Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Kurt Swinghammer: Toronto Mike'd #1252
Episode Date: May 8, 2023In this 1252nd episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Kurt Swinghammer about his art, his music, his name, working with MuchMusic, Maestro Fresh Wes, CKLN, CFNY, The Shuffle Demons, Ron Sexsmith..., Sam the Record Man, Buffy, Bruce, and so much more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, the Yes We Are Open podcast from Moneris, The Moment Lab, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.
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Welcome to episode 1252 of Toronto Mic'd.
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Today, making his Toronto Mike debut is Kurt Swinghammer.
Yo.
Welcome, Kurt.
How's it going?
You biked here today.
Yeah, it was a beautiful ride. Really great.
Okay, kudos to you. I love it when a guest bikes to the
TMDS studio, so thank you for doing
that. Oh, my pleasure.
It's always so great to
ride along the lake. It's just, you
get that vista, you know, eyes stretch
out and, you know,
it's really informative for me as a
visual artist to get into
that environment. Yeah, you're a creative
guy. It would inspire you, I would think, being around nature in all her glory.
For sure, yeah.
Okay, cool.
Now, Kurt Swinghammer, when I said I'm having Kurt Swinghammer on, a few people thought
I had a porno star coming on, Swinghammer, me and your porno name.
I'm like, no, man, this is the coolest guy.
And I'm going to basically read some shout outs for you from three pretty recent guests of Toronto Mic'd who all kind of told Kurt Swinghammer stories.
And basically when I hear these stories, like I just want to let everybody know, like I'm listening to my guests.
I'm not just interviewing, recording, like I'm listening.
And I'm like, I got to get Kurt Swinghammer on Toronto Mic'd.
Like you're like a missing link.
So thank you for being here.
It was a pleasure to be here. I'm not a podcast follower of anyone. I never listen to them,
but we know when you invited me, which is a very, very nice gesture, I thought I should
check this out. I found it quite remarkable. You've created this incredible archive of
all these Torontonians,
essentially, mostly.
And I thought that was a really significant accumulation of information that you've created.
Well, thank you.
Okay, that's praise from Caesar.
Love it.
Thank you so much.
Now, you're right.
They're mainly Torontonians, but not always.
For example, I will throw in the odd Burlington resident,
but Rob Pruce, when Rob Pruce heard Kurt Swinghammer
was coming on,
he said,
he's the coolest guy.
Ask him about his band,
Communism.
They're so good
and they do an amazing version
of Nova Heart.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, I,
Communism,
I'm no longer in the band.
Kind of it,
it changed abruptly during covid and uh
but yeah we were playing it was led by don kerr who some folks would know from his work
long-standing work with uh sexsmith and uh currently the bahamas uh live show and dan
mangman uh and he used to be in the rheostatic so Don's kind of like a really central figure in
Toronto music scene and it was his band and uh with Kevin Lacroix on bass and myself on guitar
and uh yeah it was a really good thing and then I I've always loved uh Nova Heart I remember
distinctly the first time I heard it when I was living in Niagara Falls. And I just thought, wow, this is super modern sounding.
And I saw the band a couple of times play The Spoons.
And it just kind of really blew my mind.
So I've always had that song in my back pocket as a cool Ontario cover.
And yeah, that's what we used to play that. And I know that Rob caught one of those COVID-y,
simulcast-y things, Zoom-y things.
And yeah, it's very touching to play it for him.
Well, Rob's going to be on Toronto Mic'd again
later this month for another episode of Toast.
Now, Ron Sexsmith, you dropped the name Ron Sexsmith.
So there's going to be more Sexsmith content later,
but he's another guy who was on recently.
He came on during the pandemic, actually,
because he's in, remind me...
Stratford.
Yes, right.
So he was like, that's a long drive.
I'm like, okay.
I let Ron Sexsmith zoom it in.
That's how much I respect the man.
I'm not going to make him drive here from Stratford,
but same with Peter Mansbridge. He got the same deal, okay? You're from Stratford but same with Peter Mansbridge
he got the same deal
you're in Stratford
you can zoom in
but Ron Sexmeth who will come up later
he was telling Kurt Swinghammer stories
but here's a guy who told this Whopper
great story
Whopper sounds like it's a lie
this was not a lie
so I shouldn't call it a Whopper
I don't know
I didn't go to Burger King
great line from Pulp Fiction.
But Blair Packham,
who's been on many times,
he wrote me this.
It's kind of long
so I think we're going to step through this.
I need to cover all of this, okay?
So Kurt, work with me here.
I'll pause for you to share your story
or your remarks
and then I'll keep going
with Blair Packham's note
which is a pretty detailed note.
But first he starts with
Kurt Swinghammer. Oh, by the way, if you want
to pop your beer now, you can do it on the mic.
Great Lakes sent you over some fresh craft beer.
That's awesome. I have to see what they are
here. Okay, okay. So the coldest
one is a Canuck Pale Ale.
That sounds good.
You can't go wrong with the Canuck. Right on the mic.
Kurt Swinghammer
just opened his Canuck
Pale Ale, courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery.
So if you have room in that backpack,
I'll send you home with some Great Lakes
so you can have some later.
Get comfortable there.
Good to go.
Okay.
He goes,
Kurt Swinghammer,
my dear friend of many years,
ask him about our evening with Burt Bacharach.
So I'm pausing right now because there's a lot more here to cover.
But when Burt Bacharach passed away, I had Blair Packham on the program,
and he told this detailed story.
But now let's get it from your perspective.
Tell me about your evening with Burt Bacharach.
Well, it started earlier that week.
I drove out to Ottawa with a mutual friend of ours
of Blair's, Dan Brick
a singer-songwriter from
Mississauga originally
and we
were both hardcore Burt fans
so we made the pilgrimage out to
see Burt with a big orchestra
at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa
and
I thought, shit, I really want to, you know,
shake the man's hand.
So we did the thing where, you know, you case out, like, where's the limo?
And we walked around the building and we found the limo.
And sure enough, you know, there are a couple other geeky people there
to get autographs.
But Bert came out in this beautiful, fresh Adidas gear, like powder blue Adidas jumpers.
And he's like white kicks and he had his gold chain.
And it's just like, it was like a dream come true.
He'd look so hip.
And, you know, so we met him and chatted a little bit.
That was really sweet.
And then I went on to Montreal.
And on the drive, I was by myself.
I had a girlfriend in Montreal at the time,
and I started writing this song about Bert in Montreal and it turned out to be a really,
really good song actually.
And then when I went home, I had a little gig at the Cameron and I got this call, hey,
I had a little gig at the Cameron and,
uh, I got this call.
Hey,
we've been invited to have drinks with Bert.
And I,
cause he was stuck in Toronto at that.
That's when a nine 11 went down.
Right.
He was grounded.
He was grounded.
No one knew what was going on.
LaGuardia was shut up.
There wasn't,
people couldn't fly.
So he was stuck in Toronto and I guess he called Mike Myers who,
you know,
he had to develop a friendship with
from the film and everything.
Right, Austin Powers.
Yeah, and then Mike said,
well, I know some people there
that would love to meet you
because I think Burt was really bored
and Mike's brother Paul
is a really good friend.
Gravel Berries.
Yeah, the Gravel Berries.
Also on FOTM, he's been on this program. Right on was in the gravel berries for a moment oh yeah yeah and i art directed one
or did set design for all right um i dug the gravel berries oh yeah it was a jangly pop it
was great power pop and um yeah so uh paul i guess put the word out and uh yeah there it so anyway i i had this little gig so i had my guitar
with me and my guitar had burt's head on the on the headstock little picture and with a gold crown
and so uh because i tend to decorate my guitars and i've always covered his stuff i've been a fan
since a little kid and so i when we go to this the part the
dinner was already i missed the dinner or whatever but i got to get to this swanky joint in yorkville
and someplace i'd never go to and uh i got my axe with me and there's this there's bert and there's
blair and there's michael phillip boivoda who's a guy that I've worked with extensively as a producer.
And a couple other folks, actually.
And Ruth Moody, who was in the really nice little trio singer-songwriter thing.
And there's a chair beside Bert.
And so I got to sit beside the maestro.
And it was just incredible.
And he had told great stories.
And it was a remarkable evening.
And then the classic thing was when he,
you know, he's an older dude
and he had to, you know,
kind of call it quits at some point.
So he gets up to leave
and everybody says goodbye.
And I just impulsively sat in this chair
to absorb his body heat, you know.
And then I noticed there was a glass of unfinished wine and that he was
drinking so i grabbed it and took a sip and swallowed it and you know the bird entered my
body and it was you know for me it was just like the most significant thing that had ever happened
in my life and i went home just feeling amazing i i i went to my girlfriend at the time at her place in Toronto,
and I just ended up breaking down in tears.
It was just, I was so overcome with meeting my hero
and actually having, you know,
kind of some quality time with him.
It was just mind-blowing.
Love that story so much.
So normally, you know, I would kind of start with like,
okay, I would ask you about your upbringing in Ontario,
and we might start at the beginning.
Like, when did you realize you wanted to be an artist, a musician?
And we'll kind of sprinkle that through.
But I'm actually going to run through.
I like this note from Blair Packham so much.
So we're going to be chronologically messed up,
but just think about it like it is a pulp fiction,
a little jumping around.
It's good for you. Okay. So he says, ask him about writing with Alanis Morissette.
Oh, right. Well, Alanis, this is before her big record came out. She was- Jagged Little Pill.
Yeah. She was writing with a lot of different people. I heard there's a hundred different
people she wrote with. And in town, she was part
of a small group of people that we were writing together. Like every week we'd do something and
Blair was part of that. And it was really neat. And I wasn't really familiar with her backstory,
but she was quite remarkable. I got to say like the most focused young person I'd ever met.
