The Human Experience - in words & music
Muirsical Conversation with Chris Antonik
Muirsical Conversation with Chris Antonik
When noted and award nominated Canadian blues-rock artist Chris Antonik said of latest album Morningstar, he wanted to "push the boundaries of modern blues and blues-rock" (with co-production and directorial assistance from Juno Award-winning producer Derek Downham) he wasn’t kidding.
Not only was he highly successful in that regard, he also delivered his best work to date.
Chris Antonik's previous three studio albums have all been noteworthy, especially sophomore release Better For You and last album Monarch, where he truly came into his own, but Morningstar is step beyond all previous works.
It's also one of the most entertaining, captivating and widescreen modern blues releases of recent years.
And lyrically, very few stones are left unturned – the songs and the album, in semi-conceptual story-telling style, speak of the human experience; those we can all relate to (love, life, relationships, loss) and Chris Antonik’s own, as he reaches mid-life and takes stock.
That the fourteen songs and 70 minutes seem to be over in a much shorter time-frame also speaks volumes – as does Chris Antonik on both Morningstar and the following interview conversation, where, on the eve of embarking on his third UK tour, the talented guitarist-singer-songwriter went into detail on the story behind the album and a number of the pivotal songs…
Ross Muir: Morningstar is a paradigm shift from your rootsy blues and Buddy Guy vibe’d debut album and the modern electric blues of Better For You, although there is an element of next logical step from the multi-influenced melting pot of third album Monarch.
Was Morningstar that "next logical step" or is there an even bigger sonic and mid-life lyrical picture at play here?
Chris Antonik: That’s a really interesting question because it’s not like I set out at the beginning of the day to say to myself "OK, how can I add the most difficult project to my life right now; how do I do that?" [laughs]. Those kinds of things could get stressful, especially during Covid, and I might not have any friends or family left [laughs] but it was an insane project.
I didn’t mean for it to be so epic, but I think that’s just how my personality is, now, at my age.
I’m forty-seven and I love all kinds of music – blues guitar is my touchstone, but I love all sorts; I grew up in the eighties, and then the nineties with grunge and hip-hop, but then I found psychedelic and classic rock, and old jazz and old blues; and beyond that with everything that came out in the two thousands.
We just have so many shoulders of giants to stand on at this point in music, so to tell the story I wanted to tell, which was a big and dramatic time in my life, I thought that each story deserved its own sub-genre.
And, because of Covid, we had so much time to do the album – now, I don’t ever want to do an album like that again because it just took so long – it was almost psychotic on some levels, with what we went through to get it done.
It was worth it in the sense of what we got out of it, but there’s a psychological cost behind this record; not necessarily in a negative way, but there was a lot of stress because of Covid, my personality and how long it takes to get a record done – I want to get them right.
I don’t want to just bang a record out live off the floor every six months – that’s great if you can do that – but I don’t. I like to make movies, in a sense.
But when we get to the live stage we still do the classic blues stuff and the Buddy Guy type thing – in fact we have some really cool nuggets and classic electric blues tunes coming up on this UK tour, but those only show up a few times, so what are you gonna do for the other seventy-five percent of your time?
I just have so many other things to say as an artist and this was the opportunity to do that.
I also want to mention here Derek Downham, who was my co-producer on this record. His vison is heavily ingrained in this album and he really pushed us; he gets a lot of credit for the sound of this album.
RM: I’m glad you mentioned Derek because I wanted to discuss the part he played.
Derek appears on the album playing various instrumentation but he clearly played a large part in terms of pointing you in the right direction and helping you push those musical boundaries.
And Morningstar also has a great sound.
CA: The underlying or fundamental sound of the record comes from Canterbury Studios in Toronto, where we recorded; it’s run by a gentleman called Jeremy Darby, who has done all sorts of stuff and has worked with all sorts of folks – he was Lou Reed’s sound man – and now he has a Grammy.
So he has this cool little studio which is five minutes from my house, and everybody uses it. He has this amazing Neve analog console from 1976 and that’s where you get that great, organic sound.
Now it’s not all in the gear, it’s from the players too, but we got the basis of the record’s sound from there. This was during Covid, in the summer of 2020, when we got most, but not all, of the songs done, with rhythm guitar, drums, bass and some of the keyboards live off the floor.
