ROY FORBES

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Some Tunes For That Mother of Mine

REVIEW:
Songs from a son to his mother: But the selection is a fine work with a Broken Heart knockout by Forbes
By John P. McLaughlin, The Province, Vancouver BC
Publish Date: 27-Apr-2006

The record opens with a ringing, ascending country lick that sounds like Chet Atkins circa 1957.

It's actually Vancouver's Robbie Steininger on his vintage Gretsch Tennessean -- about as Chet as a guitar gets -- at Bakerstreet Studios in North Van kicking off Johnny Cash's sweet, 48-year-old "I Still Miss Someone" and parting the musical curtains for a new and long-overdue Roy Forbes album called Some Tunes for That Mother of Mine.

The idea, simple as a letter home, was to record a bunch of old songs for Forbes' 85-year-old mother in Dawson Creek, "something for her to listen to as she sat on her back step, having a coffee and a smoke," as he writes in the liner notes, "watching the Peace Country spring turn into summer."

So he did it.

A rocker at heart, a folkie by rep and a down-home country boy by upbringing, he pulled out some of the old songs he'd heard growing up, country things like the Marty Robbins' "Singin' the Blues," Jimmie Rodgers' classic "Waiting For a Train," the jazzier "I Remember You" -- the elegant Jo Stafford version, not Frank Ifield's yodeller -- and even Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" just 'cause Forbes is a Neil freak.

"My mom got a CD player from the girls, as we call my sisters -- I have half a dozen, I was spoiled rotten," says Forbes. "Anyway, they went together and bought her a little portable blue CD player she could take outside where she likes to sit when it starts to get warm.

"So my sister Judy was making her MP3 CDs of old tunes and I was pulling out my Wilf Carter 78s, things like that, and MP3-ing them up so she could burn them. Then one day I thought maybe I should just do something myself. It seemed like a good idea."

Forbes enlisted the help of Paul Baker of Bakerstreet Studio, who had a bit of recording time to spare, longtime producer/engineer Rolf Hennemann was available and even Steininger, one very busy guitar player, managed to find a few hours.

One morning last June everybody mustered at the studio, plugged in, miked up and, at Forbes' clarion call of "OK, fellas, we're making 78s!" -- hit the little red button. Five hours later, including a lunch break, they had an album.

Well, actually, they had a neat bunch of songs to send Forbes' mom. Only a little later when Forbes realized he really had something here, that this could have a life in the marketplace -- then they had an album.

All the great old covers aside, I think the highlight comes at the end with a song called "About My Broken Heart," something Forbes wrote a year ago that cracked a too-long writer's block and, as the tale of a care-worn lover finding comfort in old records, couldn't have fit better. Spare and pulsing with affectionate joy, the song -- like the album -- is a wonderfully realized, memorable addition to a fine body of work.

But what did mom think?

"Well, she hasn't gone into great detail," says Forbes. "She doesn't do that. But she likes it, sheds a few tears. She says she can't listen to it when people are around, she waits till everyone's gone. Then she puts it on."

REVIEW:
Forbes’s New Tunes Covers Family History
By Alexander Varty, The Georgia Straight, Vancouver BC
Publish Date: 20-Apr-2006

Roy Forbes took exactly five hours to make his new CD, Some Tunes for That Mother of Mine. It sounds like it, too, but in the best possible way. You couldn’t ask for a more spontaneous recording­most of the performances are first takes ­ or improve on the friendly interplay between the singer and his sole musical guest, guitarist Robbie Steininger. A bigger band or more songs would be gilding this 36-minute lily; it’s perfect as it is.

Of course, such perfection isn’t as effortless as it seems. Some Tunes might have been laid down in a single afternoon, but it’s also the product of one long, long rehearsal.

“You know, ‘Singing the Blues’, I’ve been singing that since I was three,” says the 53-year-old Forbes, on the line from his North Vancouver home. He’s referring to the Melvin Endsley standard that’s the second track on his new disc, which also includes Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone”, Jimmie Rodgers’s “Waiting for a Train”, and Johnny Mercer’s “I Remember You”, among other country and pop classics. For the most part, they’re songs Forbes heard growing up in Dawson Creek during the 1950s and ’60s, songs his mother might have sung at family get-togethers or while working around the house.

In fact, the project started out as a gift for Margaret Fellers, Forbes’s mom, who’s still very much alive at 85. “The first thing she did when she heard it was have a big cry,” her dutiful son reveals. “That’s her sign of approval. But she loved it. She thought it was very thoughtful of me. And of course when she got the original disc it was just a CD in a little homemade cover. When she saw the final packaging, with the photo of all those grain elevators ­ my dad hauled grain for most of the farmers in the area ­ she said, ‘Honey, it just takes you right back.’”

It does, indeed. Some Tunes is not only a sampler of Forbes family favourites, but a capsule history of its maker’s musical upbringing. Included in the package are an early original, “Spider”, that the singer played with his teenage rock band the Crystal Ship, and a cover of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”.

“When I started to look at putting this record out, I went, ‘Oh my God, what’s that Neil Young song doing on there??” admits Forbes, who hosts a CD–release party for Some Tunes at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre next Friday (April 28). “But I think it all works for me ­ and it’s hard to explain what that After the Gold Rush album did to me. I think it really showed me a way to write that was spontaneous. It’s hard to put it into words, but it kind of got in there and massaged my soul.”

In addition, the disc concludes with a new Forbes composition, “About My Broken Heart”, which might be a signpost of where the singer’s going next. It’s been a while since he last wrote a whole album’s worth of material, but a new batch of tunes is on its way ­ and his aim is to have them equal the great songs he grew up hearing.

“Getting this record ready for release has made me examine my musical roots, the really deep stuff,” he explains. “You always think about your teenage years ­ you know, you’re playing in your first band and you hate country music, all of that. And I think about the early days here in Vancouver, coming here and rediscovering people like Hank Williams. But that other stuff is so deep it’s part of the blood, and I feel like it will inform my new writing. I’m not sure how, yet, but I’m always going for simplicity, anyway; the fewer lines I can use to get it across, the more I like it. ‘About My Broken Heart’ is like that. It’s really distilled. I feel like there’s not a wasted word in that song ­ and that’s what I want to do.”

And chances are that when Forbes next heads into the studio, he’s going to shoot for the same kind of spontaneity that makes Some Tunes such a winner.