And there was no indication of what was going to happen.
But she just had an amazing kind of determined, focused, positive energy about her that was really, really attractive.
And so she came over.
I was living in, I had a really great space in kensington market
and a really neat backyard and so we set up back there and i'd seen her at an annie defranco show
just a couple nights prior so i said oh i surprised you know you know annie and she oh yeah
you know i really want to do something as intense as Ani does. And then
she started dropping other names, like, oh, I'm really into Rage Against the Machine. And I was
like quite surprised because I'd seen her do some very low key folkier type of things, which she,
she sounded great doing, but so that gave me an indication, but we, we, we started writing
something just, you know, winging it right it wasn't really going anywhere
and then my cat who was an indoor cat chippewa named after the town got out and in kensington
market you don't want an indoor cat roaming around and the cat jumped over the back fence
and was like i started you know oh shit so that kind of actually ended the writing session because
i was so i'm gonna lose my cat and uh but so we didn't we didn't end up with a bona fide song
but if if i may continue there's oh my god yeah there's a second part to this story let's hear it
you know she ends up with that ballard dude in la and writes the biggest record of the century and all that.
And,
uh,
I've only met her once since I was playing guitar with Peter Murphy.
You know,
the dude.
Well,
then my next question from Blair Packham is ask him about playing with Peter Murphy so you can kill all the birds.
Right.
Once don't hear it.
Well,
I got,
I got asked to,
to sub in,
uh,
for Rob Pilch,
I guess that was,
he was playing and in,
uh,
that band.
Ballhouse, right?
Well, it was Peter Murphy's solo thing.
I gotcha.
And I didn't really know too much about it.
I was in a band that was called Vital Signs
with Glenn Milchman.
We had opened for Love and Rockets
and totally blew them off the stage.
And I was just like, whatever, these guys,
you know, pasty English guys,
they can barely play.
But this Peter Murphy is a very, very charismatic performer.
And we did this gig in Portugal, and we went on after Alanis.
And I thought, oh, well, I guess we're here to clear the crowd out, you know, like sort of, you know, get people to go home.
They were there to see him, like a huge outdoor thing in Portugal.
He's really big in certain countries.
But before that, I thought, oh, Alanis is here.
So I knocked on her, you know, her door and somebody said, um, and I said, yeah, I know Alanis from way back and just want to say hi.
And just, just a minute, you know, and I'm sitting there waiting and waiting. Is this going to, you, and I said, yeah, I know a lot from way back and just want to say hi. And just,
just a minute,
you know, and I'm sitting there waiting and waiting.
Is this going to,
you know,
I thought,
uh,
okay,
maybe she doesn't want to be bugged.
I don't think she was huge star at that point.
Big star.
But she,
she did.
So you can come in now.
And so I,
I went in and we had a little chat,
but I just really got the impression that she had been through the,
so much and was being generous to say hello to me but kind of the last thing she wanted to do was uh you know interact
with another person right she probably just needed some uh downtime and then the interesting thing
about her set she had a guy on a teleprompter and all her lyrics were on a teleprompter
which i'd never
seen that before.
Huh.
Was Taylor Hawkins the drummer at that point?
Remember?
That I don't recall.
I don't recall.
Okay.
I wasn't dialed into her stuff, actually.
I didn't really, wasn't, I wasn't really into it.
You didn't own Jagged Little Pill?
No, but I know that Ani loved it.
When she got the record, she thought, this is, this is people you know a lot of people fucking loved it a fucking huge
record yeah did you have so i don't know did you ever tune into much music in the uh late 80s and
hear her when she was kind of like canada's tiffany or debbie gibson or something uh too
hot was the big hit yeah i think i did had seen that no yeah i loved much music and
that was a source of many gigs for me at one point i was gigging a lot for for much music doing
visuals and music and yeah so much ground to cover kurt i hope you canceled your uh any appointments
you have coming up this afternoon i might need you here a little while here okay uh ask him about
playing guitar with okay actually i was, I was going to ask about,
a lot of this stuff was already on my list,
but I like the way Blair just kind of hammers it all home,
pun intended.
Okay, so he wants to talk about Ron Sexsmith here.
So if you don't mind,
because you came up quite a bit
in the Ron Sexsmith episode of Toronto Mic'd,
but yeah, give me your like,
your ongoing history of your profession,
your relationship with Ron Sexsmith.
Well, we had a mutual friend.
I used to live in Niagara Falls and Ron lived in St. Catharines.
And we had a friend, Rod Morrison, who built the first multi-track studio in the Niagara region.
And he had a day job at Austinax Music, which was like you know walter austinak a legendary polka
guy and it was it's now become a long on the quaid uh branch but uh in the time it was the
it was the biggest music store so rod kind of knew every musician because that's where you had to go
to get your supplies and uh we became friends a wonderful guy. And he was actually part of
the whole Port Dalhousie scene that Neil Peart would have been part of, a very vibrant music
scene just outside of St. Catharines. Anyway, he said, oh, you've got to check out this guy,
this kid, Ron Sacksmith. And he played me a cassette. And this would have been like 1980
or something. And this cassette, he had a band called the midnight scribes
and i was like wow it sounded like the kinks and i'd never heard any band sound like the
kinks other than the kinks and immediately i thought this is special when somebody's got that
kind of um influence and inspiration like that's major marks for me and i thought yeah i gotta i've got to go see him and then
shortly after that maybe like the next year i think it was 81 uh we were on a bill together
for like at the peace bridge in fort erie and when he started singing i just got the wicked chills up
my spine you know which is kind of a rare thing that happens to me when I hear certain music.
And I was just kind of blown away.
And he was doing his own stuff.
And then we would do gigs together occasionally.
Back in those days in that area,
you couldn't really do original material in bars and stuff.
But I started working at an artist run center which was an art gallery with a performance space and i would perform there and then ron and i started
doing some shows together sometimes and then when i moved to toronto in 84 i i said man you've got
to you got to get out here you know you know saint c Catharines is fine, but if you want to make something happen,
you've got to move here.
So he eventually did,
and then I produced a cassette of his first release, basically.
Wow.
And because I was putting out these homemade cassettes,
like really simply done,
but I was kind of like the Phil Spector
of the four-track cassette deck.
Without the murder or the do,
um,
but very,
very,
I was kind of ambitious with limited means and Ron,
I was the only person that Ron knew that did that sort of thing,
I guess.
And so,
yeah,
we did a really neat little cassette album and that couple of people in town,
William 10 skinny, the famous,
he died a couple years ago,
the manager, he's working with Hayden
and he's really, he was an amazing guy.
He liked it and I think he kind of
passed it around to some key people
and eventually, you know,
Brown found some management
and labeled in the States
and the rest was history.
All right.
Now, more recent history involving you and Ron Sexsmith.
Let me just pause the Blair Packham segment.
I mean, I still have more Blair Packham stuff to talk about, but I did get a nice note yesterday
from Michael Barclay.
Oh, yeah.
Also an FOTM, of course.
And Michael writes in,
ask him why live sound techs wanted to beat up acoustic guitarists
on stage in the 1980s
and also Sex Hammer.
So I guess that's two different questions there.
But what is Michael referring to
about why
live sound techs wanted to beat up acoustic guitarists on stage in the 1980s is that true
i've i had a bar owner punch me in the face once for dancing uh with a chair
i think maybe the band was uh michelle jordan and the poles you know they have that song
kind of a punk band from the early days but i actually sound people um because i can play
they always enjoyed it and i had my shit together and i was on and off stage in a jiffy and
you know i was doing a lot of opening sets for you know people
like bob mold and like like the gary's were throwing me great gigs open for the proclaimers
once and yeah i mean so i never had any problem with sound people ever i don't know what he's
but that being punched in the face story did that make uh have not been the same i'm thinking uh
maybe he maybe barclay got it in his research for a big book of his.
Yeah, he did interview me, and I'm in there a few spots.
I'm also, there's a loose end with Alanis Morissette.
I did, in the unauthorized biography of Alanis Morissette,
somebody said, hey, man, you're in the unauthorized biography.
And so I went to whatever bookstore just
to see what was going on and i looked in the index and there's like kurt swinghammer and it's like
god there's two pages like holy shit and that's a big entry and so i flipped to the page and goes
kurt swing hammer i had to flip the page over to get to the and and then she basically, I'm, you know, I'm not,
whatever.
She had a bit of a crush on me or something.
Wow.
And came to,
I used to have a lot of parties in, in Kensington Market.
And she came to this party kind of to scope things out,
I guess.
But,
you know,
I just,
I'm,
I was not interested in her or her music,
frankly.
But,
and she,
she,
and then in this book,
she told her friend, i'm so over him
and after what five minutes at my my pad but that's that's that oh you could have been the uh
played the dave coulier role in the uh you know the you ought to know uh autobiographical song
there right jagged little pill okay so in an alternate universe yeah Yeah. Oh, we're all over the place, but now let's talk Sex Hammer.
Sex Hammer was, at one point, Ron was really frustrated that nobody in Toronto cared about him except for some friends and musicians, you know.
All the record labels ignored him.
Pretty much everybody except for, you know, a few venues that liked him, you know.
Yvonne Met metzel would give him
gigs and stuff and um but uh we just thought well it'd be fun why don't we do a duo thing and
i'll play your songs and you play my songs and so that's what we did we traded songs but he would
cover mine and i would cover his and we we called ourselves sex hammer and I had a great little logo that would have been,
it's kind of naughty, and then I remember one gig we did at Say What,
which was kind of an interesting hub of music
in a non-musical area of town,
front end Jarvis, I guess.
