The Free Radical

Left to Right: Christopher, Cory, Niels, Shane, Ian

I found myself at the centre of a whirlwind. A surreal kaleidoscope of events had swirled around me for days already, and now it was finally winding down…

I was standing in the middle of the restaurant. The last of the drunk and very happy patrons were still relishing in the afterglow of a terrifically nostalgic weekend. We had made them smile… and dance… and sing along. So many had come to relive some cherished memories of youth, when Missing Peace was still regarded as that one band that would surely make it… and everyone had kept the collective aspiration tucked away for the day that they could say “Hey, I knew them when…”

Then and now… not that much, really, had changed. I was fifty now… but I still felt twenty-five. Christopher had replaced David on the drum kit, but still, David had taken to the stage one more time at the end of the night. Ian stood in at bass– as always. But it was Christopher who’d strapped on Shane’s guitar and stepped up to the mic to rip out a Dylan cover. He drums for us– ’cause, fuck, he’s good– but I think he still prefers being the front man, singing and playing guitar. How many CDs has he made now with his other band– the one in which he’s the main songwriter? Goddammit my bandmates are a talented lot!

Ian has always been in bands. He’s that bass player who can sit in on any jam and the other players will love him– guaranteed. He was the one who held the gun to my head so many years ago and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. “We’re going to be a band; we’ll focus on your songs.” How could I say no? Being in an actual rock band wasn’t something that I could take any more seriously than my own antics alone in my bedroom, playing air guitar when I was twelve, lip-syncing to Jerry Doucette as he sang “Mama let that boy play some rock ‘n roll…” It was a fantasy, common… maybe even silly… but Ian had been dead serious… and Ian doesn’t take no for an answer.

It may have started out– oh… about 22 years ago– centred mainly around my songwriting (something I did for myself in a vain attempt at remaining sane), but we weren’t at it very long before the irrepressible talents of my mates insisted on a more diverse path. I’d bought Shane his first guitar. Within a few months he’d written half of the songs that appeared on our first album. The other half were mine, and Cory had written the hidden track with the help of our good friend Steve. Cory had just gotten started. His songwriting skill is irrefutable, and Missing Peace took full advantage of that. And then Ian began contributing his own song-craft too.

This fiftieth birthday celebration had doubled as a CD-release party. The long-awaited, much-talked-about sophomoric release from Missing Peace was finally finished and available to the public… after a mere sixteen years in production– my bad (I wear the sound engineering hat). So what do I think of it? Feel free to quote me on this: “It’s certainly not flawless… but it’s nevertheless perfect!” Despite all of the frustrations and delays, I’m proud of it and glad to share it… and I’m pretty sure my bandmates agree.

So there I was, standing in the middle of the restaurant, at about 1:30 in the morning… and I was sober! Can you believe that? So much had been going on throughout the night– the unrelenting hug-fest among old fans and friends– that I forgot to get drunk! I hadn’t even smoked anything, despite having two pre-rolled doobies in my backpack. Maybe I was finally an adult… and I was meant to face the second half of my life with an unprecedented clarity…?

One thing was certainly clear: Missing Peace was reinvigorated. Lazarus had risen again… looking a bit rough around the edges and perhaps a bit stinky, but this weren’t no zombie corpse– no, this was true life resurrected! Jesus would be jealous.

The local newspaperman who’d always been our staunch ally referred to us again as “forward-thinking” in his writeup of the event. Sure, all the nostalgia and reminiscence was great, but we were definitely looking ahead. And most of all, that’s what I really wanted for this milestone birthday. I wanted Missing Peace to still have a life.

A day after everyone had gone home, back to their regular lives, I sat down and compiled a list of our songs which hadn’t been recorded yet. All of the simpler, poppier, radio-friendly tunes were well represented on the first two albums… and now all that remained was the really, really good stuff! I tend to listen to progressive rock (prog)– you know, the out-of-the-ordinary stuff that I couldn’t play myself if my life depended on it. So in my opinion, our best stuff, our more progressive offerings were still awaiting their day in the sun. You see, back in 2001, Missing Peace existed as a 4-piece; I had left the band– for numerous reasons, but one significant factor was that I simply didn’t have the skill as a musician to keep up with the direction the band was leaning. Besides, I was the ‘folk’ influence… and the new sound wasn’t particularly folky.

