I Am My Father's Son by Dan Hill

Author:Dan Hill [Hill, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4434-0137-1
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2009-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

The Story behind “Sometimes When We Touch”

I was sitting in the office of Barry Keane, RCA’s new A&R man now that Bayers was back in the States. In the thirteen months that I’d been signed to RCA, I’d come to really like Barry; he’d grown up in Scarborough, just a few miles from my Don Mills stomping grounds. One of those nauseating types who happened to be extremely gifted in many areas, Barry exuded a quiet confidence, rarely talking about himself or his considerable range of abilities. Regrettably, my exposure to Barry’s talents came the hard way: through being blanked by him in a one-on-one basketball game or attempting, and failing, to follow his complex drum patterns during one of our “casual” music jams. (Having turned down an offer to try out for a professional baseball team, Barry eventually went on to perform and record with Gordon Lightfoot.) Now, as our first official A&R meeting kicked off, I was discovering that Barry possessed yet another aptitude that most musicians lacked: a shrewd grasp of business.

“I’ve reviewed all the paperwork and budgeting with the president here, and we’ve agreed to go ahead and produce an album with you,” Barry announced, the stack of demo tapes and finished masters crowding his desk making it clear he had little time for chit-chat. “Considering you have no track record—let’s pretend your single never happened—the fact that I’ve been given eighteen thousand dollars to make your record should tell you that everyone here believes strongly in your potential. Along with this big budget we have free, unlimited studio time, since RCA is the only label in Canada equipped with its own in-house studio.”

Although not the jump-up-and-down, “that’s the greatest mother-fucking song I’ve ever heard” type, Barry’s confidence in my writing and singing was pretty apparent. I was being offered something that, frankly, any of the countless thousands of singer-songwriters trying to be heard in Canada would have died for. This was all the more incredible considering the sorry fate of my RCA single. (Unlike today, in the 1970s record companies were willing to stick with artists they had faith in through several failures, partly because it was less costly to nurture a “baby artist” back then.) So why did I find myself hesitating? Desperate to stay in Barry’s good books, I prevaricated and told him I was more than willing to go ahead with the album. I figured it would buy me some time while I took RCA’s offer to the McCauleys, curious as to what they’d come back with.

Flattering as it was to have options, my indecisiveness left my career in a kind of limbo, forcing me to return to my government day job while chasing down various paying gigs in the evening. Had I sold a few songs to Belafonte or Feliciano I could have avoided the nine-to-five grind, but I wasn’t prepared to do that. As a cocky teenager, I likened selling off my precious songs to chopping off one of my arms for cash.

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