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October 12, 2005
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Jeff Hardill has spent the past few minutes matter-of-factly discussing all things Fiftymen -- from the local band's drunken origins some six years ago, through an imminent and long-overdue cross-country tour. His bandmates, meanwhile, have patiently waited for their frontman to join their rehearsal.
"There's one more thing we should discuss," Hardill quietly says in his natural Johnny Cash baritone, "and that's the mood of the album."
Those familiar with the band's alt.country 2002 debut CD, After Darkfall, do not need to be told that the mood of Balances + Sums is dark. We are again taken on a ride from town to town as our narrator lives outside the law and ultimately faces the hangman's noose.
FATALIST SENTIMENT
But Hardill's fatalist sentiments are no longer borrowed from the country tradition; the pain is all too real.
"My dad was sick and dying while a lot of these songs were being written," Hardill explains. "I didn't consciously write about mortality, but I know a lot of that came out in the lyrics."
Hardill's father passed away shortly after the album's completion. And as Hardill discusses how he and his family are dealing with that and other recent losses, one can only offer the following words of comfort: "I know there will come a day/ When everything will be OK."
The words are from Not Tonight, one of several Balances + Sums tracks to deal with reluctantly moving on.
Asked whether such therapeutic exercises are difficult to sing, Hardill looks up briefly and mutters a simple, "Yep," adding that he is nonetheless proud to present material that "has real emotions."
Real may be the operative word to describe Balances + Sums. For as promising as After Darkfall was, the Fiftymen debut was essentially the work of a band of punk-rock exiles backing a first-time singer.
All the better for it, perhaps, but still something of a tentative introduction to the world of country music.
With Balances + Sums, Hardill, guitarists Mark Michaud and Todd Gibbon, bassist Michael Houston Hanlon, drummer Jacob Bryce and violinist/banjoist Keith Snider silence all who would dare to call the band pretenders, performing with such confidence that Gibbon playfully breaks into Ghost Riders in the Sky during one fiery solo and the band brings it home by gathering around one microphone to honky-tonk up Talkin' 'bout You, a song of Bryce's previously recorded by his other band, The Recoilers.
BEST-OF-2005 CONTENDER
Combine that confidence with Hardill's very real emotions, and you have a solid best-of-2005 contender.
And, finally, a determination to let those outside the 613 in on Canada's best-kept alt.country secret. Following Friday's wingding at Barrymore's, our Fiftymen will boldly go west, taking their barroom brilliance all the way to Alberta and back for some eight shows in two weeks.
"We're essentially making cold-calls," Hardill says of booking the tour. Shuyler Jansen of Alberta-based soulmates Old Reliable has been a big help, he adds, but The Fiftymen have also encountered a pleasant surprise or two during their telemarketing campaign -- such as the response of a club owner in Sault Ste Marie, who sang the band's first-album favourite Whiskey & Lulu back to Hardill over the phone.
"I've been waiting three years to hear from you guys," a flattered Hardill reports him as having said.
He's not alone. We've all been waiting three years to hear more of The Fiftymen. But with Balances + Sums, a good thing has indeed come our way.
"There are fewer three-chord ditties," is how Hardill puts it. But if the band's songwriting has blossomed, The Fiftymen are also enjoying the benefits of having a band whose members are no longer dividing their time between a number of simultaneous gigs. "This," Hardill proudly asserts, "is everybody's only project now."
That has meant undertaking that first real tour, as well as writing and arranging songs with country-ringer Snider in mind. The former Black Donnelly was merely a guest on After Darkfall but, as Hardill explains, "started coming to more and more practices."
That includes the practice that is about to commence as Hardill stalls Michaud to offer observations on life and loss. Now, it's time to move on. As the haunting track that officially closes Balances + Sums states: The Train Ain't Gonna Wait.
And this train is bound for glory.
awigney@yahoo.ca
Scene setter
The Fiftymen with Camp Radio
Where: Barrymore's Music Hall, 323 Bank St.
When: Friday, 9 p.m., $10 adv.