Notes On 'Ours And The Shepherds'

"Whose fault is it? Ours and the shepherds."
- Dorothy Day

Track List:

Jim Loney's Prayer Part I
Mimico
Tajik Boy
Kigali
Auction Days
Groesbeek
Sgt. Tommy Prince
Cigarettes
The Latest Great Embarrassment
The Padre
Hill 677
Jim Loney's Prayer Part II

In Flanders Fields

Jim Loney's Prayer Part I

'But what can you actually accomplish by going there?' the reporter asks.
'We are going to suffer with the Iraqis…'
-George Weber, Christian Peacemaker Team member interviewed in December 2002.

James Loney was the Canadian "Christian Peacemaker" held hostage in Iraq in 2006. Both Parts I and II are prayers or meditations for a world that challenges hope and love and faith. I chose to bookend a collection of Canadian war stories for a few reasons. I consider James Loney a hero of our times; as well, I understand the controversy of such sentiment. It is easy to criticize Mr. Loney for being 'in the way' – as his organization puts it – however, today's humanity is seldom driven to moral action. More often, we are too distracted, too disinterested, or too inattentive for 'moral and urgent decision'.

I met Jim when the songs were still in demo shape. I asked for permission to use his name and story for these two songs. He was flattered and a bit surprised a Canadian songwriter wrote something inspired by his work. I recited the words to him and he nodded his head and at that point I knew the songs would work.

My producer, Pat Simmonds, suggested we hire Declan O'Doherty to play piano on some songs and we started with 'Jim I'. During an early mix we discovered my guitar parts were a bit squeaky – 'what if we just took them out?' We did and the result was something we thought relatively new. I added the glockenspiel and some harmony and unison vocals and it was done. 'Jim I' has always been one of Pat's favourite tracks on 'Ours And The Shepherds'.

Mimico

This song was intended for 'No Mean City'. It started out as another Toronto neighbourhood piece but, at the time, I felt 'No Mean City' was already getting too dense with songs and ideas so we opted to save it. This was recorded and rerecorded and rerecorded again. It's far and away the most requested song in my repertoire and so we had to get it right. I hope we did. Declan played organ on it and I love the sound of acoustic guitar over organ. We added many parts to this song and slowly cut them all out in favour of sparseness. There is a plaintive aspect to this version that doesn't always come through live – the quieter 'ah, Mimico' parts are really the soul of this character's story.

Tajik Boy

There are songs that take 5 years and songs that take 5 minutes. This is one of those rare 5-minute gifts. Chris Goddard – one of the actors in 'Ray Westernson's Mistake' from 'NMC' – told me a story about a Paschendaele soldier who bayoneted a German who couldn't of been more than 13. The experience haunted him the rest of his long life. A mysterious mechanism of guilt and memory forced him to keep looking for this kid he called, 'his Archie boy'. All his life, at least once or twice a week, he caught himself looking at guys who might be this German soldier.

As well, I needed a song about the war Canada is presently engaged in. 'The Padre', 'Flanders', 'Cigarettes', and 'Auction Days' already covered much of WWI, so I transposed the story to a current subject - 'Archie Boy' became 'Tajik Boy'.

Kigali

For Sen. Romeo Dallaire and The Royal 22nd Regiment

If I had to throw them all away and keep only one, this would be the one. I love the character so much, it hurts me to keep sending him out night after night to new homes and strange ears. The first verse comes right out of Dallaire's 'Shake Hands With The Devil'; verse 2 was inspired by the great French Canadian documentary, 'Operation Homecoming'; and the third verse was inspired by the writing of Jerzy Kosinski – I like his idea that escape from our selves is found most surely through intimacy with strangers. Hence, the veteran's lap dance in the final verse.

The drummer on this track is my dad, Jack Brooks. He played professionally for 25 years. Perhaps the father-son allusion led me to invite him to play. Whatever the reasons, the result was beautiful – you cannot find drummers in my generation that play a country waltz this way. Joe Phillips played upright bass, Christine Bougie played lap steel, James Gray played accordion and Suzie Vinnick sang. I'm grateful these first order artists were able to participate. If I could afford to buy them all farms in Ireland, I would.

Auction Days

I played the London Music Club back in November 2006. I was introducing 'Tajik' and it occurred to me out loud: 'this album is missing a song from a woman's point of view'. After the set, an older guy introduced himself and said he had a story I might be interested in. His sister's English fiancé went off to WW2 and never returned – as did her brother. After the war she resolved never to marry. She died in her late 60's a lonely woman.

