Artwork: Ghost and Lady by Ehren Salazar

About the song…

It is hard to believe, but with Our Escape Plan Was Simple, A Year in Song is complete. Time flies. This year, in particular, seems to have disappeared with a frightening and unforgiving speed.

This project, with an update approximately every four weeks, served to punctuate the passage of time, leaving distinct and regular markers along an otherwise elastic period. As producers of this work, it is pretty wild to look back and reimagine who we were when we were working on these songs. I hope that you can experience something similar as listeners.

Speaking of time flying, it was in 2002, seven years ago, that I spent a month travelling up to the Yukon and back again with my girlfriend at the time. It was a powerful trip. The landscape was imposing, the distances were vast, and, on a personal level, the two of us were faced with my impending departure to Toronto, leaving the future of our relationship in question. So yeah… powerful stuff.

This is one of the first songs I wrote for The Nautical Miles, and one that I am, to this day, quite proud of. I feel that I was able to capture the majesty, intensity, joy, and agony of that trip. Be that as it may, the song, originally clocking in at over 10 mins, was a challenge for us to pull off in any live or recorded scenario and soon became a running joke for the band. Whenever we couldn’t decide what to play during a set someone would suggest Escape Plan, eliciting chuckles from the rest of us. When we would be rallying ourselves during the break at a disastrous gig, dreading the return to the stage, someone would pipe in with, “Let’s just play Escape Plan. That’ll take up the entire next set.” Again chuckles.

And so it is with great pleasure and more than a little bit of self-congratulation that we present to you a fully realized version of Our Escape Plan Was Simple, arranged by Lucas and Tim and featuring performances by Cris Derksenn (cello), Kathleen Nisbet (violin) and Stephanie Miletic (viola). Pared it down to a neat 8 minutes, seven years in the making, the much maligned Our Escpae Plan Was Simple finally has its day.

What a way to end an amazing year. Enjoy.

About the artwork…

Ehren Salazar is a gifted visual artist whose drawings I find to be breathtakingly beautiful. He also works selflessly to create affordable and accessible cultural spaces in a city bereft of cultural spaces. Whether he is booking a gallery, curating an animation festival, or working the bar at an over-capacity noise show, he is quitely, assuredly, and gracefully building a community around Little Mountain Studios that this city’s young artists have come to depend on. Thanks Ehren!

I was taken aback by the piece that Ehren created for this song. Quite frankly, I was expecting a landscape painting; however, once the initial shock had subsided I was shocked again in realizing that, in fact, Ghost and a Lady is the perfect companion for Our Escape Plan Was Simple, re-framing the song for me, and reminding me what it is really all about. I think I had forgotten.

You can see more of Ehren’s work here.

Artwork: A Stronger Word for Love, by Jennifer Van de Pol and Adrian Robertshaw

About the song…

In 2006 we released an album called Tell me again how this place got its name. The last track on that record is Accidentals, Exotics and Escapes. The lyrics are taken from a poem by Don McKay by the same name, from his collection of poetry Birding, or Desire. I have been a huge fan of Don McKay ever since his work appeared on the list of required reading for my Environmental Writing course in the first year of my undergrad. That was also the year that I started writing songs for Corbin Murdoch and the Nautical Miles. I was wanting to write songs quicker than I was able to produce lyrics (a problem that I still face today), and so I turned to the art of interpretation. I wrote to him asking for his permission to use the song on our record, and he very graciously agreed.

In my last year of university, I was writing my honours paper on songwriting as an ecological process. I read McKay’s Deactivated West 100 as part of my literature review for this project. Not wanting to spend my summer writing essays, I convinced my advisor to let me write songs about the books I was reading, instead of writing papers.

A Stronger Word For Love is the song I wrote in response to Deactivated West 100.

Originally a Pan Pan song, we asked Chris Suen one of Vancouver’s finest banjo pickers, to join us in the studio to add his inimitable flare to the tune. Chris plays in the smoking hot, old-tyme band Shout! White Dragon. Jesse Gander, our perenial studio engineer, is on back ups. We knocked this one off in an hour or so. It was a great time.

About the artwork…

This piece was created by two of the loveliest people I know, Jennifer Van de Pol and Adrian Robertshaw. Jenn and Adrian lived in Vancouver for many years, but have recently moved to the hamlet of Cedar, BC on Vancouver Island where they have opened Strathcona Press. If you find yourself on the island, it is definitely worth your time to look them up. They recently published a book of Jenn’s writings and drawings entitled Adagio. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

I gave Adrian and Jenn my copy of Deavtivated West 100 when they traveled to Nepal and India last year, so it is fitting that they produced the artwork for this month’s song. It is an honour to have them involved.