When everything shut down again we went back and did the rest of it, but that was really cool because we had so much time to think about it – for example with the guitar sounds on the album.
I’m not a gear head at all; there are some pedals Derek used for me on this where I can’t even remember what they were – if a guitar magazine were interviewing me right now I’d look like a complete idiot [laughs], I’m just not that guy!
But it was a real interesting process – we went to this different studio, where he had what seemed to be a million guitar pedals, it was like a little playground! I would just sit there and tell him ahead of time what I wanted, or heard in my head, and he would move things around or change some knobs or try different combinations and go "try that" then "OK, try this."
He would be moving things around in real time as I was performing; it was a really cool experience.
Not only was he highly successful in that regard, he also delivered his best work to date.
Chris Antonik's previous three studio albums have all been noteworthy, especially sophomore release Better For You and last album Monarch, where he truly came into his own, but Morningstar is step beyond all previous works.
It's also one of the most entertaining, captivating and widescreen modern blues releases of recent years.
And lyrically, very few stones are left unturned – the songs and the album, in semi-conceptual story-telling style, speak of the human experience; those we can all relate to (love, life, relationships, loss) and Chris Antonik’s own, as he reaches mid-life and takes stock.
That the fourteen songs and 70 minutes seem to be over in a much shorter time-frame also speaks volumes – as does Chris Antonik on both Morningstar and the following interview conversation, where, on the eve of embarking on his third UK tour, the talented guitarist-singer-songwriter went into detail on the story behind the album and a number of the pivotal songs…
Ross Muir: Morningstar is a paradigm shift from your rootsy blues and Buddy Guy vibe’d debut album and the modern electric blues of Better For You, although there is an element of next logical step from the multi-influenced melting pot of third album Monarch.
Was Morningstar that "next logical step" or is there an even bigger sonic and mid-life lyrical picture at play here?
Chris Antonik: That’s a really interesting question because it’s not like I set out at the beginning of the day to say to myself "OK, how can I add the most difficult project to my life right now; how do I do that?" [laughs]. Those kinds of things could get stressful, especially during Covid, and I might not have any friends or family left [laughs] but it was an insane project.
I didn’t mean for it to be so epic, but I think that’s just how my personality is, now, at my age.
I’m forty-seven and I love all kinds of music – blues guitar is my touchstone, but I love all sorts; I grew up in the eighties, and then the nineties with grunge and hip-hop, but then I found psychedelic and classic rock, and old jazz and old blues; and beyond that with everything that came out in the two thousands.
We just have so many shoulders of giants to stand on at this point in music, so to tell the story I wanted to tell, which was a big and dramatic time in my life, I thought that each story deserved its own sub-genre.
And, because of Covid, we had so much time to do the album – now, I don’t ever want to do an album like that again because it just took so long – it was almost psychotic on some levels, with what we went through to get it done.
It was worth it in the sense of what we got out of it, but there’s a psychological cost behind this record; not necessarily in a negative way, but there was a lot of stress because of Covid, my personality and how long it takes to get a record done – I want to get them right.
I don’t want to just bang a record out live off the floor every six months – that’s great if you can do that – but I don’t. I like to make movies, in a sense.
But when we get to the live stage we still do the classic blues stuff and the Buddy Guy type thing – in fact we have some really cool nuggets and classic electric blues tunes coming up on this UK tour, but those only show up a few times, so what are you gonna do for the other seventy-five percent of your time?
I just have so many other things to say as an artist and this was the opportunity to do that.
I also want to mention here Derek Downham, who was my co-producer on this record. His vison is heavily ingrained in this album and he really pushed us; he gets a lot of credit for the sound of this album.
RM: I’m glad you mentioned Derek because I wanted to discuss the part he played.
Derek appears on the album playing various instrumentation but he clearly played a large part in terms of pointing you in the right direction and helping you push those musical boundaries.
And Morningstar also has a great sound.
CA: The underlying or fundamental sound of the record comes from Canterbury Studios in Toronto, where we recorded; it’s run by a gentleman called Jeremy Darby, who has done all sorts of stuff and has worked with all sorts of folks – he was Lou Reed’s sound man – and now he has a Grammy.
So he has this cool little studio which is five minutes from my house, and everybody uses it. He has this amazing Neve analog console from 1976 and that’s where you get that great, organic sound.
