Music
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In the sixties and into the early seventies, the travelling life of a vagabond was a dream shared by many baby boomers. Now based in Toronto, Bob Menzies actually lived that dream, making his way around the world by thumb, boxcar, and freighter. He worked in Sudbury’s nickel mines and alongside migrant pickers in the fields of California. He’s been to Morocco, Norway, Greece and France, and lived and worked in Germany and England, all during a turbulent time when music genuinely had the power, if not to change the world, then at least to profoundly influence the people in it.
That experience imbues Menzies’ songwriting with a rare generosity of spirit tempered with the kind of worldly wisdom that can neither be bought nor faked. And then there’s the voice – utterly free of artifice or affectation, it’s as sturdy and honest as a well-worn pair of work boots, the kind of voice that seems to tell its own stories of life and love, quite apart from the song at hand.
Breaking Time is Menzies’ debut release, recorded at a time of life when most have long since stopped chasing youthful dreams. It’s a remarkable collection of folk-rock gems, some anthemic, some quietly affecting, but all delivered with unwavering passion and unquestionable commitment.
Menzies has a knack for strong hooks and infectious choruses, the kind that make songs seem like old friends even on the first listen. Lyrically, he’s concerned the passing of time and the things that truly matter when we face that fact that our own is finite. He doesn’t pretend to have all the answers – opener “Hey Now Joe,” for all its sing-along likability, questions what comes next once the final curtain falls, while “Happy Birthday My Friend” proves a posthumous, bittersweet rumination on the loss of those we love.
Elsewhere there’s “I’m Gonna Love You Anyhow,” subtitled “The Sailor Song,” a declaration of enduring devotion in spite of all, while “River Moon” gazes into the abyss and wonders whether it’s all worth it. “Crazy Town” is an autobiographical yarn about Menzies’ time working underground, and “Bitter Wind” is an elliptical and angry rant regarding the general state of the world, bristling with rage yet, in the end, indomitably optimistic that somehow we’ll find our way. “When This Day Is Done” and “The Day You Said Goodbye” are melancholic reflections on love, the former steadfast and true and the latter lost and longed for.
Although he’s done just about everything else, Menzies has limited experience as a performing musician, so he hired some of Toronto’s best to help flesh out his songs. Producer Mark Nakamura works wonders with the overall sound, warm and organic. With arrangements evolving as the sessions progressed, contributions from guitarist Russell Gray and keyboard master Martin Alex Aucoin (piano, Wurlitzer, and organ) are particularly invaluable. Both contribute instrumental shades and textures that provide unobtrusive support yet render rich and fully realized arrangements.
It’s the vocals that carry songs like these, though, and Menzies’ homespun delivery and slightly ragged but transparently true voice is just right. Resilient even in the face of doubt and despair, there’s a genuinely heartfelt sincerity in every word he sings, leaving no question whatsoever that he has indeed lived and not just learned each song.
With songwriting reminiscent of the likes of Dylan and Hiatt, excellent sound, superb musicianship, and an engagingly warm and winning personality, Breaking Time is a collection well worth spending time with!
- Blinded By Sound
In the sixties and into the early seventies, the travelling life of a vagabond was a dream shared by many baby boomers. Now based in Toronto, Bob Menzies actually lived that dream, making his way around the world by thumb, boxcar, and freighter. He worked in Sudbury’s nickel mines and alongside migrant pickers in the fields of California. He’s been to Morocco, Norway, Greece and France, and lived and worked in Germany and England, all during a turbulent time when music genuinely had the power, if not to change the world, then at least to profoundly influence the people in it.
That experience imbues Menzies’ songwriting with a rare generosity of spirit tempered with the kind of worldly wisdom that can neither be bought nor faked. And then there’s the voice – utterly free of artifice or affectation, it’s as sturdy and honest as a well-worn pair of work boots, the kind of voice that seems to tell its own stories of life and love, quite apart from the song at hand.
Breaking Time is Menzies’ debut release, recorded at a time of life when most have long since stopped chasing youthful dreams. It’s a remarkable collection of folk-rock gems, some anthemic, some quietly affecting, but all delivered with unwavering passion and unquestionable commitment.