Check out more of their work here:

jvandepol.com
adrianfilm.com

About the song…

I often feel like a bit of an inactive activist. The sentiment is there, but not necessarily the follow through. I tell myself that it is not for lack of passion, but rather for lack of an organized and meaningful movement to become involved with. I understand that this is a poor excuse and a self fulfilling prophecy, but, nevertheless, I am more often than not saddled with feelings of apathy in matters of political engagement.

I think it has a lot to do with growing older and realizing that the things you wanted so desperately and fought so hard for when you were younger may not ever come to be, or, and perhaps even more disconcerting, may not be things you really want anymore anyway. It is a disorienting realization and one that I see happening more and more in myself and in my friends. In our personal, political and romantic lives, we seem to not really know what to do next.

And so this is our anthem. We may not know what comes next, but we’ll keep what’s left of the fire in our hearts burning until we figure it out. In the meantime, we’ve got each other.

This song is a Wartime Lovesong outake, that I ended up giving to Pan Pan, an a capella trio that existed for about 10 months in 2007/2008. Pan Pan was Lyndsay Poaps, Melisa Devost, and myself. We reunited to record Anthems for A Year In Song.

Pan Pan is dead. Long live Pan Pan!

About the artwork…

Denise Higginson is a visual artist and designer from Vancouver. A graduate from Emily Carr, Denise currently works with me at The Vancouver East Cultural Centre as the design and web coordinator.

Her triptych, I Come From a Long Line of House Cleaners, is, somehow, the perfect complement to Anthems. For me, it is a breathtakingly beautiful illustration of the parts of our lives that we choose to overlook. It is the backdrop to our daydreamings. It is the things that we occupy ourselves with while we wait to make good on the promises we’ve made to ourselves.

To listen to the other A Year in Song tracks, click on the image at the top of the post or on the navigation arrows (< >) .

About the song…

This is a very old Corbin Murdoch and the Nautical Miles song. It has been kicking around in my brain for years now, performed only a handful of times, never at a public show. I found myself all alone in the studio this month so I decided to record a solo version of it on my friend’s classical guitar.

There is not too much of a story behind this one. I honestly can’t even remember writing it. Thinking back, it confuses me to even pin it down to any particular chapter in my life. I do know that over the years it has stuck with me and that I’ve always had a particular fondness for it. I’ve always found it to be an incredibly relaxing, comforting song to sing.

I am pleased to finally have the opportunity to share it with you.

About the artwork…

Tom Bull is a visual artist from England, originally from Shoreham, West Sussex. I came to know him during his time spent in Vancouver over the last few years.

Like The Ocean is a Thief, I’ve always found Tom’s landscapes to be strangely comforting. On his website, he has the following to say about his work:

“My interest in painting is derived from having encountered the quietness and grace of 18th-century Japanese landscape painting.
I endeavor to paint with a muted form of expression. Huts on stilts, raised walkways, A-frames, ladders and billboards litter the fictitious landscapes. They are traces of human existence (human idiosyncrasy), but also act as technical devices, making the landscape somehow more tangible.”

Check out more of Tom’s paintings here.

Renaissance man that he is, he has recently started a band. They are called The Ramshackle Union Band. You can check them out here.

To listen to the other A Year in Song tracks, click on the image at the top of the post or on the navigation arrows (< >) .

Artwork: Cabin, by Kate Zisman

About the song…

100 Mile House is a song that I wrote while I was working in Oppenheimer Park on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It was a great job. Oppenheimer is known as the “living room of the Downtown Eastside”, a gathering place for the homeless and underhoused.  I was working for the local community centre, a dry facility, and was charged with bringing recreational programming to those who could not access the centre because of their addictions.

One of the best parts of the job was hearing people’s stories. Some were hilarious, some were tragic. Each taught me something new about the city I lived in and its residents.

Vancouver is often trumpeted as one of the greatest cities in the world. Tourism BC sells our city to the world with imagery that can only be described as ecological pornography. The BC Liberals have even gone so far as to give our province the unfortunate slogan “The Best Place on Earth”. Our adolescent city on the lip of the Pacific Rim is meant to be an urban utopia; the envy of everyone who visits.

What I learned from hanging out in the park and listening to people’s stories is that, for a large number of people, this is not the case. I spoke to dozens of people from small towns from all across BC and the rest of Canada who are stuck in Vancouver because this is where the cheap drugs are. Many wanted nothing more than to leave and to return home. For many, Vancouver is an extremely cruel place.