(Black & Blue by Missing Peace from our 2016 release Second Thoughts)

I’d never been crazy about gigging in general, and touring was a real pain in my home-loving ass. Maybe we’d still play the odd show here and there going forward, but the guys seemed mostly content to just make music now, to be a recording band, and let the internet handle all the hype and the distribution. That’s all I ever really wanted– from before the internet was even a thing. I guess I should count myself as lucky that my mates so easily welcomed me back into the fold, seeing how I officially quit in 2000.

But some things, especially artistic things, tend to take on a life of their own. Missing Peace had always been just such a creature. Its lifeblood is the genuine bond that has endured among this family of musicians– my brothers in rhythm and melody. Its aspirations have long been the amalgamated childhood fantasies of five guys who still refuse to grow up all the way.

As I drove my sober self home, I reflected… It was the best birthday ever! I’m fifty… and I truly feel that I’m/we’re just getting started.

(Whitman’s Gauntlet by Missing Peace from our 2016 release Second Thoughts)

The New Album (2016)

Prologue: I never told my bandmates this story before…

It must’ve been early in the winter of 2000; I was standing on stage– or rather, that corner of the pub designated, this night only, as “the stage”… tables cleared, speakers stacked… when I serendipitously spied through the milling bodies a particular gentleman’s arrival. Shane and Ian seemed to notice him too as he pushed through the front door.

We’d already finished our first set at the local pub– the pub which I can practically see from my kitchen window at home– so we were pretty comfortable, relaxed… and maybe we were even a bit lackadaisical in that first set. Not to worry, we would rock it out in the second; you could feel it.

It was interesting, in hindsight, that the three of us noticed this particular gentleman’s presence. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Cory and Chris noticed him too. Serendipity can be like that.)

He sat at the bar alone, drank something cool like whisky neat, and somehow seemed to have a whiff of importance about him, a unique fragrance wafting among the common bar-room breezes. He was of average build, middle-aged, and had a big bushy beard. His hair was long, but meticulously bound in a perfect ponytail. So far as I was able to observe, he spoke to no one, except the bartender… and eventually me.

The second set was solid. The local rabble were adequately roused. The band was pleased. And the particular gentleman had remained for the whole set, and had even cracked a smile during the big rock ending, finishing it off.

But now as I was entering the milling crowd and thought to walk nearby him– you know, give him the chance to engage me in conversation– well now, suddenly he was gone. The barstool was vacant… and I thought “Now ain’t that anticlimactic?” I had been quite certain that he was somehow important.

And I’m not even one to go off talking to strangers anyway. I was already stepping out of character because intuition had given me the nod… but I must’ve been mistaken. He’d already taken off. I’d missed him. Weird.

Oh well, I was just going to duck home to enjoy a pee in my own bathroom. (That’s the sort of thing I’d count as a little victory after having become disenchanted with the many inconveniences of band life on the road.)

I zipped up my coat and stepped out the front door… and there he was, waiting for me, or perhaps any one of us, the particular gentleman. He was already handing me his business card:

Phillip Gulliver
president
J-Swift Records Inc.

“Hello Phillip,” I said, reading the card.

“Phil,” he corrected me, holding his hand out patiently for a shake. I eventually grabbed it, as protocol and awkwardness would dictate. He then raised his eyebrows in askance, and it finally dawned on me that he might reciprocally wish to know my name.

“Niels,” I said, giving the hand one final pump.

And he repeated back “Neil. Pleased to make your acquaintance Neil.”

Everyone seems to think I’m joking about the “s” at the end of my name. It’s really there; it’s not silent; I know my own name; and I don’t have a terrible lisp!

I didn’t bother correcting him.

I figured it was my turn to speak, so I looked at the business card again in my hand. “J-Swift as in Jonathan, and these are Gulliver’s travels,” I presumed.