And so we did the Sexhammer gig
and then I guess somebody just saw the name
and they're all gothed out, you know,
like all the gear on.
Yeah.
Oh, this is so disappointing
because there's two acoustic guitars
and these two squares on stage.
But that was just a short-lived fun project.
Okay.
So let's now,
since I'm going to just dump all the Ron Sexsmith stuff here,
there's a whole bunch more of it.
So Sexsmith Swinghammer Songs.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I never forget here.
In fact, this also segues into yet another Blair Packham question.
But I'm going to introduce this part with a song.
Okay.
So look, we're going to play a little of this.
You can always talk over it.
I'll just give it a taste, then I'll bring it down.
But here is some of Sexsmith's Swinghammer songs. Bye. On carousels of summertime.
It all looks so new.
When I'm off somewhere.
You are on my mind.
Memories I'll unpack in time
I trace the pages of my life
Oh, now I refuse
Cause I'm off somewhere
You are on my mind
There's nothing heavy in my heart
There's nothing heavy in my heart
When your love is standing guard
There's nothing heavy in my heart
Except when you're off somewhere
Someday we'll come back and find
The rain has made the sidewalk shine.
It all looks so new when I'm off somewhere.
You are on my mind.
You are on my mind.
You're all I'm mine I know I said I'd play a little and fade it down,
but I was enjoying that.
Me too.
I never listen to stuff I do,
so I haven't heard that for so long.
I'm quite taken with it.
Tell us what we're listening to here.
Yeah, the female vocalist is Lori Cullen,
who's my wife,
and that was Ron singing as a duet. And we had, Lori and I had a kid 10 years ago. He just turned 10 a couple days ago, Ray. That happened. Lori didn't want to make music, you know, and became a mom.
And for a few years, like, music was just not part of her life.
And she had put out, you know, I forget how many records up to that point. And she had a Juno nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album once.
And, you know, CBC support and Jazz FM stuff and beautiful records.
Really amazing.
And then Ron, when Ron lived in in Toronto we used to hang a lot and and one night we're just having some drinks and music
uh we gotta we gotta write an album for Lori and to get her back in you know and I thought yeah
that'd be that's a great excuse to get together and write. And Laurie had gone to the bathroom or something,
and he came up with this idea, and when she came back,
we'd go, hey, we're going to write a record for you,
like it or not, right?
And so I wrote all the music, including the melodies and everything,
and then Ron, I'd send him like that song,
and I'd just be playing guitar going,
I'd send him I'd send him
the
like that song
and I'd just be
playing guitar
and go
dwee da
dwee
and then he would
come back
and plug in
words to all the
dwees and dums
and even sometimes
would be inspired by
oh that dwee
sounds great
and he would
you know
find a word
that would rhyme
with dwee
right
yeah and so
that project
and then
Linus you know or the or no true north
i heard about it and uh they they said well we'll put it out you know if we had we we recorded it
and mix it and and finished it without any uh label interference or anything like that but they
they released it which is awesome yeah so that's sexsmith swing hammer songs 2016
and uh laurie cullen uh your your partner your wife and uh ron sexsmith and that was the uh i
was going there anyways of course i know blair's talking to his uh i don't know how's he listening
on his iphone he's talking to his iphone right now but uh i'm glad that uh blair had that on
the list he wanted me to ask you about your lovely and talented partner, Laurie Cullen.
Yeah, well, she's an amazing singer and really interesting writer. Her last album was all
her own material, and I didn't have anything to do with it. I think because I had my fingerprints
all over that one, the Sexsmith Swing hammer thing. She wanted to do something where I didn't have anything to do with it.
And then last night she actually played me the new stuff she's doing,
which kind of blew my mind.
She's working with like a DJ type of guy, right?
It's a very contemporary sounding.
But with her unique sensibility with the melody and vocal texture and stuff.
But the,
yeah,
that,
that album was,
um,
you know,
Ron and I both are such huge fans of Bacharach.
And that was a major sort of,
uh,
inspiration.
We thought,
well,
let's do something that of that ilk,
you know,
and I remember that,
that song is like with a duet,
like,
you know,
a female male vocal are often not,
can't work in the same key always.
So it was really interesting to find a way
to change the key for Ron to sing it.
And I'm quite really, really happy to hear that again.
Well, buckle up.
We're just getting started here, Kurt.
This is all a pregame show here.
Okay.
Ask him about designing the retail image
of Sam the Record Man stores across the country.
Yeah.
Jason Snyderman is Sam's son.
Well, I guess going back,
the first time I ever bought a record
was at Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street. And the first time I ever bought a record was at Sam Merkman in, in,
on Yonge street.
And,
uh, so every time I went to Yonge street,
I,
we always lived in a small town around,
you know,
outside of Toronto,
but I'd go to Sam's.
It was just like the pilgrimage.
And,
uh,
Jason,
um,
at one point wanted to do,
remember that vodka that had like Keith Her herring would do an ad they would absolute
vodka yes they would get all these you know warhol all these famous artists to do a version of their
bottle right so when that was happening jason said let's do something like that with our sign
and you got mendelssohn joe myself barry margaret o'hara i'm pretty sure he's a great uh visual
artist especially when it comes
to graphic right she does the she did the rivoli font right you know um and she did some elton
cover stuff um including her own of course and maybe uh fiona smith might have been another
person i've kind of blanking who all only just four of us i I think. And we all did our interpretation of the storefront.
And Jason just really loved the one I did and turned it into a t-shirt and that kind of did
really well for the store. And then just started giving me gigs. And I ended up designing the
store bag and a font called Sam that, so all the, you know, R&B, soul, all those music categories were in this font that I came up with.
And then the ultimate gig I got from Sam's was doing a makeover
for the Zamboni at Maple Leaf Gardens.
Wow.
Yeah, I did it.
I turned it into a hot rod with a big scoop of an engine
and a flame job and Sam's on it and and the amazing thing was
we did it and it looked wicked and i got to do it there at night you know like when only me and the
security guard at maple leaf gardens it was pretty amazing and then they they get a new zamboni like
every five years and the release was up or whatever so they had to get a new one and jason said well i want that a hot rod zamboni you know again so i had i got to do it twice amazing and jason of course
was in a blue peter yeah i'd seen him in blue peter and he's currently he plays with the chris
tate uh i think and that's another great chalk circle. And my very, like the second gig I ever did in Toronto, Chalk Circle opened for me.
Then I was opening for Director 17, Andy Mays' old band from Sky Diggers.
Yeah.
Andy Mays, also an FOTM.
So shout out to Andy Mays.
And let me connect all these dots here.
This is what happens when I have on people like you.
It's like, oh, it does.
But Chris Wardman was in Blue Peter, of course.
And he produced that great Chalk Circle album with April Fool on it like you. It's like, oh, that does. But, but Chris Wardman was in Blue Peter, of course, and he produced that great Chalk Circle album with April Fool on it.
Yeah.
And that's another song that I've covered and love that tune a lot.
Also the first band I ever saw live.
I saw him at Ontario Place Forum as a kid,
and that was my first concert.
I opened for them at the forum once,
solo.
Was it like,
I want to say 85 is when I saw them,
but I,
it's.
Yeah.
In and around there. Okay. Maybe is when I saw them, but I, yeah. In and around there.
Okay.
Maybe,
maybe I saw you there.
Well,
the funny thing with that gig was like,
I'd love the forum,
but just before I walked out to do it,
the guy,
guy at the gate goes,
how fast do you want to spin around?
Right.
And it was like,
I don't know,
maybe slow.
I don't want to get dizzy.
So I go out there and I'm moving so slowly
that like half the audience is staring at my ass
for a half an hour.
And I just thought, can we step on it?
Like, you know, but I, so I learned my lesson.
But that disembodied voice asking you
how fast do you want to go reminds me.
So I worked three years
at the Canadian National Exhibition.
So as a game booth attendant
and the game booth that I was working at
was right across the midway
from the Polar Express.
That was back when the X was on for 20 days.
So it was 20 days and I would be there all
20 days to close up and everything.
The number of times I heard
that guy say, do you want to go
faster? Do you want to
go faster? To this day, it's like
and by the way, just fun fact is when
you close down the cne the whoever controlled this the uh the boom box or the the loudspeakers
on that polar express every single night when everybody left played it's a wonderful oh what
a wonderful world by louis armstrong so that song would like permeate through the night sky for 20
it was now you know to this day if i hear any uh what a wonderful world i'm uh back at the x as a teenager so 15 year old so shout out to paul express okay loving this now
uh we did mention paul meyer fotm paul meyers earlier but uh blair packham wants to know
kurt do you like paul meyer's impression of him of i guess it's you yeah because the way he wrote
yeah ask him if he likes paul meyer's
impression of him do you like paul meyer's impression of you kurt swinghammer well everybody
sort of there's a number of people that do me and they all kind of do have the same go-to things and
it's always like dropping hipster language and certain like and it kind of rubs me the wrong way, but you know, it's whatever.
It's an honor to be
impersonated. I guess so, but it's always
like, well the one person
Jason Mercer does a good one.
Jason, I used
to be in a band with Jason
playing with Jeremy Robinson and
he got headhunted by Anita
Franco and joined her band.
He used to be in the Bourbon Tavern of a Choir.
Chris Brown and Kate Fenner.
He's got a good swing hammer impersonation.
So if he ever comes on, you got to get it
from him.
I would do it.
Chris Brown, he's been over here.
He's doing this thing with, still doing it,
I guess, Stephen Stanley and, yeah, I almost
said Ron and Ronnie Hawkins, but he passed away.
This is Ron Hawkins from Lowest at Low.