Two or three weeks later, I attended a Christmas party, whereupon I met a woman organizing part of the 90th Anniversary of Vimy celebrations in France. She invited me to play at it and I admitted to not yet having a song devoted to Vimy.

'Auction Days' is the distillation of these two stories. It's set in the post-Vimy New Waterford town of Cape Breton. Apparently, New Waterford sent more men per capita to Vimy Ridge than any other community in the British Empire. The following July 1917, the Dominion Coal mining disaster killed 62 more men.

I had a bigger production in mind for this song – 'country radio single', etc… I played what I thought to be a ghost track; Pat recorded two takes, picked one and said, 'we're done.' I talked him into adding Suzie's voice at the end. This is Pat's favourite song on the album.

Groesbeek

The Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery and Memorial is located about 3 km north of the village of Groesbeek, Netherlands, where 2,338 Canadian soldiers of WWII are buried.

'Groesbeek' was originally called 'Tristan Da Cunha'. It tells the story of a WWII veteran who spent the rest of his post-war years yearning to return to the state of mind he felt during the battle of Groesbeek, a battle in which five and a half thousand young Canadians died. The song idea came from an interview with a British man I stayed with in Salisbury, England back in 1997. The song imposes on the listener a counterintuitive idea – which is why I was attracted to the story. This veteran spoke of a profound peace he felt during the battle at Groesbeek; a peace he could only attribute to how near he was to death at that time. I've met veterans who spoke of Groesbeek Cemetery as also being a place of peace, hence, the chorus '…there is a place on this hard earth to rest…' aims to allude to both the battle and to the sacred ground it is today.

Sgt. Tommy Prince

October 1915 – November 25 1977

According to 'The Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples', "Aboriginal veterans fought and lost their lives in three wars and various military actions on behalf of Canada. Many were decorated as heroes, but upon their return home, they were unable to obtain the same benefits other Veterans received. Further, these Veterans had to extinguish their aboriginal rights, preventing them from returning to their own communities to live.

Sgt. Tommy Prince was from the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation in Scanterbury, Manitoba, formerly, the St. Peter's Reserve. He was decorated by King George VI at Buckingham Palace, with both the Military Medal and on behalf of President Roosevelt, the Silver Star with ribbon. Prince was one of 59 Canadians who were awarded the Silver Star during the Second World War. Only three Canadians of this group also possessed the Military Medal."

A collection of Canadian war stories would be incomplete without a story about a First Nations veteran. His tragic story has been told many times but not many times enough.

I have not heard of an Anglophone Canadian songwriter singing a First Nations ballad in part in Ojibwe. Canada was introduced as an idea - a country built on a three cultural pillars: First Nations, English, and French. I believe the Canadian artist respectful of tradition needs to honour and maintain this threefold idea by including the language and stories of each of these three founding cultures.

I first approached Alex Jacobs at the Native Canadian Centre in Toronto about this song. He recommended I contact the Prince family for permission. I did and I received informal – if not, indifferent – permission by his son, Tommy Jr.

The song chronicles the outward essentials of Tommy Prince's life. I felt the story so compelling and poetic and ironic, that any further artifice on my part, would only dull the telling.

I received a number of different translations for this song. Chuck Lilligren provided the initial translation from Minnesota; Marc Nadjiwan, an accomplished Toronto songwriter - and his mom, Hilda Nadjiwan – supplied another version. Alex Jacobs suggested two possible renderings. I contacted Roger Roulette at ALM (Aboriginal Languages Manitoba Inc.) for another opinion – and in the end, I went with Mr. Roulette's insistence that only his translation would be decipherable in the Brokenhead community.

Cigarettes

'Frank P. Dixon (1898; died of wounds 1918). Signaller Frank P. Dixon was born in Elkhorn, Manitoba and served in the 10th Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery. His mother, Ellen M. Dixon, published a slim, posthumous volume of his poems written in the trenches, "War-Time Memories In Verse" (1937).' 'Cigarettes' was published again in 2001 as part of Exile Editions', "We Wasn't Pals: Canadian Poetry and Prose of the First World War". The poem was adapted to music and printed with permission from Barry Callaghan and Bruce Meyer.

I included this adaptation of Frank P. Dixon's 1917 poem, Cigarettes, for two reasons. I felt it necessary to promote the unheralded – and almost unknown - Canadian art of First World War poetry. Everyone knows John McRae but I am confident no one who buys this CD will have heard of Frank P. Dixon.