He smiled very broadly. “You’re the first person in five years to put that together. Always a good omen.”

“I was an English Lit. major,” I explained.

“Graduate?”

How did he know I hadn’t? “Nope.”

A chill January wind blew between us and we both hitched up our coats around our necks. And he started in.

“I’m gonna be quick.” I liked him already… (…but if he now made reference to his name being Swift, I would have written him off as a 3D-fucking salesman. He didn’t.) “I’m not here to blow flowers up your ass.” When is there anyone…? Sigh. “I like you guys. You’re original. You’ve made an album already; you know the drill. I’d like you to make the next one with me, on my label.” He paused for a response… and I didn’t know where to begin.

It wasn’t too long ago that I’d said in the Banff band-house that the day we sign a record deal is the day I quit the band. I could just barely tolerate the fact that every life decision I made directly affected the lives of my four other bandmates, and every decision they made affected me. And I certainly wasn’t very keen on signing the whole lot over to some moneyed-interest willing to rigidly schedule the next few years of our lives instead.

The irony was killing me. I was being offered a record deal on behalf of the band– me!

Honestly, I’d really been thinking about quitting. The very idea of quitting the band had been weighing heavily on me. Was this a sign? Or was it possible that a record deal could be a good thing?

He was waiting for my response.

“Please forgive me for being rude, but who the fuck are you, Phillip Gulliver?” He knew what I meant. I mean, he could just be some guy with a computer in a root cellar… and a few too many garden tools. Credentials… why do I want to share custody of my children with you and your company? I need some tasty credentials… or I will never even mention this incident to my bandmates. He knew what I meant.

“Starting in the mid-sixties I worked with A&M.” He paused there as if asking if I’d ever heard of A&M. Of course I’ve fucking heard of A&M! Go on… said my smile, sweetly. “I climbed the ranks of A&M, learned the game, made the contacts, and then broke away on my own a couple of years before A&M went defunct in ’99. The studios are state of the art. But distribution in this emerging digital world is what counts… and my team puts records in people’s hands.” I liked how he’d said records and not CDs; it seemed more authentic.

“We– me and the boys– pretty much decided that we’d produce and engineer our own album.” It sounded like I was rejecting him. “We’re kinda stoked to be doing it ourselves.”

He shook his head, still smiling. “You know how many details need looking after to make a decent album? How much work it is… setting it all up from scratch?”

I wasn’t completely wet behind the ears. Even at that time, I had some inkling as to the monumental task looming before us. Now these many years later, I can fully appreciate the full scope of his query. The answer was “Thousands! Thousands of fucking details!” But I didn’t say it out loud at the time. He just plowed ahead anyway.

“I’m not asking anyone to sign anything tonight. I just want you to call me… and we’ll talk. I don’t want to steal your creativity. I want to be your partner. Call me.” He was fixing to go; I had to say something. But I hate commitment so much that I couldn’t even commit to a phone call… sometime in the nebulous future…

“Where are these studios?” I asked, stalling.

“Toronto.”

“Shitty.”

“For signed artists we have unbelievable deals with the airlines.” He paused again. “So call me.”

“Or I can give your card to Ian; he’s much more adept with telephones.”

“No,” he said, quite seriously. “I think it should be you.”

I nodded. And that was good enough for him. He turned and walked away.

“Call me, Neil!” he shouted from a dark corner of the parking lot.

“Damn straight I’ll call you Neil,” I muttered. “For that as damn sure ain’t my name!”

I quickly trotted home to pee and “freshen up.” And then I hurried back for the third and final set. It was a typical third set– all fired up to start with, and falling into unspackled drunkenness by the end, performers and audience alike.

There was only one incident of note during that final set, early on. In the “brief” pause between songs, we heard a siren outside rushing by on the highway, and Shane said “Uh-oh, they’re coming to get us.” And everyone sniggered.

None of my bandmates were aware that I had talked to Phil and that he was the president of a record company in Toronto. And I never told them… until now.