So they all three came over and played here in the basement.
And I think now that I think about it,
there was like a deal in place for Kate Fenner to come on
and it never actually happened.
And I need to follow up.
I need Kate Fenner on Toronto Mike.
But before I proceed back,
before I go back to the Blair Packham list,
and then I have my own list,
you're going to be here a bit,
but you can,
Ani DiFranco,
Ani,
right?
I was going to say Ani DiFranco.
Do you,
like,
you have more than just like,
you're not just a fan.
You,
she released some of your music.
Is there a connection there I was reading about?
Yeah,
she,
well,
first I did a session on one
of her albums called To the Teeth and it was
down, we recorded down in New Orleans where she
was working at Lenoir's old studio there.
And that album actually has Prince on it and
Maceo Parker.
And they weren't there.
Prince did his thing on thing at his studio.
But I came up with a guitar solo that's kind of my all-time favorite guitar solo that I've ever done.
And it's partly because I loved her material.
And to be recording in New Orleans was an incredible, you know, experience.
And then,
um,
I,
she heard this record I did called Vostok six,
which is an electronic kind of concept album about the first woman in space,
Valentina Tereshkova,
Russian cosmonaut.
And,
uh,
she liked it a lot and she said,
well,
would you like to put it out on my label?
I had released it independently in Toronto. um, so yeah, she put it out on righteous she said, well, would you like to put it out on my label? I had released it independently in Toronto. And so yeah, she put it out on Righteous Babe and gave
it another, a second life sort of.
Okay. Now that you've opened the Vostok box here. Okay. Let me play a little, if you're
cool, let me play a little of that. And then I got questions about Vostok 6.
Right. Okay. play a little of that and then I got questions about Vostok 6. Got a ticket for a trip
Get your kicks on Vostok 6
Vostok 6
Vostok 6
Vostok 6
Vostok 6
Vostok 6
Vostok 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, Fast Tag 6, False Doc Six
C-A-L-E-N-C-I-R-I-S-H And it goes on and on.
So that album...
Can I just say, it sounds great in the headphones.
Like, just fucking cool.
But go on.
That's Michael Philip Voivoda mixing that.
And we're old pals, and he loves electronic music,
and his studio is full of modular synths and things.
So he loved digging in there.
And that's pretty old now, right?
It's over 20 years old.
And at that time, it was hard to find a vocoder.
Those things, none of the companies had reissued them.
And there's a lot of ring modulation.
And it's all, I all recorded everything at home.
It's a lot of Moog Synthesizer.
And that project, I mean, it goes, there's some, like, easy listening stuff.
And there's some prog rock.
And that's the most, I guess proto techno kind of track uh and
it represents the the the uh the uh takeoff of the vastuk six craft her story was fascinating
because um yeah the first woman in space in like 1963 and when she was uh spinning around the the earth
kennedy was assassinated so all the publicity right to that right and people didn't even know
like she was up there right so that kind of like it's it it's spoiled everything. And, um, and then when she, uh, after that trip,
the Russians kind of can only assume was an arranged marriage. She, she married another
cosmonaut. So the two people that had been in outer space had a kid. And I think it was an
experiment to see what happens when you have a kid that, you know, from two parents that have
been in, in outer space. Interesting.
I have like a memory of like multiple
people dying on the same, oh yes,
yes, okay, I believe it was, so
the day that they assassinated
John F. Kennedy, I believe
is the same day that Addis Huxley and
C.S. Lewis passed away. Oh my god, Huxley.
So all three on the exact same day,
which is just an interesting fact
for you there, since you biked all this way,
Kurt.
I got to leave you
some fun facts here.
Okay.
Awesome.
So much great stuff here.
Now,
Vostok 6 though,
before we leave it,
some interesting
guest appearances.
Oh yeah,
for sure.
So one,
I'm going to shout out
one guy who is
a listener of the program,
probably listening right now
and is a great FOTM,
Tyler Stewart
from the Barenaked Ladies.
So he, he appears on that, that album. That would have been a great FOTM. Tyler Stewart from the Barenaked Ladies. So he appears
on that album.
That would have been a funny thing to play.
He was basically
like an MC
guy and
reading this little blast.
I'm going to play
something first. I know I'm setting
you up here. How about this?
The following program contains adult themes, nudity and coarse language. Viewer and parental discretion is
advised. Okay, please continue.
I'm just randomly playing Mark Daly on this program. Well, Mark did a
great thing. I was digging a lot at
City and Much and I just said, hey, I'm doing this Elton
and I want cameos of different people and
you you know i love your voice and you represent toronto in a big way for me and so he came over
to my humble studio picked up what i'd written and rambled through it and luckily i'd pressed
record because it was perfect he was such a pro pro. And I thought, oh, well, maybe do it once again, just to make sure, you know, and he
just did it perfectly again.
And, uh, and I wrote it exactly like a throw to one of the late night movies, right?
It's.
That's my whole youth, man.
Like him throwing the late night movies uh from the corner of you know blue
urn bathers yeah so tv everywhere yeah like great movies and porkies it was always porkies did you
notice that well that's one of the the tracks where he sets it up and he describes what's
happening because it's a kind of a cinematic the voice we literally call the voice and recent
argument and uh who was i'm trying to remember who was with but very recently this comes up quite a
bit on tor Mic, okay?
Because you've got a great Rush song called Subdivisions.
You probably remember Subdivisions.
Okay.
And earlier you mentioned Neil Peart. So there's a voice in that song, Subdivisions.
Right.
Subdivisions.
And me and many others believe that's Mark Daly,
even though I think when they asked uh getty lee he said it was neil peart or something but i think that there might have been
a reason why it was like uncredited but i believe in all my heart and soul that it was actually mark
daly's voice on that song do you have any insight into that no um i i was i was i'm not really all
that rich literate but i i did see the Doc movie and I fell
in love with them as people and
really appreciate their music now.
But when I was a kid
or younger, I
was into the bands they were into
and when they came on the scene it was very much
like, well I've already got
a Led Zeppelin album and
I've already got King Crimson albums.
But now I really respect what they've achieved.
And one thing, Mark Daly told me some fascinating stuff about his history.
When he was in Detroit and Windsor.
The Big Eight.
Yeah, he was working there.
But he befriended a lot of the music groups and the vocal groups from Motown Records.
And he was, he said he was personal security for Marvin Gaye.
Wow.
He was getting these gigs, right?
Because he was a big guy.
Yeah, sure.
But Wilder, one of the vocal quartets came to town once at a gig in Yorkville.
I forget which one it was. It wasn't the Impressions. It was in Yorkville. I forget which one it was.
It wasn't the Impressions.
It was Stylistics.
I forget which one it was.
And their bass singer was down.
He was like, he had a cold or something.
And they called Mark to sub in.
Wow.
And he did it.
And it was like, because he knew the material,
they knew he could do it.
And apparently that night in Yorkville,
if you went to their gig,
you'd see these three dudes from Detroit and Mark Daly.
You know what?
Awesome.
Now, here's a fun fact for the listenership is that,
and I believe this was revealed by FOTM Hall of Famer,
Ed Conroy himself, who goes by the name Retro Ontario,
like collecting old, he basically digitizes old VHS tapes.
And he's been doing that and he kicks ass.
That's why he's in the Hall of Fame, Kurt.
But he, when, of course, Mark Daly's been dead now,
sadly, for several years.
And Mark Daly's widow contacted Ed and said,
you know, Mark had a whole bunch of VHS cassettes
of stuff that he had kept and like
would you like this and apparently there's like a as we speak there's some project underway to
digitize to digitize all this mark daily material that he held on to in his personal collection
nice amazing right i can't wait to hear that okay so gosh still so much to cover here let's uh should i go back to the blear pack
um no because i'm actually gonna play you you you did reference that you did a lot of stuff at
much and chum of course it's called much because much is an anagram of chum this uh i should have
known this um yeah mike uh mike was on recently mike campbell from mike and mike's excellent
cross-country adventure and he was talking about you know going to the crtc to get the license for Mike was on recently, Mike Campbell from Mike and Mike's Excellent Cross-Country Adventure,
and he was talking about going to the CRTC to get the license for Chum.
But here is what I'm playing next.
This would be something that you'd hear on City TV in the 90s.
High atop headquarters at 299 Queen West, this is City TV everywhere.
The following is a special presentation.
Movie television returns next week
in its regular time slot.
And action!
One of the things when people watch beer ads,
they say, my, those must be a lot of fun to shoot. First thing is, I loved media television.
But secondly is, Kurt Swinghammer,
why is this opening theme significant to you?
Well, it was...
I loved that type of show.
Like, when I was a kid, there was one called Here Come the 70s.
In the States, Walter Cronkite had 21st Century.
So media television, I just love the content.
And when they were putting the animation together for the intro,
I knew the people that were doing that. And they asked me to,
Moses asked me to do the music. I remember it was awesome because I could go over to where the
animators were and go, well, let's set up a structural thing, like a tempo. And so that
everything would hit, you know? So I got a chance to kind of score the piece,
which doesn't always happen for like a TV theme, you know.
And it just made for a very powerful intro,
and it actually won awards and stuff,
because the animation at that time was really cutting edge.
And yeah, it was fun to just go really super techno-y, and I think at the, it was a fun to just go really super techno-y.
And I think at the time it was like, it sounded really different, more aggressive than anything else that was on TV.
And it lasted for about 13 years.
Well, let me make sure we didn't bury the lead there.
I don't think we did, but just in case that you created, you Kurt Swinghammer, you created the theme music for a city TV's media television.
Yeah, it was, at that time I was, and I did the Zig music for City TV's media television. Yeah.
