Lucas Stagg

GREAT BIG GONE

K-W songsmith Lucas Stagg up and left. After a decade or so on the 519 independent roots music radar, Stagg decided it was time to change it up. He packed up his J50 and moved the big city to see what Toronto might stir in him. You’d be forgiven for not noticing. Stagg continues to play at least weekly in the area, (sometimes solo, sometimes with cohort Craig McNair, sometimes with the Lucas Stagg Band), and he’s continued to crank out the annual record or so, now given added weight by his new home at Kitchener’s Busted Flat Records. His inaugural Busted Flat release is Great Big Gone, a record greatly informed by his leaving home, and his most gentle, rich project to date.

“Last summer, (producer), Dan Walsh was a part of a Rick Hutt Produced recording I did over at River Edge Studio,” explains Stagg of his decision to release a loving, largely acoustic record. “It was a big budget production with a four-piece band and all the bells and whistles. I had a bunch of songs that weren’t gonna make the cut on that record because I thought they sounded better with a simpler, stripped down approach. Dan suggested his studio on Lake Erie.”

Great Big Gone’s warm, sparse production and subtle textures suggest an album recorded under serene circumstances. Surely, a couple days on the coast with one’s guitar could be the ultimate serenity of many, but much credit needs to go to Dan Walsh for not only providing those relaxed surroundings, but for fleshing out each of Stagg’s deceptively simple odes to love, home, and beauty, with his rumbling, reverb drenched lead guitar, and his trusty rusty dobro.

“Basically, Tanya Philipovich, (who co-wrote the title-track with me), drove with me out to Port Dover, hung out for a couple of days, and we recorded the acoustics and the vocals. Duane Rutter, (another Busted Flat artist), lives right down the road so he came over and laid some trinkling guitars. Three weeks later I got the record in the mail and Dan had laid down everything else that you hear: dobros, electrics, bass. Dan takes a melody and converts it into a beautiful soundscape. After hearing it, I knew what type of record it was going to be. We actually recorded twelve songs, ended up with seven, and so I called Dan and asked him to do a ‘Dan’ arrangement using the “Great Big Gone” melody. The end result rounded out the record I was hearing.”

Walsh’s instrumental arrangement of the record’s title-track takes “Great Big Gone”’s repetitive, forlorn melody and retains all of the original’s intent, conveying Stagg’s high-lonesome narrative with long, lyrical pedal-steel moans. It’s a soothing capper to seven of Stagg’s strongest tunes, (including his stirring cover of Paul Kelly’s “Little Decisions”, a song seemingly written for Stagg’s voice), and a fitting debut on Busted Flat, a home for which he has much respect.


“I was a fan of the artists on the label, so at a music festival last summer I convinced Mark Logan, (BF head-honcho), to take a listen to the basic tracks. He loved it right away, but it took another six months before he let me know he was interested in having me on Busted Flat. He called me last week when the discs came in and said he put it on in Encore, (label headquarters), and some guy bought it halfway through the first song. We’re taking that as a good sign.”

Stagg’s new label is keeping him good and busy. He’s off to New York City next month for a couple of shows and will return just in time to back his bags for a Busted Flat showcase, up and down the Canadian spine with labelmate Paul MacLeod. It’s a pairing and a challenge that Stagg is excited to tackle.

“I heard Paul was itching to tour, so I called him up and the shows were booked by the end of the week. Busted Flat has earned a pretty good cool name for itself, so I think that’ll help. Paul is an amazing writer and I look forward to stealing a shit-load of guitar licks. We’re playing the right clubs, (twenty dates), for the ‘traveling troubadour’ type shows, out to Hank Snow’s hometown of Liverpool, Nova Scotia and back to Toronto’s Dakota Tavern in October, where I’ll be joined by the band!”

Stagg would hate for you to think that just cause he’s on a cool roots label, with a lovely new acoustic album ready for the fans and a solo tour on the horizon, that he’s forgotten how to get loud and gnarly. His eponymous band will keep that remedied, and plan to prove it with their own release later this year.

“Well, there are two rock records in the works,” he explains. “One is the Rick Hutt Produced record, and the other will be a Lucas Stagg Band record. We just recorded eleven tunes at River Edge, and Busted Flat will be releasing both records in 2009. The band is hittin’ all of the right clubs, right now, so we’re definitely looking forward to having a CD in hand.

“Writing songs and meeting new players keeps me interested in making cool records. If it weren’t for the commitment of the musicians that I’ve gotten to know over the past few years, I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

(originally published August, 2008. Echo Weekly. Kitchener)