Now it’s not all in the gear, it’s from the players too, but we got the basis of the record’s sound from there. This was during Covid, in the summer of 2020, when we got most, but not all, of the songs done, with rhythm guitar, drums, bass and some of the keyboards live off the floor.
When everything shut down again we went back and did the rest of it, but that was really cool because we had so much time to think about it – for example with the guitar sounds on the album.
I’m not a gear head at all; there are some pedals Derek used for me on this where I can’t even remember what they were – if a guitar magazine were interviewing me right now I’d look like a complete idiot [laughs], I’m just not that guy!
But it was a real interesting process – we went to this different studio, where he had what seemed to be a million guitar pedals, it was like a little playground! I would just sit there and tell him ahead of time what I wanted, or heard in my head, and he would move things around or change some knobs or try different combinations and go "try that" then "OK, try this."
He would be moving things around in real time as I was performing; it was a really cool experience.
For the vocals, we couldn’t find anywhere to record, because everything was closed.
But there was this little studio down by the Lakeshore in Toronto, in an industrial complex, run by this little sole proprietor business and it had a one channel microphone – just one awesome little microphone, with one channel, but that’s all we needed!
So I’m down there while there’s probably crackheads upstairs and all this shadiness going on in this dusk-filled dock area of Toronto where the ships come in, but I didn’t care.
Every other week we would go down there and do a different vocal; I would practice that vocal two weeks ahead of time while managing the on-line schooling for my kids, and all the stress that was going on with Covid.
But that was the thing about spacing all this out. I could take the time to practice each of these vocal performances, and those vocal performances were because of Derek – he would make me do push ups before takes if I wasn’t getting it; he even made me run around the block once and come back in, before we did one!
It was insane, but he saw something in me that I had never seen in myself.
RM: So, Derek quite literally, and obviously musically, brought out the best in you...
CA: He did; he brought all that out and I’m very grateful to him. I thank him daily for that.
RM: It’s really paid dividends, particularly with your vocal performances, which you touched on.
Grace for example, which closes out the album, is a beautifully conceived piece that features one of your most emotive guitar solos to date, but your vocal is strong too, and quite poignant.
CA: Thank you. I really wanted to get that one right because it was a special tune and, as a guitar player, I’ve never done a piano and vocal only tune – I heard Doyle Bramhall II do one of those on one of his last albums and I loved it – but then I also love Doyle Bramhall II!
So we started that one as a piano ballad and I’m thinking "I’m taking a risk here, can my voice cut it?"
But yeah, it could, because I’m telling this sincere story and I knew the song was going to build at the end.
Now, you’ll have noticed that at the beginning of the album we have the angry and bitter breakup song, which is Waves Of Stone. But by the end of the album, lyrically, after all those other things that have gone on in my life, Grace is the Thank You to that person I broke up with, because you know what? – while that wasn’t meant to be, I learned a lot because of that relationship, and that person, at that point in time.
I gave up alcohol, I learned meditation and I began mindfulness. I totally changed my life and it was all because of that breakup. So Grace is basically saying "hey, thank you." It's a song of thanks.
RM: Waves Of Stone is the angry Yin to Grace’s Yang of thanks, or gratitude. They are remarkably different bookends but very strong bookends – Waves Of Stone, which for me is the modern blues-rock song of the year, has such a weighty swagger about it.
CA: Waves Of Stone is another interesting number. That song was co-written by a friend of mine called Dan McKinnon; Dan is a blues guitarist who is heavily involved in the Toronto blues community and has a couple of records out of his own. I wanted to involve him because I knew what he could bring to that song.
He's the one that helped bring out that swagger in the riffage, and we collaborated on the strange chording in the choruses, things like that. Dan played a big role in the sound of that song.
But there was this little studio down by the Lakeshore in Toronto, in an industrial complex, run by this little sole proprietor business and it had a one channel microphone – just one awesome little microphone, with one channel, but that’s all we needed!
So I’m down there while there’s probably crackheads upstairs and all this shadiness going on in this dusk-filled dock area of Toronto where the ships come in, but I didn’t care.
Every other week we would go down there and do a different vocal; I would practice that vocal two weeks ahead of time while managing the on-line schooling for my kids, and all the stress that was going on with Covid.