At that time, I did the Ziggy show.
I love Ziggy.
Life on Venus app was really fun.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I'm a big fan of everything going on there at 299 Queen Street West.
So you can always drop anything.
Don't be shy here.
Okay.
So back to Blair Packham's epic note he sent me when he heard you were coming on. All right. Yeah, it's about time
we get to your paintings. I've been looking at
some of your paintings and they're gorgeous, but
Blair would like me to ask you about your
incredible paintings.
Well, I've got a, I just yesterday delivered a
new show out to Prince Edward County to the
Hatch Gallery in Bloomfield,
a really nice little part of that world.
And yeah, I've been doing visual art ever since I was like a little kid.
What came first, the visual art or the music?
Well, I didn't get a guitar until I was seven, but I was already doing a lot of visual stuff,
like really into it.
And I always thought I'd keep the music maybe more personal,
but it's,
it's always been half and half and yeah.
And where in Ontario are you?
Like whereabouts are you in the province?
Where did I grow up?
Yeah.
Born in Newmarket,
moved to Fort Erie,
then moved to Bowmanville, then to Newcastle, and then
to Niagara Falls, and then to Toronto.
Newmarket, home of Alan Frew, who's here on Wednesday.
Oh, really?
Yeah, he's coming here Wednesday.
Once I did a gig with, maybe even Blair Packham was on that What? And it was like four singer-songwriters on the stage
and Alan was the, you know, sort of like
introducing everybody and he forgot to introduce me.
So that created a great opportunity for me
to do something a little snarky.
So I'm sorry, Alan, if I was.
Okay, work me on this.
Okay, so the biggest Canadian hit,
I think it's like technically i went in and looked
at the billboard hot 100 and i think it's their second biggest american hit but the biggest
canadian hit for glass higer tiger is don't forget me we're gone right that's a good song
great song i think it's a great pop song so the horns are amazing 85 there's background vocals
by brian adams because the co-writer of that song. Valance. Jim Valance. Yeah.
Right.
So that's 85, okay?
What else is Jim Valance working on in 85?
Tears Are Not Enough.
Am I right?
Oh, yeah.
Like, why is Alan Frew not on Tears Are Not Enough?
You're asking me why?
I'm asking you.
Not that you would know, but really, I'm just rehearsing for Wednesday.
I feel like, I know that's
early times for Glass Tiger like that's like their first big hit I guess is Don't Forget Me When I'm
Gone so maybe they were not big enough I don't know I just think it would be a slam dunk to slide
in a an Alan Frew into the chorus of Tears Are Not Enough right I don't know you don't even have
to dignify this with a response because how the hell would Kurt Swinghammer know?
Except Jim Valance is writing the song that hit.
Anyway, this is all the stuff I think about
when I'm on these bike rides.
Right.
Yeah, like it's interesting to look at those things
as like these snapshots of time and like,
oh, Luba is in there
and like somebody else didn't get in there.
Right.
And Neil Young's, you know, that's my sound, man.
Yep. It's interesting to see who makes the cut.
And often like...
And who was invited but didn't make it.
I've had chats with, who told me this?
Terry David Mulligan.
Oh, yeah.
Who was buddies with that whole Bruce Allen,
Jim Fallon circle in Vancouver at the time.
And there's a name.
In fact, again, we're not going in order today, everybody.
There's just so much stuff, exciting stuff going on.
But this song here.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you're slick. We'll be right back. You're a globalized curse. You put war on the masses and then you clean out the purse.
And that's how it's done.
War after war.
You old feudal parasites.
You just sacrifice the poor.
You got the cutting edge weapons.
But your scam's still the same as it's been since the Romans.
Hell, it's the Patriot Game.
Yo, that's the war racket.
It's the war racket.
It's the war racket.
It's the war racket.
All right, I'm playing this particular Buffy St. Marie song for a reason.
But before I get to that reason, Buffy was invited to be a part.
She was all going to be a part. I think she was getting her own line in the big part of the song.
She was on Tears Are Not Enough.
And then this phone call comes in,
because Terry David Mulligan witnessed this call,
I guess to Bruce Allen,
and then Bruce puts down the phone and says these two words,
which I have used many times since I learned about this,
Buffy bailed.
So Buffy bailed.
No Buffy St. Marie on Tears Are Not Enough.
She should have been there, of course.
Why am I playing this specific Buffy St. Marie song,
which is called The War Racket?
I got a call to do an animated video for this track
that they released as a single.
This was produced by Michael Philip Voivoda voida voida and mixed oh no no
sorry i'm i'm that's wrong that's okay um i'm not fixing that in post okay we'll just
crack it on the record here he had done the previous record but uh yeah so uh i had a
call with buffy and told her what i was thinking of doing and she said just don't make it too gory and
because I had this idea of like skeletons dancing around on the chorus and I said no no it's going
to be a bit more it's going to have some humor and and so she said okay and as you probably know like it's very often you have to change things and revise and
the artist sees a video go no that's i i want something different it's very very common to
have people want to revise things and she saw it loved it didn't ask for a single change and it's
since become part of her show actually and i went to see her at massey hall and she had projected and she all synced up yeah amazing and the uh i was really really dug into it because the lyrics
are awesome and the dancing skeleton thing is i actually put got black leotards and painted a
skeleton and that's me dancing around i i chroma keyed myself into it i love this tangent run right
now i wanted to cover that anyways, obviously,
but all because you said you were from Newmarket.
That's where that came from.
So shout out to Alan Frew.
He's on the program Wednesday,
but Kurt Swinghammer is here right now.
So, okay, so you're just,
you're always interested in art.
You're interested in creating art.
You're interested in music.
Young man growing up around,
bouncing around Ontario.
Okay, so
this is a good time for me
to play this next jam, so
I'm going to let Buffy bring us into the next song. We'll be right back. Thank you. Right on the bus Right on the bus On the Dynabus
Ain't no school bus
Ain't no streetcar
Ain't no subwaycar
It's the Dynabus
It's the Dynabus
I want confirmation on my information
On my transportation from the Dynastation
She wants confirmation on his information
On his transportation from the Dynastation
She wants confirmation on my information On my transportation from the Dynastation I'm a dino-boss That's not for me. Well, you can't have fun on the York you run. And the oxygen trolley, it's just a big folly.
Well, I don't give a damn about the bathhouse tram.
But I'll make a fuss about the dynabus.
Because I'm 77B.
77B.
I'm the TTC.
TTC.
Yeah, 77B.
77B.
I'm the TTC.
TTC.
Well, 77A.
77A.
I guess it'll be okay.
That's okay.
But I want 77B.
77B.
I'm the TTC. TTC. Hey, check it out. I went down to I'm a D, D, D, D, D, D, D
Hey, check it out
I went down to the station
Man, this is a Toronto jam.
Okay, The Shuffle Demons.
I just have lost the patience
Waited for that
Now, you tell me,
is this sort of where it all begins for you?
Like, in terms of like,
I want to know in the origin of things,
like, whereabouts in your career
did you start designing, you know,
album covers for The Shuffle Demons and such?
Well, that was the first album cover I did.
Maybe the second.
But yeah, I'd gotten to know Rich in Underhill.
And, you know, he's seen the stuff I was doing and thought it'd be a nice mix.
So I did the cover for this album.
And then Joel Goldberg was directing a video for the next song out of my host Roach,
and asked me to art direct that and create the set design and shit.
And so that led to a long relationship with the Demons and doing t-shirts and album covers and videos and things.
And Goldberg was the director who went on to do
Mice Refresh West, right?
And that was a whole other thing happening there.
Let your backbone slide.
Yeah.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah, those things blew up.
Also one of the co-founders of Electric Circus, the show.
Right, yeah, yeah.
And he directed a video for me
and we worked occasionally over the years with Patricia O'Callaghan.
We did a video.
But yeah, you know, I was living in a situation downtown
with like a shared space with these other jazz musicians.
So I kind of got to know Rich from this jazz scene.
Like they were all like into Ornette Coleman
and then sort of more avant-garde jazz.
And it was just, it was so much fun.
And then after that album,
Rich said, why don't you do the next cover?
And so I had a chance to do it from scratch
and I painted their outfits
and which took like a week of my life
and for 500 bucks or whatever.
But it established
a look for that band
and they've
kept those suits up
but at one point they just fell apart
they were worn so much
and somebody else is painting them now
in the style of
which is a little weird
but you know
it's an homage to Kurt
Swinghammer. You designed the Shuffle Demons painted suits. That's, uh, I can't believe I'm
talking to the guy who designed the Shuffle Demons painted suits. Amazing. Okay. Very cool.
And at what point in your career here, do you get on the cover of Now Magazine? Cause I would think
back then that would be a huge deal to be on the cover of Now. Oh yeah, totally. Well,
the funny thing is with that,
I was delivering Now magazines.
My last part-time job, which was one day a week,
I had two at the same time.
I was busing at the Cameron on Friday and Saturday nights.
And then on Thursdays, we'd deliver Now magazines.
And it was all the musicians.
The National Velvet, remember that band?
They were doing it.
Yes, absolutely.
The Skydiggers.
Andy, I think, was doing it it was all maybe and andrew cash might have been doing it um so all
these people were all these musicians were delivering me on magazines a really fun job
and uh and then one day i got the call like oh we're gonna uh review your new album and put you
on the cover and it's like i can't possibly deliver the magazine and put you on the cover. And it's like, I can't possibly deliver the magazine
with my picture on the cover.
So I quit Now Magazine because we're taking
all the glamour out of that, right?
That's funny.
Yeah, it's like, look at me now.
Okay, cool.
But years later, go ahead.
No, finish your story.
