Ken Tizzard rocks remotely with new single ‘Mad World’
Ken Tizzard is back to rock ’n’ roll and he’s brought some friends.
“All Together Now” is Tizzard’s upcoming album of 13 cover songs of tunes from his formative years and features contributions from 45 artists.
The first single, “Mad World,” a cover of the Tears for Fears song, immediately brings listeners back to Tizzard’s past projects with Big Wreck, The Watchmen and Thornley.
Neil Lucy from Music For Goats and Mike Turner from Our Lady Peace and Crash Karma offers up electric guitar for the song, with Tommy MacDonald from Hedley on bass, Daniel Adair from Nickelback on drums and Graydon James from the Young Novelists bringing piano and organ to the track.
The project started as a collection of covers that Tizzard was playing on Whisky Wednesday at The Stinking Rose, now That Little Pub, in Campbellford, and was intended to be an acoustic album. But when he started bringing friends on board it became clear it would be something else.
“As a solo artist I do a lot of folk and country stuff, and that’s still my main thing,” said Tizzard.
“With this album, because so many of my peers have been from larger Canadian rock bands … you start bringing these musicians in and these guys are pretty fantastic at what they do so I didn’t want to fight that it was turning into a bit more of a rock album.”
Tizzard put the call out through Facebook and sent tracks of him playing acoustic guitar and singing the song.
He asked the musicians to do whatever they wanted to with it and he would find a way to include it whether it was the whole demo or just a 15-second snippet.
“Sure, enough everyone sent me back stuff and I started picking the bits that fit,” said Tizzard. “I described it to some people as the world’s biggest puzzle and that’s kind of how it felt.”
The album features covers of John Lennon, The Cure, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, The Clash and more. Tizzard says people who are familiar with his solo work and his rock projects will find a bit of everything on the new album.
“A lot of the music is from the mid-’80s when I was learning to play and influenced me heavily,” said Tizzard.
What was a one-month project expanded to just about a year before finishing in February and will be released to the world on May 18. Pre-orders for the album and its limited vinyl run are available at kentizzard.com.