But that was the thing about spacing all this out. I could take the time to practice each of these vocal performances, and those vocal performances were because of Derek – he would make me do push ups before takes if I wasn’t getting it; he even made me run around the block once and come back in, before we did one!
It was insane, but he saw something in me that I had never seen in myself.
RM: So, Derek quite literally, and obviously musically, brought out the best in you...
CA: He did; he brought all that out and I’m very grateful to him. I thank him daily for that.
RM: It’s really paid dividends, particularly with your vocal performances, which you touched on.
Grace for example, which closes out the album, is a beautifully conceived piece that features one of your most emotive guitar solos to date, but your vocal is strong too, and quite poignant.
CA: Thank you. I really wanted to get that one right because it was a special tune and, as a guitar player, I’ve never done a piano and vocal only tune – I heard Doyle Bramhall II do one of those on one of his last albums and I loved it – but then I also love Doyle Bramhall II!
So we started that one as a piano ballad and I’m thinking "I’m taking a risk here, can my voice cut it?"
But yeah, it could, because I’m telling this sincere story and I knew the song was going to build at the end.
Now, you’ll have noticed that at the beginning of the album we have the angry and bitter breakup song, which is Waves Of Stone. But by the end of the album, lyrically, after all those other things that have gone on in my life, Grace is the Thank You to that person I broke up with, because you know what? – while that wasn’t meant to be, I learned a lot because of that relationship, and that person, at that point in time.
I gave up alcohol, I learned meditation and I began mindfulness. I totally changed my life and it was all because of that breakup. So Grace is basically saying "hey, thank you." It's a song of thanks.
RM: Waves Of Stone is the angry Yin to Grace’s Yang of thanks, or gratitude. They are remarkably different bookends but very strong bookends – Waves Of Stone, which for me is the modern blues-rock song of the year, has such a weighty swagger about it.
CA: Waves Of Stone is another interesting number. That song was co-written by a friend of mine called Dan McKinnon; Dan is a blues guitarist who is heavily involved in the Toronto blues community and has a couple of records out of his own. I wanted to involve him because I knew what he could bring to that song.
He's the one that helped bring out that swagger in the riffage, and we collaborated on the strange chording in the choruses, things like that. Dan played a big role in the sound of that song.
RM: Another strength to Waves Of Stone, and indeed something that permeates throughout and accentuates so many numbers, is the implementation of female backing vocals.
That’s the final, tonal touch – or vocal texture – that helps lift so many songs to the next multi-layered level.
CA: There’s an interesting story there, too, because it was Derek who recruited those incredible women.
There are Canadian gospel singers called the Levy sisters, featuring Ciceal and Amoy Levy; sadly Amoy passed away at the end of 2020. That was a real loss to the Toronto community.
I didn’t know her personally but she was one of Derek’s best friends. Derek was able to get Amoy’s sister Ciceal involved along with another singer by the name of Marlene O’Neill; those women are almost literally angels; they are just gospel royalty in Toronto.
I was like "you got who…? OK, go for it!" It was great to have that sort of power on the album.
I can be a bit controlling and a perfectionist; I’m one of those people who knows what they want in their head but gets frustrated when other people can’t read their minds [laughter] – not all the time, but if you talk to my girlfriend and my kids they probably won’t disagree!
So to let people run with their ideas, in a creative environment, was a good lesson for me, because Derek knows what he’s doing.
When we would disagree on things, or have very dissenting visons, that’s when something interesting usually happened, within that compromise. Like the song How to be Alone, for example – what the heck is that? Where did all those drum machines come from? [laughs].
RM: OK, where did all those drum machines come from?
CA: Well, we started by recording that song live off the floor; it was just meat and potatoes blues rock but I was like "nah, something’s just not working for me." So we left it.
A few months later, after the pandemic, we revisited it. Derek said to me "do you listen to future funk?"
I said "no, what is that?" So I checked it out on Apple Music and it ranges over all these different time periods, but really, it’s just this particular sound – Prince is a good example of future funk for me, and others who are working with that sound, now. And the sonic textures in there are infinite.
So we’re back in the studio and Derek pulls out this Linn drum machine – the type that Prince made famous in the eighties – and he plugs it in.