Well, that was for an album my first cd called pomo
a go-go and that came out on a little label called fringe product they you know they licensed it off
me and like every other label situation i never i've never seen one cent from that but uh it was
a fun record and uh yeah oh man okay but many years later, you would be recognized as Best Local Guitarist. You got the Best Local Guitarist Award from Now Magazine's Reader's Poll. This was in 2000.
Yeah, and, you know, Jeff Healy. Now, the drummer for Jeff Healy Band
just passed away, actually,
earlier this year, Tom Stephen.
He's an FOTM, too.
Now, I mean, it's okay.
So much ground to cover.
I'm just looking here.
What I'm going to do now
is I'm just going to give you a couple of gifts.
Then I'll get back to the Blair Packham note,
and then I have a few other hot spots I want to hit.
I hope you're having a good time.
How are you doing there, Kurt Swinghammer?
Awesome.
Honored to be here.
Trying to mic for sure. Swinghammer, though, because you're having a good time. How are you doing there, Kurt Swinghammer? Awesome. Honored to be here.
Swinghammer, though, because you're a guitarist, right? Like the Swinghammer is a fake name,
right?
Nope. My dad... Show me your driver's license.
Yeah, my dad was born Louis Schwinghammer in Germany, came over here when he was three
years old, and to avoid all the hoopla over there, and was fought in the second world war underage he snuck in
as a 16 year old or something because he didn't want to be in a small town ontario as the only
guy or whatever wow and uh his his lieutenant or whatever couldn't get their head around
pronouncing schwing you know and so he called him swing. And when my dad came back home, he just kept it.
And he never changed it officially or anything, but it became Swinghammer.
Fascinating.
I was actually, so your dad, I'm glad you brought up your dad because Blair tipped me off that he met Paul McCartney.
He did, yeah.
In the 60s.
When the Beatles came to Toronto, my dad was an electric glide motorcade cop, right?
He rode the big Harley.
And the OPP were hired to be the security.
And so they escorted the Beatles from Malton Airport to the King Eddie.
And when they were at the airport, my dad had the wherewithal to get John and Paul's autograph on the same piece of paper, which is remarkable.
Paul's autograph on the same piece of paper, which is remarkable.
And then the telegram, which was one of the big newspapers at the time,
the staff photographer shot my dad getting in his OPP drag with Paul's in his Pierre Cardin outfit.
And, you know, it's just, I've got it blowing up really big because it's the coolest photo of all time.
Well, you know, of course, you know, on the coverant pepper album there's the op is that's your dad's uh doing well i my dad didn't talk to me we didn't have rapport and i never did
hear how opp crest got there but i don't think it would have been my dad but because but print
the legend kurt print the legend uh liberty valance here. Okay, because that's kind of wild that Schwinghammer,
your father, is the reason there's an OPP logo
on the cover of Sgt. Pepper.
It looks like OPD, officially pronounced dead.
That was one of the clues.
Paul is dead, right?
What a time to be alive.
Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home, by the way.
See, that's how we roll here, Kurt. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home, by the way. See, that's how we roll here, Kurt.
Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home.
The good news is Paul is still with us.
Still very much alive.
By the way, we've talked quite a bit about Paul Myers.
It's worth noting.
I'm going to make this up, okay?
I'm just letting everyone know I'm making this up,
but I'm going to say it anyway.
Paul Myers' brother, Mike Myers,
heard about Schwinghammer
and said for Wayne Campbell of Wayne's World, Schwing!
Right, you can also print that legend.
It works too.
Well, there is a character, I found it just a couple years ago, the band, either Bread or Air Supply, there was a musical about that incorporated all their tunes and told some crazy story.
And it was.
It's got to be Air Supply because of his Jim Steinem connection.
I feel like.
Okay.
I feel like that was all showboat show, like Broadway style songs.
Right.
Well, but there was a Toronto theater director who did this, mounted this show.
And it was in like, I don know it's in thailand or someplace beautifully exotic
and somebody said hey man there's a character named kurt swinghammer in this musical and i
was like what like and so i wrote them i said and and it turned and i read the stuff and the
character kurt swinghammer in this musical of air supplier bread um is like a kind of a bad a and r guy kind of nasty music biz
character which is like you know sometimes i only listen to music for 15 seconds but i'm not a
industry insider right and uh so i wrote them i said well send me tickets and airplane tickets
to your show and i won't sue you you And I was like, but nothing became of it.
Interesting though.
Yeah.
Because that's not a coincidence.
Somebody.
Well, the Toronto director.
Yeah.
Who, he would have heard my name.
Of course.
At some point.
Of course he would have.
Of course.
Very interesting.
All right.
So you got your beer from Great Lakes.
Do you like Italian food, Kurt?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
I've got a large lasagna for you in my freezer
courtesy of Palma Pasta.
Awesome. Delicious, authentic Italian Palma Pasta. Awesome.
Delicious, authentic Italian food here in GTA.
There are four locations, Mississauga and Oakville.
Go to palmapasta.com.
Thank you, Palma Pasta.
I also have, by the way, Ridley Funeral Home wants you to have this measuring tape there
in case you need to, emergency measurements
need to take place, Kurt.
Good to know, thank you.
Insert joke here, okay.
But, Moneris,
they've sent over
this wireless speaker.
It sounds damn good.
And with that wireless speaker,
you're going to listen
to season four
of Yes, We Are Open,
which is an award-winning podcast
from Moneris,
hosted by FOTM Al Grego,
who I hope to see Thursday night
because we're having TMLX 12 at 6 p.m. this coming Thursday,
which is May 11th.
If you want the map, just Google TMLX 12
or write me, Mike, at torontomike.com.
I'll send you the map where we're going to all gather
and enjoy tasty beverages and check in with one another.
But Al Grego's been traveling the country,
talking to small business owners,
gathering their stories so they can inspire entrepreneurs
and other small business owners like me.
And this season's been awesome.
Season four, yes, we are open.
Subscribe, listen, enjoy.
That's what you're going to do if you're a wireless speaker there.
Sweet.
And I am going to just shed out, recycle my electronics
since I talked about this wireless speaker.
Because if you have any old tech
any old electronics you need
to dispose of, don't throw it
in the garbage. It just ends up in the landfill
and those chemicals do not belong in the landfill.
Go to RecycleMyElectronics.ca
and find out a safe place
to drop off your old tech. So thank you
EPRA for RecycleMyElectronics.ca
Let me go back to the Blair Packham note here.
He says,
uh,
ask him.
Oh,
great question.
How many albums have you released?
And before you give me a number,
Blair wants you to know his favorites are in this.
This is a great note,
Blair,
uh,
the Vostok six that we talked about and black eyed Sue.
He still loves the song Tammy Left Town.
How many albums you released?
Well, there's at least a dozen.
And I've got a couple in the can that I've been
very slow to put out to the world because it's so
depressing to put a record out these days.
But I do have two that are mixed.
Do you want to speak to that?
Just like, I mean, I feel it's an obvious,
like we all know,
but maybe hearing from someone,
from your perspective,
like how have things changed
for a songwriter like yourself?
Well, I've never relied on music
to make a living
other than writing for film and TV.
And I was very much immersed in that world for a long time and, you know, very appreciative of those gigs and was able to buy a house downtown because of TV music.
But my music that I put out for myself is just, I'm doing it because I have an impulse to make music and there's no
financial reward whatsoever. Well, you're an artist and that's some of your art that you're
producing. Yeah. And, and I've never like expected it to, uh, do anything other than
just make me feel good making music. Um, but, uh, at this point, point like it just feels like we've got there's too much stuff in the world
uh in all areas and so contributing to this landfill of music is kind of depressing and
there seems to be like this you know 24-hour news cycle of of music now that it's it's there for a
day and then it disappears and even like pa like Paul McCartney will put out a record
and people really don't care.
They don't really want to hear anything other than Blackbird or whatever.
But, you know, I hear new stuff sometimes,
like a band like Black Midi or something comes out of the blue
and it's like, this is wild.
It's visceral and it's exciting and inspiring.
And thank God people do put out music but
on a personal level it's it's kind of it's like going to a dance and no one asks you to dance
you know it's like nothing's worse so uh i'm sort of on nothing's going to stop me from making music
but the idea of going through the trouble of of releasing is, yeah, I'm not that ambitious anymore.
Let me play a little something here so we can at least talk about this project. Beneath the skin, the beast within, dying to be. Meet the stars.
Tears and scars.
We'll look in.
Till the end.
That's from Ginger Snaps 2.
Unleashed.
Have you seen Ginger Snaps 2?
Oh yeah, well I saw it like a million times.
Just making sure there.
Yeah. Now the thing of when you score a film,
you watch it hundreds of times or at least segments of it.
And yeah, that was uh actually lori
my partner is singing and the only track that has any vocals on it and most of it's very very
uh like hardcore techno i was at the time i was listening to a lot of autechre and you know
sort of industrial edm or you know like um complicated sort of industrial EDM or, you know, like complicated sort of techno.
And so most of the music on that is really aggressive.
And it's actually the most successful album I ever put out.
One label decided to release it as, you know, the soundtrack.
Right. it as a you know the soundtrack right and to this day like goth kids all over the world you know
download it uh from band camp it's interesting you never know what will be your most popular
piece of work like uh and it's going to be your uh you know ambient uh techno soundtrack to be
called here horror film uh ginger snaps too yeah and the funny thing about that, the process of that, the
producer, when we had a
meeting, said, you know, I don't want
any guitar in this album. No.
Can't have any guitar. And 99%
of that album is made on
guitar, but you'd never recognize it as guitar.
Just processed through the smithereens.