I’ll send this one out to my “Street Mum” Philo May. RIP.

100 Mile House features the beautiful vocal stylings of the inimitable Debra-Jean Creelman.

About the artwork…

Kate Zisman is the official visual artist of the Nautical Miles. Over the last six years she has created dozens of posters and images for the band. She created the cover of our 2006 record, Tell me again how this place got its name, and is also the mastermind behind our website, www.corbinmurdoch.com.

We owe her a lot of favours.

If you ever need illustrations, posters, album covers, or beautiful works of art for your walls, you can’t do better than Kate Beth Zisman. Track her down.  Doing so may just land you a record review.

Cabin is a transferred drawing based on photos she took in 100 Mile country.

You can see more of Kate’s work here.

To listen to the other A Year in Song tracks, click on the image at the top of the post or on the navigation arrows (< >) .

About the song…

Ever had one of those days when nothing is going your way? Unfortunate event compounded by unfortunate event until you are broken and blue? This song was born of one such day. I was feeling heartbroken and lonely , living out a blistering winter in a crowded little apartment in North York, Ontario. The apartment had a vicious little heating system that sapped all of the moisture from the air.

One particularly bleak day, nothing seemed to be going right. I will spare you the details. Wanting to take solace in the comfort of song I picked up my guitar and noticed that the bone-dry air in my apartment had caused it to split down the back seam. This was the final straw. I love that instrument, and to see it broken broke me. In a rage I started pounding away on the guitar until this song emerged.

Cracked instrument // broken heart.

While we were recording this song, Jesse asked me if it is about a girl or about a guitar. I told him that it is about a guitar. While we were re-mixing it a few weeks ago, he asked me again and I told him the opposite. I guess, in the end, I’m not really sure.

About the artwork…

Our friend Taylor Ashton drew this picture while he was hanging out in Winnipeg. I sent him the lyrics, he sent me back this image. Taylor plays in a wicked band called Fish & Bird with another friend of ours, Adam Iredale-Gray. Next time you see Taylor you should ask him which one is the fish and which one is the bird. He loves that question.

You can check out more of Taylor’s artwork here: http://taylorsdrawings.blogspot.com/

You can check out Fish & Bird here: http://fishandbird.ca/

To listen to the other A Year in Song tracks, click on the image at the top of the post or on the navigation arrows (< >) .

Artwork: Wartime Lovesong by Corbin Murdoch

About the song:

So we are cheating a little bit this month. Wartime Lovesong, is not a brand new song that we recorded with Jesse in one day. Rather, it is the title track of our new album, which is being released tomorrow (June 16th) on Jericho Beach Music.

The album, three years in the making, is a song cycle about war, family, love, and revolution, and how these notions are transfered and translated from generation to generation. It features a brass quintet, and back up vocals by Debra-Jean Creelman (who is singing on this track), Jess Hill, Melisa Devost, and Lyndsay Poaps.

Here are what some people have been saying about the album so far:

http://www.straight.com/article-227878/corbin-murdoch-nautical-miles

http://www.seemagazine.com/article/music/music-previews/murdoch0611/

We thought it would be silly not to post one of the songs from Wartime Lovesong this month. We are really proud of this record and hope that you will have the opportunity to hear it. If you are so inclined, you can purchase it here:

http://corbinmurdoch.bandcamp.com/

About the artwork:

The image that you see at the top of the post is a collage of old family photographs that I put together in photoshop. It serves as the cover of Wartime Lovesong.

To listen to the other A Year in Song tracks, click on the image at the top of the post or on the navigation arrows (< >) .

Artwork: The Woman with Many Faces, by Meagan Gartlan

About the song:

Last summer, I had the opportunity to travel around Europe playing shows with two other singer-songwriters– Melisa Devost and Sarah MacDougall. I was in 6 countries in 5 weeks: Greece, England, Sweden, Denmark, Poland and Germany. This song is an assemblage of some of the words that I put to paper during the trip.

Traveling as a tourist and as a working musician, I was able to meet all kinds of different people throughout Europe. I did so with gleeful enthusiasm. While people’s sympathies and struggles were all ones I recognized initially, I began to appreciate more and more that their political and historical contexts were radically different than my own.

The verses of this song is meant to be in conflict with the chorus. The chorus represents the simplicity and the euphoria of being a tourist, of meeting new people, of sitting in a cafe and watching pretty girls on bicycles ride by. The verses are an attempt to confuse this simplicity, revealing some of the cultural and political nuances I was able to glean during my time in the European Union.

