A Backwards Glance @ The Big City Nights Band's first 4 albums, 2007-2009
Part 1 of a 5-part series
We were mainly active from 2005-2015, but we never stopped. Adulthood, work, my own drug problems, and geography (we all live in different cities now, me in Toronto, James in Hamilton, and Ryan in Brampton) has prevented us from getting together but when we finally do, after this COVID nightmare ends, we will be finishing vocals & bass on the long-delayed, long-awaited You’ve Come A Long Way, Maybe…a mammoth double album featuring forty (!) songs, 20 of which we did basic tracks for in late 2015 (I know, it’s insane that we haven’t finished this record yet but…like I said…life, man). I expect the album to be out either sometime in 2022 or, for sure, in 2023.
After that, we will most likely transition to writing and recording singles instead of full albums, due to the time constraints placed on us. So we could get together on a Saturday morning at James detached house in Hamilton (we are just waiting for COVID to end and for him to do some soundproofing and fix a basement issue that arose this winter), write a song that morning, record it over the afternoon, mix it and master it by the evening, then upload it to Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube. It will be our Single of the Month. A full year of this (and getting together once a month sounds totally feasible), and we’ll have a 12 track album (11 tracks if we miss one month) we can then compile, and upload to Bandcamp with a title, deleting the singles pages (though leaving them up on the other platforms). Bandcamp is the depository where we keep our full-length records. And though I have recorded a few albums without Ryan & James, I don’t want to do that anymore. So no more LPs like Mercy Among the Children (2011), High Hopes (2016), or Almost Awake (2016), the latter of which was done with my friend Jules on drums, who played on several songs on early albums like Born to Bar Band & A Steamroller Named Desire & Complete Lung Champions. Jules also played bass on “That Evil Beat,” the first song on Carry Me Ontario. Every song Jules played was made better by the sheer power, control, understanding of the dynamics of a song, studio mastery, etc that Jules had. So I have to extend my thanks for all of the work Jules did on so many BCN songs over the years, from 2006-2016. Drums, vocals, bass, synth. All of it. THANK U.
So on this post I’m gonna go back in this post and pick a song or nine from each album that I think still holds up or is notable for some other reason. (With Carry Me Ontario, almost the entire track listing is posted…I don’t do that with all our records. I just think that 2008’s A Steamroller Named Desire, 2009’s Carry Me Ontario, and Might Minutes (2010) are really consistent records. They set the bar. Chords for the Bored came close, but I don’t think it’s as consistent as those early 3 efforts.
SO. Without further ado…or is it adieu?
“Don’t Fuck With Me” from Born to Bar Band (2007)
James had not joined the band yet, but I think the chorus captures the kind of joyful noise, gang vocal, drunk yelling approach we took. You can hear Ryan prominently at the end, which is just the way I like it.
“Mathematics” from Born to Bar Band (2007)
This one doesn’t have Ryan or James, instead Brandon & Mitch from my other band Sleep for the Nightlife, but I’m adding it because it was the very first Big City Nights song. Again, gang vocal chorus, but it’s Brandon’s acoustic guitar solo @ the beginning that always catches me off guard and draws me into the tune. It also set the tone, lyrically, for the kind of band we were. Champions of nothing. Our old MySpace bio proclaimed the following: We knew we would never see fame or anything like it with this endeavour but, in the words of Robert Pollard, “we began making records anyway. Just to have them.” That’s right. Just to have them. Lord knows we have nothing else. Doomed to obscurity. Born to bar band. The chorus: Baby, I’ll be your law of averages.
And one last track from B2BB: “Wedding Day.” A paean to remaining single and a warning to a friend who was getting married (it didn’t last), I drummed this one, but I’m most proud of the “Wedding March” in the middle, performed on an acoustic plugged into my old Marshall 900.
“Be Mine This Xmas” Christmas single 2007.
Here’s a photo from the session. I’m mixing it and I’m tired. It was Nov 2007 and “Two Girls One Cup” had just captured the public’s full attention & horror.