And he's,
I played
a lap steel for the most part and just like throwing the bar at
the thing and just crazy got the crazy sounds out of it because it was it's such an expressive
instrument you know lapsed with a with a bar um so i but i never told the producer you by the way
you know there's a lot of guitar in here but they they didn't it didn't sound like guitar
here is the conclusion to the Blair Packham essay.
Okay.
So it gets a little, uh, gets a little real here.
I really, uh, you know, kind of emotional here.
He writes, Kurt taught me by example to be a hugger.
I began hugging my own dad again after maybe 10 years of not.
And I did that because of Kurt.
Oh, that's lovely.
I met his dad and his mom.
His mom's a really interesting painter.
And they were just like, yeah, they're beautiful people.
It's touching to hear that.
I had no idea.
He says, I love Kurt and admire him deeply.
So thank you, Blair.
That's nice, yeah. Wow. All right's nice yeah alright gonna hit a few more hot spots
here before we
you've been amazing before we wrap up so here
literally like these are like the best of the rest
and then if I missed anything you really
wanted to talk about of course we'll give you
an opportunity to talk about that but I played
the I did play
the Buffy St. Marie cut
and I wanted to play
this one oh it's so good guitar solo Here we are
Faced
With choice
Shutters and walls
Are open
Embrace Like it or not Or open embrace
Like it or not
The human race
Is a song History is what it is
Scars we inflict on each other don't die
But slowly soak into the DNA of a sloth Of us all
This is Bruce Colburn's All, sorry, Us All.
Beautiful song by Bruce.
Yeah.
It's from his most recent record, and Colin Linden produced, Gary Craig's on drums there, one of my favorite drummers, he's amazing.
And, yeah, True North asked me to come up with some lyric videos.
So I did three videos for the new Bruce.
I'd done a couple animated videos for previous records.
And, you know, they just give me total free reign.
You know, do what you want.
Nobody had to prove anything and just, you know.
And I just fell in love with this track.
And I just fell in love with this track.
And Bruce, for me, has always been a real example of how do you conduct yourself as a musician in Canada.
Remarkable career. And you go through his work.
It's just amazing.
go through his work. It's just amazing. And I had done, when COVID hit, I did a little painting of a COVID molecule, sort of inspired by all these graphics I was seeing of like, how do you depict,
how do you render a COVID? So I did one. I just wanted a reminder when I left the house,
oh, put on your mask. So I wanted to do a little
painting of a COVID.
But then I became like
the dude in Close Encounters
who does the mountain over and over
and over again. I became obsessed
with it and I ended up doing over
150 of these little COVIDs and would
name them COVID number 20.
COVID 21.
But I felt like, what am I going to do with these things?
I made a mural at home, sort of a mosaic of these things,
which was really neat.
But for Bruce's cover, the artist had this nice image,
and the cover's called, this album's called Oh Sun, Oh Moon.
And the COVIDs that I was doing look celestial, look like, you know, it could be a star or it's a planet or something.
And so I thought, oh, this relates to the cover.
And it had a spiritual quality when I started animating them.
quality when I started animating them it's they became mandalas and really seemed to be a nice image for the song and not distracting and just you know like it's just a textural image
that's kind of fading in and out and and very subtle movements. And yeah, I was really, really enamored with that song
and honored to do a visual for it.
Amazing.
Now to go further back, you mentioned murals a minute ago.
Is it true, Mr. Swinghammer, that a mural of yours
can be seen in Tom Cruise's Cocktail.
Yeah, that's true.
I've not seen the film, but I did see a clip of it,
I think, on YouTube or something.
Do you know I've never seen the film either?
Yeah.
That's a blockbuster.
How did we both miss that film?
I feel like most people have seen Cocktail.
Yeah.
Well, they shot at Lee's Palace upstairs in the dance cave. And I had done the, at Lee's Palace, I'd done the Lee's logo. I came up with the logo. And believe it or not, there's shots of wall, and I threw up this thing that says Dance Cave,
like really, really big mural.
And there's this shot of Tom Cruise
making cocktails in the movie Cocktail.
And in the background, there's maybe slightly out of focus
for some depth of field.
There's the Dance Cave mural that I didn't,
I don't think I get any credit or anything
in the role at the end of the film yeah i i don't know did i own the i'm asking you as if you could
ever have a clue if i own the cocktail uh soundtrack on cassette but i might have owned
that at some point like i feel like that was a big i know it had it had beach boys kokomo on it
but it had a lot of big jams on it, as I recall, the cocktail soundtrack.
Anyway, tell me what you did for CKLN.
Yeah, CKLN, Community Radio Station,
awesome station.
A lot of great people came through there
and have gone on to wonderful things.
And I started just donating my graphics to them to do posters and things.
And we started doing annual fundraising t-shirts.
And at one point, I could not go out any night and not see somebody wearing those.
They would do like maybe 10,000 of them.
They were all over the place.
And did four or five of them i think and uh it was just really beautiful to
give a you know create a visual representation for this station that i loved and was multicultural
and very diverse and uh like once even my own stuff would get played sometimes and i remember
like they they had these little like uh charts
you know and i remember the first time before i started doing the graphics actually but when one
of my first cassettes that i put out i got charted on ckln and it's gonna you know kind of right home
to my mom say hey look i'm on a chart but i was right the artist right behind me was uh on a label
called radical cunts anonymous so i didn't I didn't show that to my mom.
That's great.
Speaking of CKLN, here's how we're going to tie things up here.
DJ Ron Nelson, of course, hosted Fantastic Voyage on CKLN.
DJ Ron Nelson's been over here to talk all about it.
One of the local rappers that he broke on that program, a number of FOTMs,
including Maestro fresh west and you did touch on it but now i need the specifics now so what's specific because you
mentioned joel goldberg also a good fotm by the way hello hello joel if you're listening
so joel goldberg we talked about him directing the back let your backbone slide and drop the
needle and what and i know they get you know juno awards and much music awards and all
that but what specifically did you do for those videos is it that graffiti design like what is the
okay that's a very cool uh aspect i wanted to get the specifics as what you were doing for those two
videos yeah like set designs and uh graphics the second one uh Needle, was a bit more green screen stuff. So I generated a bunch of images
and then people would be dancing in front of them via green screen.
Backbone was shot in an
old church. So I did some big
murals on seamless paper, like from the photography
stuff. It would be like 8 by 30 feet long or whatever, right? some big murals on seamless paper, you know, like from the photography stuff,
like be like eight by 30 feet long or whatever. Right. And, uh, yeah. And that actually,
it was really remarkable because before that video I'd never heard of the guy.
I'd, I'd, he,
I remember going to the Rivoli one night and seeing these two really cool dudes
and their, their jacket said dope state.
I thought,
wow,
that's so hip.
And it turned out to be Maestro and,
and his manager,
Farty Flex.
But so when I got the call from Joel to do this,
I thought,
cool,
this sounds neat.
Let's do this video.
And when we got to the space,
there was like 200 kids lined up waiting to go in.
And usually it's a nightmare trying to, you know, beg for people to be in the dance part of the video, right?
But something was happening with him already.
And then the video just blew up and it became the most requested video.
It won Junos and much music awards.
And just a couple of years ago, like even like TIFF included it.
It's like one of the 100 most important
canadian moving images or something like that is very prestigious kind of amazing yeah amazing
he had a role in that and just love it and shout out to fotm dwight drummond do as a cameo in both
those videos he well yeah and he was on the crew of one of my videos that joel directed because he
was doing like security for Electric Circus.
Oh, yeah.
And then, of course, that's Joel's thing.
And that's where Maestro gets his U.S. record deal
because an artist named Stevie B was playing Electric Circus
and saw him there and said, yeah.
Well, and then Joel asked me to art direct a Stevie B video
and he came up and he hated the stuff.
He just said, I'm not doing it.
Because maybe I just pushed it a bit too far.
Gotcha.
Oh, you can't please everybody, Kurt.
Come on.
Now we're going to, before I close up a couple of just more recent Kurt
Swinghammer songs, uh, although now I want to call you Swinghammer, but okay.
I need to know because we cover very in depth here on Toronto Mike, we cover
the ongoing history of CFNY.
You designed the Casby Award logo?
Yeah, that was, yeah, at one point, yeah.
Casby was a Canadian artist as selected by you.
So it was an alternative to Juno's.
Yeah, but they were called Juno's.
Juno's was a sort of a, yeah.
Yeah, they were like a parody of Juno's.
Yeah.
And David Marsden called them the You Knows.
Yeah.
And then they morphed into Caspi's Canadian Artist
that's Selected by You.
Yeah.
And you did the logo and the set,
you did the set design.
Yeah.
Like, what does that mean?
What's set design?
Well, just like when-
It's a radio station, right?
Well, but they had a live show.
Right.
And it needed some sort of continuity with the visuals.
Right.
Yeah, I did a big mural with quite, yeah,
it would have been like 30 feet wide and 12 feet high or something.
And the program, so everything kind of tied together.
And yeah, you know, CFNY was really important, right?
Like that was an incredible station,
like maybe one of the
most interesting radio stations in North America, really, you know.
It comes back to Rush. They wrote Spirit of Radio. See, everything's full circle here.
Any, do any on-air personalities at CFNY, you want a name check here that you would,
you would listen to back in the day?
Reiner Schwartz was there briefly and, but he had other things, like he did a video show on tvo which was just
remarkable he was like a visionary and uh anticipated what would happen with music video
uh and i i tried to watch that as any time it was kind of on late at night and uh it was so
incredible what he would do and then he had then he did the news at Multicultural Television for a while.
And he would dress up like a news anchor, kind of straight.
But then he would editorialize on each piece.
