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MY BIO ACCORDING TO MY HONEY
“Yeah! ... Alright now”
It’s the end of the night at Heartwood Bakery in Halifax, a 64 key piano sits by the wall, and the customers have cleared out. A song from Mike Evin’s new album Good Watermelon manages to travel from the kitchen in the back where the guys are cleaning up to the front by the window as a hot summer day turns into a sticky summer night.
Mike Evin’s been honing the craft of making people dance and sing and laugh along with his piano pop songs since he picked music over communications while studying the latter at Concordia. He made his first album, The January Muse, in Montreal in 2001 with his former TA, Danielle Duval. At the time Mike was still switching between guitar and piano. But some of the songs—like “The Lord Writes all the Ragtime Songs,” and “All Your Exmuses”—are phenomenally good.
The January Muse caught the attention of Jim and Andy Creeggan, who brought him to Toronto to record I’ll Bring the Stereo in 2004. The album was recorded at Jim’s old house in Roncesvalles in the summer while Mike was fighting a cold—but you can’t hear the cold through the great songs and amazing players, including Barenaked Ladies Kevin Hearn and Tyler Stewart.
While living in Toronto Mike wrote an EP of love songs called Let’s Slow it Down, which he recorded in 2006 with Don Kerr at the Gas Station and the Rooster. The songs—about dishes, tooth brushing and late-night radio—feature Don on drums, Jason Mercer on upright bass, Kurt Swinghammer on guitar and Tim Bovaconti on pedal steel.
In an act of true love, Mike packed up the piano and the car and hauled our two cats and me to Halifax last August so that I could go back to school here and we could soak up the Haligonian music scene for awhile. But when it came time to make his fourth CD, Mike decided that he wanted to go home to Montreal to record with old friends.
He made the right choice.
Mike’s backup band play together as a collective called Ideal Lovers, which include Geneseo, NY native and Montreal transplant Zac Decamp on bass and awesome vibes, David Payant (Vic Chestnut) on kick ass soul session drums, Mike O’Brien on classy acoustic guitar and Joe Grass on electric guitar, pedal steel and banjo. Andy Creeggan joined in at the end of the sessions on percussion and thumb piano. Everyone sings. And that includes the lovely Emma Baxter (Orillia Opry) at the high end, singer/songwriter Angela Desveaux rounding out the middle, and Andrea Dawes (who arranged the string parts) on “This Soul.”
West-coaster Paul Forgues (who also worked on I’ll Bring the Stereo) recorded and mixed Good Watermelon live to two-track analog tape at Breakglass, which meant that for some songs, like “Great Pop Song,” there were 18 people in the room. They played the songs until they got a good live take. Mike says it created a vibe they never would have achieved if they were overdubbing.
Good Watermelon varies from hip shaking “We Should Dance,” and “Rockin’ Receptionist” to mature songs reflecting on childhood and relationships (“Good Watermelon,” “Sweet Family Outings,” and “Me and My Love”). Mike says it’s the most personal album he’s ever made.
Mike’s music has found him friends and fans in Nashville, Hamilton, Sackville and Chapel Hill. He’s played at punk bars and folk fests, picnics and backyard parties. He’s performed for CBC radio broadcasts FUSE (with the Brothers Creeggan) and Routes Montreal, and been interviewed on the CBC and on campus-community radio shows. "Soapbox Racer" was recently featured in a Redbull ad.
I like how ex-Torontonian piano man Dan Bryk puts it:
“Many of my Canuck indie rock peeps talk about his 2005 record I'll Bring The Stereo in the hushed tones reserved for Zumpano and early Ron Sexsmith records. Veering between Randy Newman (cynical) and Jonathan Richman (earnest), often within the same song, fans of wry, cynical/earnest piano pop should catch his shit. Mike possesses phenomenal hooks and truly awesome stride-y piano chops -- that is, when he's not finger snapping and hand clapping the audience into some otherworldly bliss.”
Sarah Greene
July, 2008
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