Recorded @ our friend Aurora’s house. Emon on bass. Jessica & Andrew Fisher singing the chorus with me. James on drums & harmonica. You can hear him laughing and going “hooo!” from 1:00-1:01.
“Lets Go To Hell” from A Streamroller Named Desire (2008)
This was an unusually technical song, for us, not being in 4/4. I love the chorus. Jules on drums.
“Horseshoes” from A Streamroller Named Desire (2008)
Our first fully collaborative song and one I still love. That’s Mike Mikocic on the guitar solo. Ryan wrote the opening riff with what you hear, then James came in, then I came in. The way the song begins is exactly how we wrote it, jamming out of my Dad’s old warehouse on Torbram Street in Brampton (named because it goes from Toronto to Brampton…as I often would in subsequent years to make the songs on Carry Me Ontario, Deep Space Bistro, and Might Minutes, the latter of which has our best front-loaded run of 6 or 7 songs I fucking love.) But this was the first song written all together by
“Night Needles” from A Streamroller Named Desire (2008)
My first song written on piano.
“Hockey Night in Canada” from A Streamroller Named Desire (2008)
I love the ending. Pretty much the zenith of our gang vocal approach. After this, we had to learn to harmonize.
“The Fog (The Hitchhiker's Guide to Hitchhiking)” from A Streamroller Named Desire (2008)
“Health and Happiness” from A Streamroller Named Desire (2008)
I’m adding this one bcuz I’m proud of the fingerpicking and I love the ending when Ryan joins me.
“Sunshine City” from Complete Lung Champions (2009)
A staple of our live set, this song was us getting better at dynamics. The shots after each chorus to make the song more interesting. That’s drummer Jules saying “bass!” when Ryan starts playing bass. We left in in cuz I love it. A week a day and I can get away/and I never know what yer gonna say/but I like to think yr gonna stay/and we can wait we’re never gonna change
“Reena” from Complete Lung Champions (2009)
This was a prescient one. Seriously. Usually when men write songs about women they love, they come to regret it after the inevitable break-up. Before we recorded this one Ryan was all excited, telling me “I met this airline stewardess and she’s…awesome.” It was as if he knew, from the first day, that they were gonna be together. There’s a Japanese saying: Koi No Yokan that translates roughly to “premonition of love.” I think Ryan knew as soon as he met Reena, that he was gonna fall in love. Koi no yokan. (Koi No Yokan is also the title of my fav Deftones album. Check out “Swerve City,” “Leathers” and the beautiful “Entombed.”) But for now check out Reena. In perfect BCN fashion, we recorded this with a dude we’d just met that day, named Mike. He played the drums on “Reena,” I sent it the recording to him, to which he replied “Sounds great despite the ghetto recording job!” and we never, ever saw or heard from him again. Some drummers are ephemeral that way. But love is forever. I love this song. It’s a love song. And I love it.
“Gigantic Onion” from Complete Lung Champions (2009)
I’m adding this only to mention that it was my attempt at writing a ringtone. The first half is dull, everything from 0:29 onwards I fuckin LOVE. It also shows what an insane patchwork grab bag this album was. Inspired by Yo La Tengo’s genre-hopping I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, I wanted an album that sounded like a schizophrenic mixtape. I think most will agree that “Evil” does NOT sound like the same band as on “Sunshine City.” Nor does “If It Feels Right” sound like the band that recorded “Weird Weather.”
“Electric Guitar Face” from Complete Lung Champions (2009)
Again, I did this one alone but I’m putting it on because eagle-ears will hear that we took part of this song and added it to “Neon Knee” from Chords for the Bored.
“Weird Weather” from Complete Lung Champions (2009)
I love the acoustic version from Deep Space Bisto cuz it has Ryan on it. This one, the backing vocals are Jules, who also played drums, and Brent played bass, so I apologize to my band for posting this but I think it’s a great song:
“Valley of the Malls” from Complete Lung Champions (2009)
I’m posting this because it shows us branching out into post-rock synth territory.