Menzies has a knack for strong hooks and infectious choruses, the kind that make songs seem like old friends even on the first listen. Lyrically, he’s concerned the passing of time and the things that truly matter when we face that fact that our own is finite. He doesn’t pretend to have all the answers – opener “Hey Now Joe,” for all its sing-along likability, questions what comes next once the final curtain falls, while “Happy Birthday My Friend” proves a posthumous, bittersweet rumination on the loss of those we love.
Elsewhere there’s “I’m Gonna Love You Anyhow,” subtitled “The Sailor Song,” a declaration of enduring devotion in spite of all, while “River Moon” gazes into the abyss and wonders whether it’s all worth it. “Crazy Town” is an autobiographical yarn about Menzies’ time working underground, and “Bitter Wind” is an elliptical and angry rant regarding the general state of the world, bristling with rage yet, in the end, indomitably optimistic that somehow we’ll find our way. “When This Day Is Done” and “The Day You Said Goodbye” are melancholic reflections on love, the former steadfast and true and the latter lost and longed for.
Although he’s done just about everything else, Menzies has limited experience as a performing musician, so he hired some of Toronto’s best to help flesh out his songs. Producer Mark Nakamura works wonders with the overall sound, warm and organic. With arrangements evolving as the sessions progressed, contributions from guitarist Russell Gray and keyboard master Martin Alex Aucoin (piano, Wurlitzer, and organ) are particularly invaluable. Both contribute instrumental shades and textures that provide unobtrusive support yet render rich and fully realized arrangements.
It’s the vocals that carry songs like these, though, and Menzies’ homespun delivery and slightly ragged but transparently true voice is just right. Resilient even in the face of doubt and despair, there’s a genuinely heartfelt sincerity in every word he sings, leaving no question whatsoever that he has indeed lived and not just learned each song.
With songwriting reminiscent of the likes of Dylan and Hiatt, excellent sound, superb musicianship, and an engagingly warm and winning personality, Breaking Time is a collection well worth spending time with!
- Blinded By Sound
Discography
Breaking Time - Album self-released 2012
2nd Album Lines of Stone due out in 2013
Photos
Bio
During the late sixties and seventies Bob travelled a lot, mostly by thumb but also boxcar and freighter ship. From Norway to Morocco, Greece to Holland, France to Germany, the UK and the Channel Islands. He lived in the London of free concerts in Hyde Park, the Who playing the Albert Hall with Chuck Berry and the untimely passing of Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones. It was also the time of the newly minted albums Nashville Skyline and the songs of Leonard Cohen, albums playing in all of the flats in South London.
Back in North America, he worked in the nickel mines of North Ontario and the migrant worker fields of California. That was the California of Sonny Barger and the Black Panthers, the SDS, Angela Davis and Altamont. He jumped boxcars to travel free through the American South, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia finally making his way back to Montreal during the 1971 FLQ crisis where he was greeted by the sight of tanks in the streets.
He worked as a hod carrier in Germany, a bricklayer in London, a coal handler for the Jersey Coal Company as well as an accountant for the electricity company. He was a hard rock miner in Sudbury, a migrant worker in California, and a seller of fresh flowers on Highway 101. Finally he settled in Toronto to work in the financial district as an Executive Headhunter.
In 2010 Bob started writing songs and in August 2011 entered Studio 92 in east end Toronto to begin working on what would become his debut album, “Breaking Time”. He was at a time of life when most people are winding down and thinking of retiring; instead he headed to his garage, re-christened it the Singing Dog Studio and began working up songs on a beat-up old Yamaha that had been gathering dust for 25 years.
Working with Toronto-based producer Mark Nakamura, engineer Brett “Buff Justice” MacMillan and some of Toronto’s finest studio session players, they produced an acoustic-flavoured album with influences as varied as 50’s rock ‘n roll, folk, reggae, Celtic and straight up rock. He financed the project independently and self-released it in 2012. He is currently in the studio working on a second album tentatively titled Lines of Stone to be released in 2013.
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