After that brief chat in the pub parking lot with Phil, I had a couple of sleepless nights. I laid in bed, fantasizing about being rich and famous, a proper rock star and all. It was great as a fantasy, but it wasn’t me in real life. I wasn’t that guy.

The next week I quit the band.

I handed them my carefully crafted resignation letter at a rare Wednesday afternoon jam in the garage. As they passed it around, I picked up the copy of the local newspaper Shane had brought to the jam hall. I was letting them digest the fact of my leaving at the end of this tour schedule… and then I was going to tell them about my conversation with Phil. I was willing to phone him on their behalf, but I wasn’t going to be any part of the deal– if one could be salvaged. I figured I owed my bandmates at least that much.

But when I turned to the third page, where the weekly RCMP Report was, the name Phillip Gulliver leapt from the page and poked me in the eye! “Toronto businessman… head-on collision… dead at the scene… just north of Fairmont…” Holy shit! That’s what those sirens were on Friday night. Gulliver’s earthly travels had come to a swift end.

And I quickly decided that there was no point now of informing my bandmates of the prospect that had gotten away. It’s not like we could phone up the company and say “Um, yeah… your dead boss thought we were pretty cool… and we were just wondering…”

No. None of us is quite that lame.

And that was that. And here we are…

– NK April 15, 2016, Fairmont Hot Springs, BC, Canada

Missing Peace Live Backdrop

(Ben Jeffreys (sp?) – CJAY92 FM Calgary)

Aye, that’s the rub. The above soundbite was uttered by popular DJ, Ben Jeffreys, at Calgary’s biggest rock station in early 1997 right after we played a song, So I, ‘live’ in the radio station’s studio to conclude a half-hour interview about the release of our first album Tense Moments. (These things don’t really go live on the air; they’re rather pre-recorded and played at the scheduled time… but you don’t get any do-overs and no editing allowed, so it might as well be live.)

Shit! That was almost 20 years ago. We were just getting started… and things were going pretty well. I mean, we were on the radio! And not just some tiny community-funded local station, but the biggest rock station in the goddam city! AND… right after the interview was concluded, Ben told us that the station had just officially made the switch from vinyl to CD, so their entire vinyl library was up for grabs. “Go nuts. Take whatever you want.”

Seriously, an accumulation of records from the last 30 years, shelved and catalogued in its own room across from the DJ booth, was free for the taking. That’s just the kind of serendipity that Missing Peace had already grown accustomed to. Collectively, we had that kind of luck.

There were thousands of records. I wanted to back the touring van up to the back door and load up the whole thing… but that wasn’t practical. Actually, we only had about 15 minutes to grab whatever we could think to snatch. We had places to be, people to see, appointments to keep. Things were happening; we were a band on the move. We grabbed whatever was comfortable to carry, and we were quickly on our way…

Like I said, that was 1997. We figured maybe two years– tops– before we’d have the next album out. We had plenty of material… and the set lists were growing every day. And besides, things had a peculiar habit of working out for us… even in spite of our derelict rock’n-roller ways.

But alas, somewhere along the way the magic ran out. We’d used up all of our free passes, it seemed. We took a pretty decent run at the second album in and around 1999. That was at the local studio just having been set up by our temporary replacement guitar guru, Russ Brent. (Cory had left us for a year to explore his options with a popular cover band; he needed a steady paycheque, and had grown weary of having to keep his day job. We couldn’t blame him, and besides, Russ was one helluva lead guitar player!)

We tried to lay beds for at least a dozen songs– some with our original drummer, David, and some with our new drummer Christopher. (So there was that whole transition going on too.) At the end of the day, there were only 4 songs that were deemed worthy of overdubs and eventual full production; the rest were tragically flawed for one reason or another. Four songs do not a CD make!

