In 1998 I was just beginning to find my voice. I had written and played music for years, but not ‘til then did my true voice begin to appear. I remember very clearly, the night I recorded ‘I Can Be A Rock,’ and having the voice inside my head say "you are very, nearly there." The music on "Before We Were Security Guards" really represents this discovery. Like a new found, glorious pair of shoes. I was trying everything in them.
Getting comfy in them. Learning to believe in them.

Early on I was recording in the front entrance of a studio owned by a friend, James Paul, well north of Dundas on Keele Street. I road my bike there at all hours to sneak recording and writing in when his schedule allowed it. He also gave me a bass when mine was stolen out of my mother's car in the middle of a rainy day at Church and Shuter. I remember riding up there in the middle of the night to sleep on the couch and record and discover. It was a glorious time. I have memories of eating peanut butter off my finger, and the smell of the bone grinder at the Abattoir across the way. Shortly after, I moved my modest studio to the basement of a friend's recently deceased grandmother on Hillsdale Avenue. My friend's grandma had been a dance teacher in Vienna, and spent half her time there and the other in Toronto. The place was a museum of strange art and musical instruments. I realize now it was a great gift. This place became Hawksleytown Studio, where most of this album was recorded. So too was "For Him And The Girls," "Last Night We Were The Delicious Wolves," and many other recordings for the likes of John Southworth, Cash Brothers, Sarah Slean, Jason Collet, Kevin Drew, Skydiggers and Paul Mcleod. I learned a great deal from all of these people.

"Before We Were Security Guards" is full of little treasures I had forgotten about. I don't mean this to be entirely sentimental. I listen to this music and it fills me with a funny peace. I was naïve, and it was lovely. But I have grown, traveled and experienced, and I am grateful. These songs are by no means my definitive beginnings, for those go way back to the embarrassing church school plays and awkward songs written in high school. These are the true beginnings of my voice that I still write and sing with today; the same voice, but now, naturally a little weathered and a little wiser. Back then I had time to write. I was broke, had no job, and did things like practiced walking blindfolded in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. I was consumed. I drank dandelion tea. I wrote and recorded perpetually. It was a love affair, and one that I continue to nurture to this day.
This isn't a period at the end of a sentence, and I hope it isn't a sloppy, teary look back. Simply a nod to the time when I thought I was lost and wandering; certainly not that I am found now. I am simply honouring, without pretence or embarrassment, my beginnings. To seek some wisdom in those very uninformed, naively brave moments that were the dirt that I planted seeds in. I hope you enjoy this music as much as I did making it then, and now re-hearing it long after.
h.