专辑简介

I had decided to take a year off, to possibly get married and have a baby, but that didn't end up happening so it was time again to make another Mercenaries album. The concept was to record a more mellow, acoustic oriented album reminiscent of Bob Dylan and The Bands " Planet Waves", Neil Young's " On the beach" and Lou Reed's "Coney island baby". I had demoed 22 newly written songs and now all I needed was a band. Having recently relocated to Toronto, I didn't really know any musicians here, but luckily I did know Jeff MacNeil, a multi-instrumentalist who wound up doing double duty on this album playing Bass and Lead Guitar along with Keyboardist Luke Collins who I met at a bar where he was playing. Jeff suggested we record at his friend Tim Foy's studio. Tim is also a versatile musician so besides engineering these sessions, he also played the drums. We started recording in the winter and things went very smoothly. Everyone involved contributed great parts and ideas. For live shows, where we showcased a lot of these songs, Colleen Hodgeson played Bass to spare Jeff from the task of having to play Bass and lead guitar at the same time. John Critchley did a great job mixing and mastering these songs at his Green Door Studio in Toronto and it was finally finished. After hearing the end results and hoping we didn't hurt ourselves patting each other on the back, this album turned out better than any of us had anticipated, and that's a good thing! Hope you enjoy it. Lest you forget, Altogether Steve Rutyna. steverutyna@gmail.com