The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
New David Myles album out Friday
Musician contemplates value of relationships with new album
With his new album Leave Tonight debuting on Friday, and traditional means of performing live on hold due to COVID-19, David Myles is in the midst of preparing a special launch party that takes place on Youtube on Thursday at 9 p.m. AT.
And it turns out the Halifax singer-songwriter is no less a perfectionist when it comes to setting up devices for a remote streaming broadcast than he is when it comes to honing lyrics and dialing in the perfect sound in the studio.
“I’ve been teching out,” says Myles of his increased skill levels at making videos and getting new music to fans in the era of self-isolation. And he’s looking forward to showing them off when viewers tune in to the stream on his Youtube channel.
“I’m going to play the record, talk about how it was made, maybe interview Kyle or James, play a song or two,” says Myles, referring to longtime bassist Kyle Cunjak and Leave Tonight’s producer, James Bunton.
“It’ll be a release party, with just me in my little studio at home. I’ve been into it, working on it like crazy figuring out how to get all the details sorted, but I think I’ve figured out how I can do these interviews and all these other cool things.”
DEALING WITH ISOLATION
For a musician who both makes his living and gets his charge from performing live shows for fans from coast to coast, Myles says he’s adapted well to staying at home with his wife, CBC journalist and producer Nina Corfu, and their children, and continues to find ways to challenge himself in the midst of selfisolation.
Early on, he began posting his impromptu Songs From the Pod videos online, like a performance of the First Edition’s I Just Checked In to See What Condition My Condition Was In following Kenny Rogers’ passing. And he’s been turning up in other corners, like the East Coast all-star rendition of Bill Withers’ Lean on Me dedicated to essential retail workers, and as a guest on Joel Plaskett’s Youtube launch for his new four-record set, 44.
“I am busy, man! But I don’t need that many outside forces to keep myself occupied. I don’t require a tour to keep myself busy, or to dig into something creative,” says Myles.
“When I’m not with the kids, like at night, I go into my little studio and I just start working on creative stuff. If anything, I’ve directed tons of energy towards that, I feel really motivated to do it, and to connect with people in any way that I can.”
The singer was already reaching out remotely with his weekly show Myles From Home, which airs on and can be streamed from Alberta station CKUA (or CKUA. com) on Saturday mornings. More recently he crafted a homemade video for Leave Tonight’s second single Kind of Like It with band members
Cunjak, guitarist Alan Jeffries and drummer Joshua Van Tassel all performing remotely.
FINDING A SOUND
Kind of Like It cooks with a serious groove, while other songs on Leave Tonight have a dreamy midnight mood thanks to soaring strings and an overall aesthetic that Myles refers to as listening that’s “easy without being cheesy.”
Working with producer Bunton (Donovan Woods, Kashka), Myles and his cohorts worked hard to craft a sound for his 12th album that would be “contemporary, rather than referential” and not refer directly back to classic crooners or vintage pop and rock and roll.
“What do I sound like now, at this point in my life?” was the question Myles kept asking himself as he wrote and prepped for Leave Tonight, trying to ensure that the songs stayed rooted in the present, sounding new and fresh, “but with all the influences that I have.
“For me, the sweet spot, what I’ve wanted to get to and what I’ve always had in the back of my mind, was somewhere between country, crooning, and Chet, that cool Chet Baker jazz stuff that’s on the chill side, and also a bit of James Taylor.
“Somehow, I wanted the music to fit somewhere in there where you can’t quite identify whether it’s country or jazz or folk or whatever. It’s what I’ve always tried to do, to some extent, and it’s always about trying to do that at the highest level I’ve done yet.”
And like a lot of music that’s just coming out now, certain songs take on new meaning in the context of COVID-19. Young Again is filled with a certain bittersweet nostalgia for carefree adolescent and teenage years and Home, written and recorded before everything shut down, fully expresses everything he’s missing right now.
“I’m a social guy, and that’s what the song’s about,” says Myles. “Especially that third verse, which is all about the regular interactions I have with people. Not people I know super-well, not my closest friends, but the people I see when I’m out grabbing a coffee or running into people on the street.
“It’s about the people I love seeing, and having those interactions with. When you’re a social person, this is the fuel that gets you going. Even if they’re not people I talk to every day, that’s not the point,
they’re just part of my life.”
FACING DEATH
Somehow, I wanted the music to fit somewhere in there where you can’t quite identify whether it’s country or jazz or folk or whatever.
David Myles
It’s the album’s closing track Weight that Myles describes as the toughest song he’s ever tackled, inspired by the ongoing process of coming to terms with a parent’s death.
His father Jim Myles, a beloved Fredericton music educator, passed away in the winter of 2017 and three years later he says he “cracked myself open” writing the song, letting a flood of unrealized emotion pour onto the page as he wrote it. Then he followed Bunton’s advice to “stare into the abyss of those feelings” during the late-night session when it was recorded.
“For a long time I rationalized it, as one does, by saying ‘He had a good life, we’re all adults, he taught us well and we’re going to be fine.’ You do that for a little while, but then you realize there’s still something that hurts or bugs you or is difficult, and that’s when you realize there’s a whole bunch of stuff you just haven’t dealt with,” says the singer, who debated putting Weight on the record because of the seriousness of its subject matter.
But he’s glad he did as he gets more feedback about it, and more people around him are experiencing those same emotions at a time when there’s been a surplus of tragedy and uncertainty for all of us to cope with.
“You haven’t allowed yourself to grieve, or allowed yourself to be sad, for a number of reasons. At least I didn’t, so that’s what that song comes from, and it’s as raw as anything I’ve ever done.”