‘Moonlight’ which in some ways is about the complicated relationship that some of us have with loneliness – and it is a lonely-sounding song – the choir takes it to an uplifting place and creates a net which catches and cradles those lonely feelings. It wasn’t random to include whistling at the end. Whistling is usually a solitary act, but in this context, it’s counterbalanced by Laurel’s enveloping choral arrangement and choir.

So we worked with our existing tracks as if they were clay, adding and taking away from the form, sending notes back and forth remotely a lot of the time, and really taking the time to think about what the songs were asking for. Although they were recorded in a lot of different locations over an extended period of time, it felt like there was a thread running through them – from the initial inspiration of the natural world to rediscovering the joy of musicians singing and playing in a room together, and yet also meditating on the isolation and collective anxiety of world in crisis. 

Our ‘deluxe’ version of the album released late last year includes acoustic versions of some of the songs, which I think makes for an enlightening contrast to some of the more layered tracks on the album. I’ve always thought that the mark of a good song is that it holds its own when scaled back to its basic parts, which in this case are guitar and vocals. I recorded a cover version years ago of Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Carefree Highway’ for the Prayer Of The Woods solo album which I think is a great example of that. Take away the orchestra, and all of the bells and whistles, and it is still devastatingly beautiful. 

One last note about the album’s artwork. I enlisted the help of Niagara artist Geoff Farnsworth, also at Adam’s suggestion, and was sending him the demos, lyrics, and potential album titles as they were in progress. We settled on a painting based on some sketches that he created during a trip to northern Ontario. I instantly identified with the central image of the tree, with its roots growing into the rock at the edge of the water, and its ability to bend without breaking in the harsh climate. I love that as a metaphor, and the image was augmented by one of Adam’s photographs of Lake Superior from that initial trip in 2019.

I feel like there’s a lot more I could dig into here about the creation of the songs, so maybe I’ll get into a song-by-song breakdown of the album in a future post? For now, though, I want to say thank you and hello (!) to our new subscribers and also to everyone who has been along for the ride, or joined up at some point, over the last 20+ years. 

More soon. -Tony.

UPCOMING TOUR DATES

May 3: Galt, ON – Farm League Brewing – SOLD OUT

May 24: Tweed, ON – Marble Arts Centre 

May 25: Bancroft, ON – The Village Playhouse

May 26: Wakefield, QC – Centre Wakefield La Pêche, Gwen Shea Hall

May 31: Ottawa, ON – Red Bird Live – SOLD OUT

June 1: Ottawa, ON – Red Bird Live – SOLD OUT

June 2: Ottawa, ON – Red Bird Live – SOLD OUT

June 20: Windsor, ON – Meteor Bar 

June 21: Windsor, ON – Meteor Bar

July 14: Durham, ON – Four Winds Music Fest

August 9: Madison, WI – Sessions at McPike Park

August 11:  Louisville, KY – The Whirling Tiger