A Chromatic Scale
Introducing Blue Umbrella
Blue Umbrella is a new band. I’m in it. So are some talented musicians. We’re putting out an album. I’d like to tell you more about it.
You may have most noticed a few more posts from this Substack lately. Perhaps you wondered why I went quiet in the first place. Probably not, though; a symptom of our online lives is we often forget the people who aren’t in our feeds or inboxes. Which is part of why I spend a lot less time communicating this way, especially after my time in politics, I wanted to connect more with people in real life and think less about likes and clicks. On the other hand, it’s also a delightful surprise how often I run into subscribers who want to talk to me about my most recent post and encourage me to keep writing.
The other reason I’ve been quiet here is that I was busy making noise in real life. Over the last year and a half, I’ve been working with a group of friends on a new project, Blue Umbrella. I’m excited to announce we’ve just sent our new album, Recklessly Yours, off to the presses. We will be releasing a dozen songs on vinyl and on streaming platforms over the coming weeks.
I started writing songs in my early twenties and used to do the occasional performance, sometimes solo, sometimes with friends. I had hopes back then to make a record, but medicine, kids, politics - the joys and challenges of a full life - pushed that out of the way. A couple of years ago, I turned 49. Being pretty good at math, I realized what was coming next and decided that, despite the rust, it was finally time.
A Look Under the Umbrella
Fortunately, I had some friends, old and new, who had never stopped playing music and were up for the challenge of a new project.
Tyson McShane is one of my best and oldest friends, and a former bandmate from university days. He’s had an international career as the frontman for Slow Down Molasses and plays bass with Blue Umbrella. Luke Ryalls, fronted with the Fjords and released a solo album, The City, is an incredible guitarist and singer. For the first few months we played with Charles Lemire, another old friend and drummer for Saskatoon bands Runway, Blue Fantasy, etc. The etc. caught up with him, and he decided to leave the group, but not before contributing driving drums on the first four tracks we recorded.
At that time, Sam Corbett was already hard at work producing the album. He’d previously produced Ellen Froese’s album For Each Flower Growing and his own ridiculously good record, NUTANA. When Charles moved on, Sam also stepped in on drums. Seeing as he toured the world as drummer for the Sheepdogs for twenty years, that was light work for him and a great addition to Blue Umbrella. He dove into the production and the playing, coming up with ideas for arrangements and adding various great performances on percussion, keys and vocals.
We were recently joined by Burke Barlow, formerly of Deep Dark Woods, who recorded pedal steel for a few tracks and will be a part of the live shows. The album also includes contributions from Saskatoon singer-songwriter Ellen Froese on vocals, a feature with up-and-coming songwriter Lachlan Neville, a non-political guest performance from MLA Meara Conway on cello, and Barrett Ross of Dump Babes on organ and synth. Barrett also engineered and mixed the recording at Rec Hall Studios.
A friend referred to us the other day as a Saskatchewan-famous dad rock supergroup. I’ll take it. The regular band is all busy dads, which means finding time to rehearse and record can be a challenge. Luckily, everyone’s experience and talent has meant for a set of songs that came together quickly and, in my unbiased opinion, sound pretty terrific.
Recklessly Yours
The songs on Recklessly Yours are probably best described as Canadian folk-rock. The name Blue Umbrella comes from a 1975 song by John Prine. It’s one of my all-time favourite songs, and a nod to Prine’s influence on my songwriting and composition. The contributing musicians brought their wide range of influences and well-developed styles to the arrangements, resulting in a collection of songs that range from sweet and simple acoustic to hooky, driving rock. The record consists of ten Blue Umbrella originals and two deep cut Canadian covers from the Hip and Leonard Cohen.
The album is now ready for pre-order over on bandcamp. We’ll be rolling out a couple of singles over the next few weeks. The full album is slated to be available online when we have records in hand on July 1st.
The first single, Ignorance, will be released this coming Monday, but here’s an exclusive early listen for A Larger Scale subscribers: Song 1 - Ignorance.
Playing with all of these incredible musicians has been so fun and I’m proud of what we’ve put together. I hope a lot of people will hear it. For that reason, I’ll be posting here, on Instagram and on Facebook. I’m going to try to keep perspective in this, not get too caught up in reaction and reach, but I’ll be as widely as I can without worrying too much about the metrics.
So what does this mean for A Larger Scale? Well, I haven’t quit my day job. I’ll still be practicing medicine and paying attention to the politics of health. You can expect the frequency of those posts to increase. It’s just that now there will be some Blue Umbrella content in the mix. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
I like it! Very Gord Downy of you and so Canadian! All the best Ryan.
Congratulations! Can’t wait to hear some more.