As well, I needed a song that somehow captured a balanced and believable view of humour in the face of death. Absurd, yes, however, the law of opposites demands that extremes do meet. I attempted this in Groesbeek but I think Dixon's poem arrests a more chilling balance between fear and courage, laughter and death. It reminds me of Martin Scorcese talking about humour as a means of enhancing a scene's violence; it reminds me of that piece of dark chocolate that enhances the 'heat' in a chilli recipe. The humanity of humour set against the inhumanity of war is what makes Cigarettes equal parts funny and terrifying. I also enjoy the idea that if I were born the day after Dixon wrote this I'd be over 90 years old today.

On Pat's suggestion, I wrote horn parts for this recorded in single and haunting takes by Diane Doig.

The Latest Great Embarrassment

'The worst crime was dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.'
– Tacitus

For the United Nations Security Council, 1993-1995

In many ways, this song was the 'first song' of 'Ours And The Shepherds'. I wrote an earlier version of 'Latest' in Krakow, Poland. I had just returned from a backpacking trip through Bosnia-Herzegovina. In song anyway, I've had trouble eschewing reaction to what I saw in May 1997. I rewrote a few lyrics written by a younger man and here is the closest thing I have to a protest song. I don't like protest songs and I don't wish this to be one – although I admit it does share a few traits with 'the protest song'. It was directed towards the Clinton administration and the UN. Much false hope was given to the Bosnians: the false hope that help was on the way. But 'help's' hands were tied in a collective malaise of Western indifference, UN bureaucracy, general human incompetence, and political righteousness without action on all sides. Milosevic and the Serbian Army are to foremost to blame, but the rest of the world exacerbated the catastrophe by not admitting they unprepared to sacrifice one international peacekeeper for the lives and families of thousands of Bosnians.

I wiped the dust off of this song after not playing it for at least 5 years. I considered it a finished bit of 90's politics but the song remains topical. I don't even have to change the words: it's now about Darfur.

The Padre

For Chaplain William Henry Davis, Lte. Jack Campbell, Capt. John Woods, Pte. Jaf Eaton, Sgt. Major Dunlop

"Chaplain Davis was the Anglican rector of St. Peter's Church in Bonnie Doon when he joined the 138th battalion, but went to the front with the 4th CMRs. At the battle of Paschendaele, waving a Red Cross flag, Davis took out a large party of stretcher-bearers under fire to search for wounded in No Man's Land. His fearlessness may have triggered a spontaneous truce, as the Germans ceased fired. For his part in this strange interlude, Davis was awarded the Military Cross. In 1918 at the Battle of Amiens he was directing stretcher-bearers with wounded men when a shell killed him. Davis had previously turned down his bishop's request to return to Edmonton, in order to stay with his men. "He came from Western Canada but he had retained his Irish heart and Celtic charm. If he knew what fear was he never showed it…No officer was more loved for his character or admired for his bravery than Padre Davis", wrote the 4th CMR's historian."

- taken from research generously provided by Duff Crerar.

The Padre was an important song for me to include aside from the fact that Chaplain William Henry Davis is a little known Irish-Canadian hero. I am fascinated by the spirituality of the military padre – the man of love and God and hope standing in the ruins of death and hopelessness. Albert Camus wrote, 'the light of hope shines brightest in the dark where it's needed most.' This is the spirituality of the padre – mystic, defiant, heroic, absurd, idealistic, stoic, and resolute. Chaplain Davis stayed and died with his men because he understood that he was connected with his men; that he 'was his men' and 'his men were him'.

Hill 677

On Hill 677 near the Kap'yong River, the 2nd Battalion of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry repulsed a major enemy assault from 23 to 25 April 1951, a key strategic point on the route to Seoul.

For Private Wayne Mitchell and Private Curt Hayes from 'B Company' of The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry

Korea is Canada's 'forgotten war'. I doubt it's taught in high schools, I doubt it ever was. Even researching it was a challenge. All the arguable successes and failures of this so-called 'conflict' are expressed reluctantly in Canadian war history. Whatever the reasons, the CD needed a song that investigated our experience in the Korean War. And, aside from the obvious questions, I hope the chorus also asks and answers the listener: 'whose fault is it that we accept such non-discussion of our country's history? Ours and the shepherds.'

Musically, Pat and I were so impressed with Christine Bougie's lap steel playing we extended the ending.

Jim Loney's Prayer Part II

Again, to bookend the CD with something hopeful, a prayer attuned to the difficult idea that if one part of the world hurts, we all hurt.

In Flanders Fields

Meant as a 'bonus track', I wanted to incite new and violent life to McRae's poem. 90 years of grade school recitations will dull the disturbing edges off the sturdiest of poetry.