POSTCARD COMETS' Page

Farewell, Van Johnson

I read today that actor Van Johnson died last week. He’s not on the tip of many tastemaker tongues these days but back in the middle of the 20th Century he was hot stuff. I know this because my father told me it was true.

My dad was a modest movie buff, a fan of ‘40s stuff like A Guy Named Joe, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and State Of The Union with my man Spencer Tracy. I suspect that my movie obsession comes from my father and, by extension, from actors like Van Johnson.… Continue

When POSTCARD COMETS put our first tracks on MySpace last year, we had fewer tunes than the player had slots. A song called WHAT THE RIVER HAS SEEN was among the first of our postings. Those early recordings were destined for our first CD BODIES OF WATER but by the time the tracks were sequenced and nestled on the disc, WHAT THE RIVER HAS SEEN was gone.

The song had always troubled me and I wasn’t sure why. It was a story partially told, and while it still isn’t New York Times reporting in the… Continue

I can barely remember where the first droplet of this song came from. But I think it went like this:
My computer takes a bit of time to boot and have a habit of doodling at the piano while waiting for the sign-in message. Sometimes this produces the musical version of gibberish but every so often...
Anyway, it's my opinion that the genesis of this song, that opening piano figure, was a lightning strike and not a light drizzle. You may see it differently. But after I had the piano figure, the who… Continue

A few years ago, pre-POSTCARD COMETS but by no means before my musical partnership with Buck Wilburn, he asked me to produce a CD for a band he was in. The band was the Altona Kahunas and the CD was called Live Off The Floor. It was literally that, a recording of a 5 piece guitar band recorded all at once—instruments, vocals, harmonies and solos--- all from a garage just East of Altona Road in Pickering Ontario.
The garage belonged to a friend called Tim Hewie.
To say that Tim was the leader of… Continue

A few months ago I mentioned to Buck that I'd found an old version of The Guardhouse And The Moon and that it was one of the few of my older recordings that I actually thought was properly mixed.

Musicians will possibly understand the rarity of this. Some players dislike hearing recordings of themselves. Many are embarrassed by their older songs, knowing that their craft has moved beyond the point captured in their past work. Even more musicians dislike hearing their older recordings, believing… Continue