To celebrate the physical release of my debut album It’s Not An Excuse, It’s A Reason, I thought it would be cool to break it down track by track and share a little history behind each song. It’s Not An Excuse, It’s A Reason was just released physically last week along with the making of documentary Walking Proof all in the same package.

Siren Song

I wrote this song back in 2009 before releasing the Break Me EP. I had just left University where I had been studying classics and Homer’s The Iliad was one of them. I became very intrigued with the story of the sirens and how they would sing to unsuspecting men out to sea in order to draw them in and, once they got them close enough, they would eat them. Since I always write from personal experience, I used imagery from the story and alluded heavily to it in order to get my point across.

Holding On

Doctor, Please

I wrote the verses in 2012 and finally a chorus but felt something was missing and then it hit me. The opening riff was something I’d written back in 2010 but never knew what to do with it. I ended up combining it with this song and everything just clicked. This is probably my favourite song on the record to listen to.

Remember Love

This is another personal favourite as the lyrics are very personal to me. Well, all of my lyrics are personal to me but this song is about my relationship with my wife that began when we were just fifteen and in high school. I’m also really proud of the vocals in this one. This was one of the last songs I wrote for the album. I had the opening idea of the song kicking around for a few months but it all came together just before entering the studio.

S.A.D.

I love Canada, I really do, but I’m just not a fan of winter. For some of you non-Canadians who think it’s winter-time all year around and that we all live in igloos, you’re right. If I could live in an ever-Spring season, I think I’d be the happiest chap on the block. It would need to be warm enough to go for a bike ride in shorts and a tank but cool enough to not overheat and feel sluggish. Is this really too much to ask? Anyway, I wrote this song in 2009 when I was having a particularly bad time coping with the winter blues. There was much more to it, of course, and going to bed at 7am, waking up at 3pm and only seeing a couple hours of daylight for months on end may have contributed to my mild depression at the time, or maybe it was the low mood that kept me up all night. Either way, like most of my songs, the lyrics are deeply personal although I took a more artsy approach with the lyrics, writing them more poetically. When it came to the music, I wanted to write a song that sounded like summer to help me get through the winter.

This Song Is Not For You

Even though, at first glance, it might seem like this song is the least meaningful on the record, I actually wrote it as sort of a fuck you to anyone who has ever been immortalized in one of my songs for hurting me in one way or another. I got so fed up with writing about being betrayed and I almost started thinking that some people were subconsciously trying to get me to write a song about them. Whether or not that was ever true, this song came out of me as a result of it. This was probably one of the shortest amounts of time I’ve ever spent writing a song. It came flowing out of me in one afternoon sitting – lyrics, melody, and music. I wrote and demoed it in less than two hours.

Eyes Wide Shut

Now, this is probably the oldest song on the record and, for some reason, it never made it onto any of my previous EPs. I think it needed its time to ripen. This is an incredibly intimate song and I didn’t hide that intimacy in the music this time but instead kept it very vulnerable. I remember being in the studio tightening up all my lyrics and thought that I should lose the line “I forgot the reasons why / I wanted to see you choke and die” because the language was so violent against such a delicate background but Jim very emphatically said, “No way!” and explained how he loves the juxtaposition of a lot of my lyrics against my songwriting. I remember being so thrilled that he got that because I once had an A&R from Universal tell me that my songs were great but my lyrics didn’t match the music and I laughed all the way back to my world where not everything fits into a cookie cutter home.

Recover

In the Mourning

I actually wrote the main guitar idea for “In the Mourning” back in 2008 but could never find the right words and melody for it. I think it’s so interesting how, sometimes, songs need to ripen, like any tasty fruit. The lyrics didn’t come until 2011 after my wife experienced a traumatic miscarriage at 24 weeks which was preceded by the two worst years of our lives. The lyrics didn’t come right away, in fact, they came many months later once I could somewhat wrap my head around the whole thing. A theme I use purposely throughout the whole album is that of water and the way I use it in this song is something you can drown in or…

Walking Proof

I ended up naming the making of documentary after this song because I felt like it tied everything in together.