Tim Tweedale, our slide guitar player, is on tour in Europe with Sarah Macdougall right now. Here’ s wishing them luck on the road!

About the artwork:

Our friend Meagan is a really amazing collage artist and animator. When I saw this image I was immediately reminded of this song. At first glance it is a strikingly beautiful portrait of a woman. When you spend a little time with it you realize the complexity of what you are looking at– much like what I’ve described above.

Here is how Meagan describes her work:
“Meagan cuts away at her time by making new pictures from old pictures.  Incorporating many books from various topics and decades she creates a current image that represents the issues of today. She loves the obscure and the ridiculous, but always keeps an anchor in reality.   To check out more of her work you can go to artistgartlan.carbonmade.com. View her animations at www.vimeo.com/2785071.”

Be sure to check out the animations. They rule.

To listen to the other A Year in Song tracks, click on the image at the top of the post or on the navigation arrows (< >) .

Artwork: Vancouver Special with Chain Link Fence, by Suzo Hickey

About the song:

Oh, and Samantha is a song that I wrote in August of 2007 during my brief stint as a prep cook at a popular Irish Pub in Vancouver.  I peeled hundreds of potatoes and carrots and rolled out acres and acres of pastry during my three weeks in the kitchen. It was a crappy job, no question, but there was one perk. The long hours of monotonous work allowed me to do lots of songwriting on the job. I would often spend my shifts composing verses in my head and then race home and figure them out on my guitar before they were forgotten.

Oh, and Samantha was written entirely in my head during a particularly grueling shift. It is partly inspired by some of the people who worked there at the time. They were lovely people, but I think a lot of them were harbouring  sadness- using their service industry jobs to get through periods in their lives that they hoped would soon be over. There seemed to be a lot of waiting for real life to begin. I suppose, at the time, the same was true for me.

Lucas Schuller is featured on the vibraphone.

About the artwork:

Suzo Hickey has been friend of the Nautical Miles for many years. She is an incredible painter who creates large, striking canvases.  Her latest work is a series of landscapes representing the Renfrew Heights neighbourhood on the eastern edge of the City of Vancouver. Vancouver Special with Chain Link Fence comes from this series.

Oh, and Samantha is a very sad song. It was written during an extremely lonely period in my life.  After working all day in the kitchen I would ride my bike home to the very neighbourhood that Suzo’s paintings depict. When I look at this painting I am reminded of the way that I felt that summer. I feel that it captures perfectly the way that the neighbourhoods we’ve lived in can come to represent the way we felt when we were living in them.

I find it very tragic, and very beautiful.

To listen to the other A Year in Song tracks, click on the image at the top of the post or on the navigation arrows (< >) .

Artwork: Jeff Mark (study), by Tyler Brett

About the song…

Fireblind goes out to Lucas, Tim, Simon, Dave, Pete, Dan, Kepler, Justin, Zack, Andrew, Alex, Rob, Luke, and Asif… my dearest friends. These are my tight bros from way back when. Some of the happiest moments of my life have been spent with these fine folk, in various assemblages, sharing memories, jokes, song and drink around the campfire.

Fireblind is a song about enjoying the comfort of friends, in particular old friends who have grown up beside you and who know you better than you know yourself. It is about never making the mistake of taking them for granted, for there is truly no substitute.

I am blessed to have so many dear friends, and am doubly lucky to have three of them in my band. Lucas, Simon and Tim, on top of being fine, fine musicians, are the best friends a fellow a could hope for. To my beloved Nautical Miles- thank you!

About the artwork…

Jeff Mark (study), was created by an amazing multi-media artist by the name of Tyler Brett. I have been a fan of Tyler’s work for a long time, and when we started this project I knew that I wanted to include a piece of his. When I saw this image, it reminded me immediately of summertime, drunken boating excursions with my dearest friends. We often end up looking a lot like Mr Mark. I asked Tyler if we could use this image for Fireblind, and he graciously agreed.

Tyler’s band, The Dept played the very first Corbin Murdoch and the Nautical Miles show, back in 2003. Tyler is a formidable talent. On top of The Dept, he is the co-founder of collaborative architecture project T&T, and the owner/operator of allcitizens.org and handmodel.ca. Next time you are in Bruno, Saskatchewan, be sure to drop by All Citizens and say hello.

www.tylerbrett.com

To listen to the other A Year in Song tracks, click on the image at the top of the post or on the navigation arrows (< >) .