He would give his two cents, which I thought, yeah, that's what's lacking in news coverage, some opinions.
Yeah, yeah.
lacking in news coverage, you know, some opinions.
Yeah.
Okay.
I know FOTM Danny Elwell has wonderful
things to say about Reiner Schwartz and
what he meant to her when they worked
together at CFNY.
Right.
Yeah.
But yeah, like in the day it was so
happening and unlike any other commercial
radio station, it was just incredible.
And they were the first radio play that I
ever got.
Like, because they would actually play local cassettes.
The Streets of Ontario with Liz Janik, right?
Right, Liz Janik, yes, absolutely.
When you're bored one day, go listen to episode 1021
of Toronto Mic, which is 102.1, and it's got Liz Janik
and a whole bunch of people.
You'd want to, I mean, Ivor Hamilton, I'll name
Scott Turner, May Potts, Alan Cross, David Marston,
Humble and Fred, a whole bunch of interesting people on that program.
Okay, so we're going to close with a couple of songs.
Mansbridge had tears in his eyes
When he told the country the news
That Jack Layton had died
And a little part of me died too
The part that had faith
A politician could be on my side
A leader I could believe in
Who stood for what was right
but Mansbridge
didn't know
later on
that very day
in a
Fonthill nursing home
Grace
Appleton passed away
Jack Layton and Grace Appleton passed away. Jagalayton and Grace
Appleton.
Jagalayton
and Grace Appleton.
Two names that never
were mentioned
in the same breath.
She wasn't famous and she wasn't rich She lived and voted conservatively
But she was the president
Of the Niagara Falls Horticultural Society
Yeah
They lit up the CN Tower.
Bright orange of the NDP.
And my mom's favorite flower.
Her garden full of tiger lilies.
Jagalitin and Grace Appleton.
Jagalitin and Grace Appleton Jack Layton and Grace Appleton Two names that never were together
Jack Layton and Grace Appleton.
Yeah.
Tell me about this song.
Well, my mom was... She was very sick and dying.
And Laurie and I would drive to Font Hill,
where she was in this nursing home.
And one day we're going to drive,
and I turn on the news in the morning,
and there's Mansbridge totally losing his shit
because Jack had died.
Jack and Olivia had asked me a number of times
to do graphics for their campaigns and stuff
and i you know i really admired jack so much and we were going to call our son layton but it just
felt a little pretentious late in the swing hammer so we we ditched that idea eventually but so i
just um uh you know it was a interesting coincidence that he died when my mom died.
And then when months go by and I was invited to do a recording out at the Canadian Music Center in Calgary,
which has this phenomenal collection of synthesizers.
And I thought, yeah yeah let's do it so i dragged michael
philip voivoda out with me because i thought if if you do all the tech if you record everything
and i'll play everything um it'll be great and uh so i i thought well i don't want to wing it
you know like i thought i i could go out there and just improvise but i'm going to write everything out. And so I wrote an album about my mom
and making use of all these incredible keyboards.
And like, you know, they have like the theremin from 1928
and stuff like that.
It's just phenomenal.
And then the music, the only record I ever played
that my mom actually said
what is that? It's really interesting. It was
Brian Eno's music for airports.
And so
when I got that I was playing it all the time
and she said yeah that's really interesting.
And she'd never liked any music I ever played.
And then when my dad died
I played it at his funeral
and later on she goes what was that music?
Because that would have been separated by
I don't know how many decades. she said what was that music was really really
interesting and i thought oh the second time you've you remember hearing it or whatever it's
like you it resonated and then when she was dying i was playing it in the room just because it's so
beautiful and yeah i thought that would resonate with her. So I analyzed the chord sequences from one of Eno's albums,
Another Green World,
and found two songs that share the same chord sequence.
And then for all the songs on this album that I did about my mom,
it's all on these musical relationships that are part of the Eno theme.
Because he's always been one of my big heroes.
So that's what that album's about.
And that's called Another Another.
Yeah.
Cause it was from another green world, the chords, but they're not overt. Like they're, it's kind of just like the, like I say, it's the DNA that's inside the
songs.
It's from you know and i should tell
people listening if you go to swinghammer.bandcamp.com you can grab a whole bunch of great uh
kurt swinghammer songs including the album another another we just heard from and i wanted to close
with something from the kurt of Kensington.
It's a true story.
I open my door to a day in the life as sung by the hippie across the street
on an abysmal acoustic guitar
with a bad bongle beat.
And the Portuguese men are staring again
as they do every day from the billiard hall
Well, don't they have anything better to do with their lives?
And they're at the $1, $2, $3 store
They've just run out of rich motels
And Bruce Copen's photograph is no longer on the wall
At the pizza joint around the corner
Is it my imagination or have things settled down
Since a bunch of fucking goobs got kicked out of the fort
And the cops cracked down on the crack house on Kensington
Well I close my door to Hotel California
As played by the hippie across the street
on an abysmal acoustic guitar, an abysmal acoustic guitar, an abysmal acoustic guitar
with a bad bongo beat. Kensington from the Kurt of Kensington.
Again, that's at swinghammer.bandcamp.com as well.
And that's a live track at the Glen Gould.
We recorded an album live and no overdubs,
no, a little bit of reverb.
Amazing. Look at you. kurt i oh my god i took so much of your valuable time here is there anything i didn't cover that
you wanted to share with everybody or you know you're welcome to save it for a sequel i mean i
thought about some at one point i thought hey i could start i could just ask him about all the
different people he did like a guitar session work for.
And then I said,
like,
what a list,
like from great big C,
real static,
Sarah Sleen,
Royal wood.
I mean,
you mentioned Peter Murphy,
Ani,
uh,
Lorraine Sagato,
wild strawberries.
And we always,
we talked quite a bit about Ron Sexsmith,
uh,
your,
your wife,
of course,
but like I was going to,
then I thought,
okay,
what about all these different artists
he was a house band guitarist for
at different benefits and variety shows?
And I said, I can ask about Kevin Drew
and Emily Haynes
and Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies.
And of course, we talked a little bit
about Andy Mays.
And then there's Andy Kim.
They're both the FOTMs.
But anything you wanted to share
before we play some lowest of the low
to say goodbye here?
Right.
Well, I do have a site that has the visual art and, you know, there's prints available and stuff like that.
But if people just want to see what I'm currently working on, these landscape-based paintings are up there.
Yeah, if you search Kurt Springhammer, it'll come up.
Okay, cool.
And last thing, maybe, because I think I was very, very early in your
career, but you collaborated with Andy
Stokansky. Yeah, we did
an album together.
We were back in the day with
ADAT, so you could just, you know, send
a tape back and forth and
did a sort of fairly
experimental thing, you know.
Okay, cool.
You ever worked with Lowest of the Low?
I did a gig with Steve Stanley just a few months back.
I did a gig with the Low like really early on.
We were shared a bill.
But we haven't really crossed paths a lot.
Well, thanks, Kurt, man.
This was, like, I always thought of you
as almost like a missing link kind of guy
to fill in a whole bunch of cracks.
And you've just been a part of the scene
seemingly forever, musically,
your artwork, the commercial work,
all of it.
And, man, just now you're an FOTM.
But thanks for doing this, buddy.
Oh, thank you.
I really appreciate having the excuse to get on my bike and ride out here.
It's beautiful.
It's a beautiful day to bike.
Finally.
Although I bike in all weather, right?
So I bike all year round.
But man, what a day today was.
And that brings us to the end of our 1,250 second show.
You can follow me on Twitter.
I'm at Toronto Mike.
So Kurt, you're actively tweeting on Twitter. Whereabouts can we follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. So Kurt, you're actively
tweeting on Twitter. Whereabouts can we follow
you on social media?
I like the Facebook format
a bit more, but I do have a Twitter
thing. I don't really tweet. And Instagram
I put images up
of my work, basically.
Follow Kurt and check out his great
work. Our friends at
Great Lakes Brewery,
they're at Great Lakes Beer.
Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta.
Mineris is at Mineris.
Recycle My Electronics are at EPRA.
Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH.
And I want to shout out the Moment Lab.
If you've been struggling to get your message out to the world,
if you're looking to increase your brand's visibility
and reach your target audience,
the Moment Lab specializes in public relations and has a team of experienced professionals
who know how to craft stories that resonate with your audience and generate positive media coverage.
I'm happy to introduce you to my friends Matt and Jared at The Moment Lab
to learn more about how they can help you achieve your public relations goals.
They're on Twitter, at The Moment Lab.
See you all later this week when my special guest is
Alan Frew of Glass Tiger. Won't stay today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Cause everything is
Rosy and great
Well I've been told
That there's a sucker born
Every day
But I wonder who
Yeah I wonder who Yeah, I wonder who
Maybe the one who doesn't realize
There's a thousand shades of grey
Cause I know that's true
Yes, I do
I know it's true, yeah
I know it's true
How about you?
Are they picking up trash trash and then putting down ropes
And they're brokering stocks, the class struggle explodes
And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can
Maybe I'm not and maybe I am
But who gives a damn
Because everything is coming up
Rosy and gray
Yeah, the wind is cold
But the smell of snow
Warms me today
And your smile is fine
And it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Because everything is rosy and gray And your smile is fine, it's just like mine, and it won't go away.
Cause everything is rosy and gray.
Well, I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain.
And I've kissed you in places I better not name.
And I've seen the sun go down on Shakalaka.
But I like it much better going down on you.
Yeah, you know that's true because everything is coming up rosy and green.
Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms us today
And your smile is fine
and it's just like mine
and it won't go away
Cause everything is
rosy now
Everything is rosy
Yeah everything is
rosy and gray
Yeah Everything is rosy and gray