“My Private Radio” from Complete Lung Champions (2009)
I did this one with Omri, my friend from The Harold Wartooth and his drummer Sam. Sam had some weird ideas about when to hit the crash cymbals, as you will hear and notice. I wrote the chorus of this song in my head while hitchhiking in north Ontario.
“It Won’t Be Long” from Complete Lung Champions (2009)
Reminds me of “Health & Happiness” in that it’s an acoustic track with me and Ryan singing placed later on in the tracklist. I love the vocals though.
“Skeleton Man” from Complete Lung Champions (2009)
This is kinda what I’d like the band to do post-COVID. Ryan came to my place in Toronto one day in January 2009, we took the subway to the studio, had Jules’ play drums, and walked out of there an hour with a finished song. This has also become a staple of our live show. James’ drums it just as well, and just as fast. I love playing this song. It’s Mike Simpsons fav BCN tune. He’s the guy who runs Hosehead Records.
“That Evil Beat” from Carry Me Ontario (2009)
Another live staple. We’ve played it so much live that the recorded version sounds weird to me now. I wish James had played on it rather than a drum machine. You’d have to come see us live to hear it that way though.
“World Finds You” from Carry Me Ontario (2009)
Another true collab. Ryan wrote the verse, I wrote the chorus. James on drums. I hired a trombone player for $20 to come to my basement apartment I shared with Jessica in 2009 and record his parts. Then I fed him pasta and he left. A lot of people thought this song too lightweight, and kinda cheesy. But I think the chorus gives it some weight. I love Reena’s harmonies in the second chorus. Without them, the song would be much worse. I also love Ryan’s call-and-response: Band: “When the world…” Ryan: “WORLD!” Band: “finds…” Ryan: “FINDS!” Band: “You” Ryan: “Uh huh!”
That wasn’t a mistake, btw. We wrote it that way. He’s not sneezing. I like it like that.
“Happy Man” from Carry Me Ontario (2009)
My first banjo song. Jessica’s vocals are prominent. One of our better ballads, I think.
“The Sleeper” from Carry Me Ontario (2009)
James missed this session, so it fell on me to play drums (we also recorded “Dead Meat Man” that way and that day, with Ryan on guitar and me on drums, then overdubbing). I love this song. This one is all Ryan’s and it’s gorgeous. The demo he recorded is amazing too. I hope he still has it somewhere. I’d love to hear it/release it.
“Wait a Minute, Charlie” from Carry Me Ontario (2009)
I wrote this one in my head and had to ask my then-friend Hannah for her cellphone so I could yell the riff and lyrics into the voice recorder on her flip phone. This one got played live a lot too. Like Track 02, this is the BCN line-up, James on drums, Ryan on bass and vox, me on guitar and vox. We recorded it on the same day.
“Carry Me Ontario” from Carry Me Ontario (2009)
I’d been playing the main riff so often at home that I was driving Jessica fucking nuts. The recording took longer than any song up to that point. Days and days. It took me a full day to record verse 1, then a single take to record verse 2. Then I needed Jessica’s help, and Ryan Hacker’s help. That’s him singing “out in the li-ight” after the first chorus. “Walking away with your polished face won’t keep the weeks you need to mine [“mine” meaning “dig around and look for”]…out in the light.”
I like the atmospheric sound of this song, piano drifting in and out, little shimmering guitar parts, although I would have preferred James on drums to Mitch, as James plays with more emotion and feeling. Still, I do like that he played the song with brushes. Still…it was new territory again, for BCN…a song that drifted slowly, like a lazy river. Hazy and foggy and sentimental.
“Dead Meat Man” from Carry Me Ontario (2009)
Ryan’s song again. Me on drums. I did a very sloppy job of backing vocals that took some creative mixing choices, but I love the main riff Ryan wrote, and I really like the guitar solo (yes, I know that’s me…whatever).