We started to replace the live drums with it, while trying to get a Bruno Mars kinda take on things – I was really trying to create a pop song in a way, one that might have some commercial potential.
But then of course we get to the guitar solo and the solo’s about two minutes long!
I said to Derek "well, what are we gonna do now?" and he said "just leave it!"
And I thought yeah, damn right we’re leaving it [laughs]. So, it is what it is, you know?
RM: That song is a great example of the multi-faceted styles within Morningstar and sometimes within the songs themselves.
I’m also glad you mentioned the solo on How to Be Alone, because you lay down some very joyous and soulfully expressive playing on that song. There’s some great blues crying notes and deftness of touch to be heard on Morningstar.
CA: Wow, thank you. I think that’s one of my default comfort zones, that Dickey Betts-Allman Brothers kind of feel. It’s almost like playing these major scales as really emotive, almost happy country scales, but they are really blues inflections.
Dickey Betts, Warren Haynes, Duane Allman, all those types of players, are big for me; it’s another tool to express happy emotions, personally.
That’s the final, tonal touch – or vocal texture – that helps lift so many songs to the next multi-layered level.
CA: There’s an interesting story there, too, because it was Derek who recruited those incredible women.
There are Canadian gospel singers called the Levy sisters, featuring Ciceal and Amoy Levy; sadly Amoy passed away at the end of 2020. That was a real loss to the Toronto community.
I didn’t know her personally but she was one of Derek’s best friends. Derek was able to get Amoy’s sister Ciceal involved along with another singer by the name of Marlene O’Neill; those women are almost literally angels; they are just gospel royalty in Toronto.
I was like "you got who…? OK, go for it!" It was great to have that sort of power on the album.
I can be a bit controlling and a perfectionist; I’m one of those people who knows what they want in their head but gets frustrated when other people can’t read their minds [laughter] – not all the time, but if you talk to my girlfriend and my kids they probably won’t disagree!
So to let people run with their ideas, in a creative environment, was a good lesson for me, because Derek knows what he’s doing.
When we would disagree on things, or have very dissenting visons, that’s when something interesting usually happened, within that compromise. Like the song How to be Alone, for example – what the heck is that? Where did all those drum machines come from? [laughs].
RM: OK, where did all those drum machines come from?
CA: Well, we started by recording that song live off the floor; it was just meat and potatoes blues rock but I was like "nah, something’s just not working for me." So we left it.
A few months later, after the pandemic, we revisited it. Derek said to me "do you listen to future funk?"
I said "no, what is that?" So I checked it out on Apple Music and it ranges over all these different time periods, but really, it’s just this particular sound – Prince is a good example of future funk for me, and others who are working with that sound, now. And the sonic textures in there are infinite.
So we’re back in the studio and Derek pulls out this Linn drum machine – the type that Prince made famous in the eighties – and he plugs it in.
We started to replace the live drums with it, while trying to get a Bruno Mars kinda take on things – I was really trying to create a pop song in a way, one that might have some commercial potential.
But then of course we get to the guitar solo and the solo’s about two minutes long!
I said to Derek "well, what are we gonna do now?" and he said "just leave it!"
And I thought yeah, damn right we’re leaving it [laughs]. So, it is what it is, you know?
RM: That song is a great example of the multi-faceted styles within Morningstar and sometimes within the songs themselves.
I’m also glad you mentioned the solo on How to Be Alone, because you lay down some very joyous and soulfully expressive playing on that song. There’s some great blues crying notes and deftness of touch to be heard on Morningstar.
CA: Wow, thank you. I think that’s one of my default comfort zones, that Dickey Betts-Allman Brothers kind of feel. It’s almost like playing these major scales as really emotive, almost happy country scales, but they are really blues inflections.
Dickey Betts, Warren Haynes, Duane Allman, all those types of players, are big for me; it’s another tool to express happy emotions, personally.
Photo by Kirsten Sonntag
RM: I want to cherry-pick out another couple of songs from Morningstar because they showcase yet more shades, or facets, of both the album and your song writing.
In Our Home is the album’s country-folk styled moment but with this lovely juxtaposition of a very contemporary Moog synth solo within what is a fairly traditional sounding framework.
CA: That’s my favourite song on the album. It was co-written with Ben Fisher, who features heavily on the album as a co-writer – I’ve collaborated with Ben for a long time now, nine or ten years.
