Revival Dear

REVIVAL DEAR

Discovering your sound does not come easily for most bands. Years are often spent honing your abilities and by the time you’ve found your singing voice, or learned a few guitar licks, you’re ready to write some songs. The first few usually aren’t so hot. It takes a good couple dozen before you find a balance between where your strengths lie and where your inspirations hit your heart. Naturally, as this time progresses and your talents mature, so do your tastes. Whichever band you loved that owned Much Music when you started is maybe by now less important as you begin discovering the classics. Bob Dylan; Neil Young; The Band; Muddy Waters; all the artists that sounded like your parents’ music until you could finally let down your high school blinders and appreciate that maybe the roots of modern music are the roots for a reason. Eddie Orso and Shelley Hayes spent a lot of years playing rock n’ roll in various incarnations before they formed Revival Dear, a group whose hearts lay firmly in the roots-based Canadiana of their heroes.

“Roots music is real, it’s honest,” Orso explains of his commitment to that aesthetic. “I love old instruments, songs about the country and vocal harmonies. Old time music is worn-in and it just feels right.”

Eddie Orso and his partner in music, Shelley Hayes, have a long history of collaboration, but it was a Big Pinkian change of scenery that started turning the gears of Revival Dear, which has quickly become their most successful, (both commercially and artistically), endeavour.

“Shelley and I have been singing together for years now,” he says, “but it wasn’t until moving to Toronto when the name Revival Dear and the sound of Revival Dear came through us. We rented a house and turned the basement into a recording studio and just worked out there for two years. The Band, Bob Dylan, Blue Rodeo, and Gram Parsons were all in heavy rotation and we found ourselves falling into a very rootsy, Canadiana kind of sound.”

The move to Toronto came after several years on the scene in Kitchener-Waterloo, where their former outfit, (Samsara), met with moderate success, but they needed something more. They needed a new scene, with new folks and new ears, and they found a fertile ground, and a good many collaborators in the big city.

“We moved to Toronto to network and get into a bigger scene. Living in a big house with a band was pretty inspiring itself. We developed our sound over the next few years, just soaking up our old vinyl collection. If you learn how to play the mandolin, banjo, or upright bass, you’ll find yourself writing old time roots music. And that is what we did. We have a basement flooded with vintage instruments and away we went!”

“As we settled into Toronto,” Orso continues, “we started going out to open-mic’s and bars to meet people. The C’est What had an unbelievable open jam night. That is where we met, (producer), Terence Gowan. He took a shine to us, as we did to him, and shortly after we were recording our record at Don Kerr’s studio, The Rooster. Most of the overdubs were done at the Rock Basement, (our house in Toronto). We also recorded some finishing touches with Jeremy Darby at Canterbury Studios.”

The result of these sessions is Revival Dear’s self-titled debut, a rollicking, authentic, straight-from-Saugerties revival of the style and tunes that were once perfected by the rebellious vanguard of groups like The Hawks and Gram Parson’s Fallen Angels. Orso and Hayes share vocal duties evenly throughout and certainly immediately recall the best of Parsons’ and Emmy Lou Harris’ duets, but the songs are so crisp and poppy that further inspection reveals even a kinship with Lindsay Buckingham-Stevie Nicks era Fleetwood Mac, (see opening track “Town That I’ve Known”). All thirteen tracks employ a myriad of classy instruments, from the loving mandolin and pedal steel licks on “Century Toy”, the Garth Hudson-esque accordion of “Workin’ Man”, the truly excellent Hammond work on “Give Me The Blues”, and the smatterings of banjo and fiddle dusted across the album. All of this lends Orso’s and Haye’s vocal work a rich bedrock upon which to paint their masterpiece. It’s a remarkable record that can be committed in this day and age and still sound like it could have come from any generation’s roots heroes. Revival Dear have worked hard to make such a record, but it shouldn’t be interpreted as any sort of musical history lesson. After all, it’s only rock n’ roll, and Revival Dear want to see you dance.

“We like to leave audiences feeling like it’s OK to stomp your feet, sing along, and be a part of the show,” Orso explains of their mission. “We like to extend our songs into long piano or harmonica jams and sing ‘til our voices crack. We have fun, and in doing so, so does our audience.”

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