Sonny’s Dream: New takes on classic tunes
Ken Tizzard brings the songs of the late Ron Hynes to the Red Dog Saturday night
There's a special kind of song out there, one that songwriters have been chasing for decades. Few have caught it. Ron Hynes was one of those, says Ken Tizzard – a man who could write a deceptively simple tune with a story people wanted to hear, songs filled with characters at their best and worst, love, loss and discovery.
“You can be tremendously entertained by that kind of songwriting,” says Tizzard, the Newfoundland-born, Campbellfordbased bassist for The Watchmen and Thornley, whose side gig as a solo singer-songwriter has taken precedence in recent years.
Tizzard is on the road with his new album, A Good Dog Is Lost. It's his tribute to a man who inspired him as he was coming up the ranks as a young musician with an introspective side, and played a big role in his transition from hard rocker to acclaimed singer-songwriter.
Tizzard released a video to launch the album. His take on Sonny's Dream, recorded with his daughters Cassidy and Caitlyn, was turned into a gentle, rolling video filmed in a vintage car on the backroads of Northumberland County.
He's also been on the road, playing pubs and clubs across the country, places where Hynes's songs still resonate.
He brings that music to the Red Dog in Peterborough on Saturday, with a CD launch party starting at 8 p.m. Admission is $15.
Hynes, a Newfoundland folk musician whose music made him one of the country's finest singersongwriters, died in 2015 at 64 after a cancer battle.
He and Tizzard had been on the road together before his death after Hynes approached Tizzard in 2013 and asked if he'd join him for a tour of smaller duo shows.
“He was getting more fragile and asked if I would step in as his bass player,” Tizzard says.
This led to the two of them touring in one car, their instruments in the back with a couple of suitcases. Nothing fancy, just two musicians on the road.
It was during this period, while staying in quiet motels, that Tizzard started playing some of his own songs for Hynes. In addition to his work as a rock bassist, Tizzard writes and performs gentler, country-tinged songs, both solo and with a band, and Hynes was a big influence.
The feedback was valuable, and helped shape Tizzard's solo sound as the two of them worked through as many as 30 Hynes tunes.
“I use the word 'mentor' but I don't think it really applies to Ron. I'd play a song and he'd go 'eh …' I'd play another one and he's say 'That one's good.'”
But while he was writing his own songs in hotel rooms, he was playing Hynes's work on stage each night.
Those classics include Sonny's Dream. St. John's Waltz, 1962, My Father's Ghost and the title track, songs Tizzard could relate to long before he sat down beside Hynes to play them.
“Those sort of lyrics remind me of me – the Newfoundlander who leaves home and tries to make it,” he says, adding that working with Hynes helped his own solo songs take on new life as he embraced the storytelling side of music, as heard on his albums.
Years later, after Hynes's death, Tizzard began thinking about recording some of his songs. Not as a cover artist, or impersonator, but as a tribute to the legacy Hynes left behind – a legacy, Tizzard says, not enough people know about.
The first step was a show at Westben, Hynesight, where he played songs by Hynes and himself and told stories about their time together.
But eventually he started thinking about a record.
“I was on and off the fence with the record, but last November I started recording, and was done by January.”
He turned to a new group of musicians to work on the album. The band came together naturally, centred around one of Tizzard's musical haunts – the Church Key Pub in Campbellford, where he plays a regular gig called Whisky Wednesdays with Ken Tizzard and the Random Strangers.
“Campellford has been such an inspiring place to make music,” Tizzard says. “It makes the place feel more like home to us.”
At different times, he met musicians new to the area who were interested in jamming a bit – and the new band, with Ken Grant, Steve Dagg and Luke Mercier, took shape.
The album, recorded at Tizzard's own Storey House Studio in Campbellford, also features guest vocals from Amelia Curran with piano from Paul Kinsman on the track St. John's Waltz, recorded in Newfoundland.
“I felt like Ron was looking down on me, so to speak,” Tizzard says of the finished product. “I think he'd be happy with it.”