It's been a busy fall for David Myles.
Fall has kept David Myles on the move.
Over the past few of weeks he has co-hosted the SOCAN Awards in Toronto with Barney Bentall and Carolyn Dawn Johnson, personally handing honours to Tom Cochrane and Gordon Lightfoot. He was also picked to represent New Brunswick in CBC's SongQuest challenge, and spent the last half of October traveling India.
To top it all off, Myles is currently putting the finishing touches on a brand new record and despite a wealth of experience in the studio, he is pleased with the sense of new this experience has brought to an otherwise familiar process.
"The last few records I made were done over an extended period of time," said Myles, "but this time around, we've booked some time and we're working within some boundaries. Everybody involved in this recording is very busy. Before, because of the way we did things recording a bit here and a little there, we were always questioning stuff. This way is more psychologically healthy. We're just going in and doing it and it's going awesome."
For this recording, Myles has chosen to work with Fredericton's Kyle Cunjak on bass and Al Jefferies on guitar, alongside the Bridgewater-born, Toronto-based drummer Joshua Van Tassel.
"It's more of a rehearsed band because these are the guys I tour with," said Myles, "so they've played the songs before and we've developed them together in preproduction. This way, we don't need as much time in the studio. We just go in and execute."
Nova Scotia's song-writer extraordinaire Joel Plaskett, has been recording and producing the entire project from his home studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
"We went to Memphis together last year and we spent a lot of time together here in Halifax during the basketball playoffs last season," said Myles. "At the time, I was talking about my new record a lot and he was talking about making records so eventually it just got to the point where I figured I'd ask if he would be interested in producing it. I sent him a bunch of songs I was working on and he picked out the ones that he liked and we went for it."
With most of the recording under his belt now, the next few weeks will include a trip to Arizona where Myles and Plaskett will be mixing the new songs together.
"That should be really cool," said Myles. "We're mixing it at the same place he recorded La De Da and it will definitely be nice to spend some time in the heat."
Racking up further Air Miles (no pun intended), Myles will return to Toronto to perform his song for CBC in mid-December before taking a break for the coming holidays. After that, he'll no doubt be preparing to tour his new recording.
"As it looks right now, I'm going to go to Toronto to play the Hopewell Rocks song with Kyle and Al. It will be fun to take the New Brunswick contingent up there and rock Toronto. That's December 15 and I think that's my last trip until after Christmas."