(Whitman’s Gauntlet – from the “Russ Sessions”)

Here, have a listen as you continue reading. It’s good… but it wasn’t always. The original mixes of those four songs from Russ’ had some serious issues– nothing to do with the recorded tracks, just with how they were finally mixed. The vocals were so overbearing that the songs were nearly unlistenable. There was a problem with Russ’ playback system. What we were hearing during mix-down was NOT the mix being finalized. It was only when we took those recordings home to be played on our own home stereos that we discovered the problem. And due to circumstances beyond our control, we never had the opportunity to remix them again with Russ. For a very long time we were stuck with very bad mixes of very good songs… and that was a bummer!

It was many years later, 2013 I think, when we finally secured the source recordings from Russ and took a shot at remixing those songs. They had been recorded using Cubase software and were stored as multi-track recordings on CDs. I tried loading them into my own home digital multi-track recording system… but many of the tracks weren’t placed in the appropriate places– meaning that short tracks that were little add-ons and embellishments all played simultaneously at the beginning of the song. They had to be manually moved to their appropriate places one by one. My digital system lacks a visual display of the sound waves. For such a task requiring absolute precision, a visual guide was essential.

Fortunately, a good friend and fellow musician who lived nearby, Bill Rainbow, had a recording studio in his house, and he happened to employ Cubase as his recording system. Even though it was the same recording software, just different versions, the songs still didn’t load properly in terms of track placement. We still had to move dozens of tracks to their appropriate places in the songs. Bill and I spent quite a number of hours reconstructing two of the four songs– the one offered above, and this next one below.

(Handful of Sand – from the “Russ Sessions”)

In Whitman’s above, all guitar players are featured. I’m the main acoustic, playing my 12-string, with Russ adding the accents and embellishments throughout on clean electric guitar. And then Cory added the dirty electric during the choruses after Bill and I had reconstructed the song in 2013. As for Handful, again it’s my 12-string leading the way with a simple picking pattern and chord progression. And then it’s Russ soloing the shit out of it in the fast part at the end. We’re quite happy with these two reconstructions.

As for the other two songs from the “Russ Sessions”, Bill and I found the task of trying to reconstruct those just too daunting. The best that I could do was to run them through a couple of mastering algorithms to try and smooth out some of the worst imbalances. “The Ride” sounds almost normal, while “Stop” has a most peculiar ‘wall of sound’ against which Shane’s vocal batters and wails until the final death throes of the dying beast is laid to rest at the end. (You’ll just have to get your hands on the new record to see– or rather, hear– what I mean.) “Stop” is the only song on the new album which features our original drummer David Shaw. All the rest are Christopher J. Howse– yes, THE Christopher J.

So now let’s rewind to the turn of the millennium. By the year 2000, I had grown rather weary of touring with Missing Peace. While out on the road, I found myself most often wishing that I was home, working on other projects, particularly my writing. (My second book, Butterfly Dreams, was already long overdue in 2000 and I didn’t even get it finished and published until 2005.) In that last year of the second millennium, I authored a rather excellent resignation letter to my bandmates. I don’t think that it really came as much of a surprise. They knew I’d had enough in general, and the four remaining members of Missing Peace– Ian, Shane, Cory and Chris– were more than capable of continuing without me. The band had already begun heavily leaning in the direction of a much heavier sound… and I had always been the acoustic, folkier influence.

During my tenure with Missing Peace, I had learned most of the tricks of the sound-engineer/recording-engineer trade. I had a bit of a knack for it and I really enjoyed it. Collectively, by the year 2000, we additionally figured that we knew enough about proper recording procedures to finally produce the second album ourselves.

We daisy-chained two ADAT recorders together to provide 16 simultaneous track recording, ran a snake between the house and the detached garage/jam hall, and ran everything through the Mackie 24 by 4 mixing board, in what was easily the most complex audio arrangement I had ever presided over. Everyone was provided headphones… and Chris listened to a metronome click in his headphones to help keep the songs scrupulously on tempo. (Unfortunately, he needed the click so loud that during the quietest moments, when there was just enough drum noise to hold the noise gates open, the click could be heard bleeding through onto the drum mics… something I would spend hours of frustration trying to clean up in the ensuing years.)