“Memory Motel” from Carry Me Ontario (2009)
Ryan was on it on Carry Me Ontario. He wrote this song too, I wrote the lyrics, but he wrote the chords & his own verse melody. I sang a different melody over the verse chords because I couldn’t duplicate his vocal part well enough. That synth line is so loud.
“One Great Year” from Carry Me Ontario (2009)
I love the broken sound and the trashed, melancholy air of this song. I was started to drink every day around this time and it was effecting me psychologically and emotionally. Another BCN song called “Tranquility Man” captures me at the depths of alcoholism, that was me, a Guitrele (like a ukulele but tuned like a guitar, and a bottle of gin, which I rarely drank but at that point I was drinking anything and everything I could get my hands on. We’ve played this live a few times and it’s always been a really cathartic experience for me, because this song means a lot to me, emotionally, and getting to perform it with Ryan and James is always a privilege. You can hear how messed up emotionally I was in the lyrics: well i think we found enough, i…and i need a human touch, I’m…reaching out for the first time…don't think i could get enough…but i think you had it all, i think it ain't enough. i think you got it all, i think it’s just enough
if you think about it all, i…are the women of your soul dry? in the in between but don’t try…four years ago is last night
“I need a human touch. I’m reaching out for the first time.” Aw. Poor Danny. I deliberately made the lead guitar sound directionless and almost like the guitar was crying, and I deliberately plugged both guitars directly into my mixer…no microphone, no amp, to get this sort of “end of the line, out of ideas” desperation to the song. I think it works. I think it’s a real tear jerker. See what you think:
“New Nouns” from the Carry Me Ontario sessions but not released til 2013.
I’m adding one song from a future release, “New Nouns” from 2013’s Your Mom Remains The Same because it was recorded for Carry Me Ontario. I just lost the file for a few years. I think that if we’d kicked off “Four Wasted Years” in favour of this song, Carry Me Ontario might be our best album, pound-for-pound. As it stands, I consider Might Minutes to be our best. It’s with the classic line-up burning through one great song after another. I’ll always love that record but hey…there’s always a chance we can best it. We’re the Big City Nights Band. We will always be around. On this song, I love James’ on the keyboard, he makes one mistake, which sounds funny but it also works in the spirit of the song. See if you don’t think so:
“New Nouns”
Next time! We’ll talk about 2010, a year in which we made 4 albums, despite the fact that I was gone for 6 weeks in the summer, on tour in the United States with my other band, Sleep for the Nightlife. And! Speaking of beautiful drifting, like Matthew Good Band’s “Suburbia,” I will always be proud to have played on this song, “Beau Ideal” by SFTN, written by Brandon Fleet, the same guy who played that insane-but-amazing guitar solo on “Mathematics.”
Brandon is the best guitarist I have ever played with. Ever. He’s the only guy I ever met who wrote songs above his own ability. He would write songs he could not play, so he had to get better, faster, more dynamic, in order to play them. Wrap that around your head.Did Glenn Gould or Mozart or Wagner ever try that? And I’m not being delusional by putting Fleet in their company. He will one day go to the moon on something. A musical project. But he’s already been there once.
He’s written a shitload of beautiful & challengingly beautiful music, which I will explore more thoroughly on this Substack one day, but this post is…I mean was about The Big City Nights Band. Me, Ryan, James.
But I’m gonna leave you (“gonna leave you-oooo” - Nick Oliver-era QOTSA) with “Beau Ideal.” Notice the LITTLE trick of running the intro through a filter, so that when the song comes in it sounds so lush and big? I’ve stolen that trick for numerous BCN songs. What better way to make a lo-fi recording sound mi-fi, or even hi-fi in the case of “Beau Ideal” than to make the first 14 seconds sound like they were recorded over the phone from Siberia? I love the delay on the guitars too. And Mitch’s snare work in the “chorus” @ 1:08-1:30 is just…primo.