NOTES:

With the exception of a few months of work on and off back in 2011/12 before I broke my leg
and had my recording gear in repairs for the better part of 2 years, this album was almost
all recorded between May of 2014 to February of 2015 in my new studio at my home in Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada. In fact, not too much survived from the 2011/12 sessions audibly in the tracks
that were started then, though I did leave in the very first notes recorded for the project
early in 2011, when I laid down the solo acoustic and vocal part in the centre of Johnny Rearender.
I thought I was just demoing a new song at the time and not singing the eventual single...
but I was so excited to be making music again, in my brand new room in my brand new house,
and it gave it an energy I wanted to keep.

The sole guest this time around is Paul Fairlie, who played the drums on Crow Can Fly.
I missed the chance to work with more of my friends as I did on the Childish Things album...
but my work schedule, geographics and the realities of working as part of a new family meant
that with that one thankful exception... the music on this album is as much a selfie as the photo
theme carried into the artwork. Otherwise, all the sounds you hear are me, playing the actual
instruments, or playing a rather nice set of keyboard orchestral, piano and organ samples by
Magix in real time. There are no fake drums or loop based arrangements on Stray, everything was
physically played, one part at a time. I learned to play drums for the album, that's partly why
it took so long to get done!

In addition to my usual army of guitars and bass and the new keyboard sounds to play through my
old keyboard, Stray also features some very fine vintage folk instruments that I inherited from
my Grandfather, Harry Atherton, who passed away just before the 2014 sessions got started, as well
as his very fine upright Kay bass... and, at the heart of the drum kit I bought for myself, louder
than everything else in it, sits the old maple shelled snare drum Malcolm gave me, from our first
sessions together back in the 80's. Virtually everything in music is inherited, in one way or another.
What makes it interesting is how inherited traits combine.

Colin
(April, 2014)



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