We laid the beds for quite a number of songs– like almost 20 of them, I think. When laying beds, the only thing that really matters is that the drum tracks are virtually perfect. The rest of the instruments and vocals are just there to provide structure and an energy dynamic for later overdubs of everything. So far so good…

Then some things happened. With me deciding to leave the band, I kinda left the overdubs in the hands of the remaining members– meaning that I wouldn’t be there to supervise the overdub sessions. They were each given their turn with the recording equipment and expected to provide the overdubs of their respective parts.

Recording can be intimidating at the best of times. Without an active recording engineer taking charge, the scary task of overdubbing languished in prolonged procrastination. It became a source of infighting among the remaining members of the band. “Just do your parts, for fuck’s sake!” was a popular refrain at the time. Eventually, it was the straw that broke Ian’s resolve. He too authored a fine resignation letter to his bandmates, and in 2001 Missing Peace was done– defunct. We still had every intention of completing the album– we told ourselves, me included– but Missing Peace was no longer a performing band… the enthusiasm had reached an all-time low.

And then something most unexpected happened. On May 30, 2001, just as the band was winding up its last hoorah with its touring schedule, I went out on a psychedelic adventure with two friends that afternoon, partaking of ayahuasca for the first– and only– time. Three of us went out that afternoon… but only two came back. One of my dear friends died that afternoon right before my eyes. That is easily the most intense occurrence of my life, as his spirit flew up from the river valley and his body fell into Dutch Creek.

I languished emotionally in a surreal mix of survivor guilt and outright astonishment for at least a couple of years. “Did that really happen?!!” Indeed, it had.

The band didn’t put any pressure on me to resume work on the album… and it was nearly forgotten altogether. At some point we realized that the superVHS tapes which were the source recordings for the album were subject to slow degradation, and I did manage to transfer everything to a more secure and permanent digital medium– my Zoom multi-track digital studio.

Eventually, I would get back to the album. I could offer up a long list of excuses why I kept pushing it off thereafter, but the main obstacle was that I was wholly unfamiliar with digital processing of recorded material. During my days with the band, I learned through experience how to process sound using analogue equipment. I knew exactly fuck all about doing the same thing with digital algorithms. The learning curve I was suddenly facing was enormous and treacherously steep. Anyone who’s ever gotten a new piece of highly-complex software knows that the only way to really learn how to use it is through many many hours of experience.

Okay, I’m fully up to speed now with digital processing, mixing and mastering. I learned it… and it’s fun! I went back to all those recordings, wondering if there was material for an actual album there worth assembling. Many of the tracks had never been overdubbed. Most of the vocals were scratch tracks or practice runs. But in the listening, and with a few tweaks, it appeared that we could still salvage this thing… these many years later.

The band is scattered throughout BC. Finishing the overdubs wasn’t really a viable option. Most of the tracks were good. Sure, there were glitches, but there was way too much really good stuff to toss the whole thing in the bin. Cory came over a few times to add some choice guitar parts (he only lives 20 minutes away from me). And Chris added some cymbal shots here and there to help cover the click track bleed-throughs (he lives about a half hour away). Ian and Shane are way out on the coast, so adding new parts from them posed some serious inconveniences. We did grab some new vocal attempts a couple of years ago during Shane’s 40th birthday in Nanaimo…

Anyway, the long-awaited, fabled second album is done… and we like it! I don’t think we’re trying to make any excuses; it’s a good album after all. I’ve previewed a couple of songs from the “Russ Sessions” here for you (those two had been soft-released previously over the years as poorly mixed versions, so I don’t mind including them here). All 4 of those are on the album along with others from our independent sessions at home. The rest of the album is quite a bit heavier and raunchier… but still tasteful and melodic.

The album will be officially released on Mother’s Day, May 8th, 2016. We will also be celebrating my 50th birthday on that day at our local restaurant/pub The Hoodoos. My former bandmates have all agreed to a reunion gig on that date to launch the CD release. Please come join us if you’re able. This thing was 16 years in the making– the CD, that is; I was fully 50 years in the making, and I’m not done yet!

Check it out… it’s all about passion and fun!