Ben actually lives in Basildon in England and he’ll be with me in the touring band for the UK dates.
Home, in this case, was from the broken home of a divorce to starting a new life with my kids in a new home, one not too far from where their mom lives. And home is such a powerful concept – will I be able to build a new home with my kids; can I live with anyone again – is it me, or was it something I did?
I didn’t want to tread lightly with this so I called Ben and said "look, I’m struggling with this one; would you like to collaborate?"
So we came up with what we did and what you hear but, originally, I couldn’t get out what I wanted to get with the song. In my head what I wanted – and I said this to anyone who came near the song – was, "OK, imagine Jimmy Page, in the early seventies, on acid, in Wales, around lots of sheep – and it’s raining" [laughter]
Ben said "Oh, psychedelic folk from the early seventies, why didn’t you just say that?" [laughs]
But of course it’s not 1971, it’s 2022, so it’s going to sound the way it should sound now, but we did have our mixing engineer listen to a lot of early seventies psychedelic folk so the vocals and guitars would sound a certain way.
We also brought in a pedal steel player Burke Carrol, a wonderful artist from Toronto who plays with all sorts of folks. I said "have a listen to the song but just be yourself and just do your thing" – and he found all the right notes for it.
RM: A classic case of all the pieces fitting – and of course the cherry on the psychedelic country-folk take is having Alison Young duet with you on the song.
CA: Yeah, that was something we did right near the end. Alison is my partner, we’ve been together a few years now, and I just said "Ali, what if we do co-vocals on this song? Not back-ups, but singing together."
Now she can play saxophone like there’s no tomorrow but she can also sing, so it was really nice to get her in to do that. It was very touching and, of course, there was also that whole thing about us trying to build something together. It was just a nice, all around experience.
RM: Staying with the more delicate and personal side of the album there’s also the song Little man, which I described as a lovely, horns-backed blues lullaby.
That song is not so much you as the musician but as the loving father…
CA: Yeah; that one was for my eldest son, who went through a lot during the divorce.
I try not to talk too personally about that because I want to keep his personal details out of all this, but it’s just a comment on how amazing he is and how strong he was, having to deal with all that from his perspective as a six or seven year old, at the time. So, yeah, it’s a tribute to him for being just this really strong kid.
RM: I appreciate you being so candid here Chris and right through this conversation, because it really does underline the bigger picture element of Morningstar – there are very few personal stones left unturned.
This sounds like it was also an internal and external catharsis of sorts.
CA: The thing I’ve learned about these last five years, having undergone certain changes in my life, is hopefully having become more emotionally intelligent and more in tune with, and acknowledging, mental health.
The importance of acknowledging mental health is understanding that all emotions are valid – you’re allowed to feel what you want; it’s not up to you what comes through but it is important to recognise it.
In that sense the angry songs – Waves of Stone and Trust In Me – are snapshots of how I felt.
I’m not an angry person and I don’t go around talking like that, but those emotions were there.
RM: Trust In Me is a real boundary pushing number – an interesting, primarily downtempo track with a jazzy interlude featuring Alison on saxophone and an angry guitar solo.
Lyrically it makes for a very strong you-can’t-trust-anybody-but-yourself statement…
In Our Home is the album’s country-folk styled moment but with this lovely juxtaposition of a very contemporary Moog synth solo within what is a fairly traditional sounding framework.
CA: That’s my favourite song on the album. It was co-written with Ben Fisher, who features heavily on the album as a co-writer – I’ve collaborated with Ben for a long time now, nine or ten years.
Ben actually lives in Basildon in England and he’ll be with me in the touring band for the UK dates.
Home, in this case, was from the broken home of a divorce to starting a new life with my kids in a new home, one not too far from where their mom lives. And home is such a powerful concept – will I be able to build a new home with my kids; can I live with anyone again – is it me, or was it something I did?
I didn’t want to tread lightly with this so I called Ben and said "look, I’m struggling with this one; would you like to collaborate?"
So we came up with what we did and what you hear but, originally, I couldn’t get out what I wanted to get with the song. In my head what I wanted – and I said this to anyone who came near the song – was, "OK, imagine Jimmy Page, in the early seventies, on acid, in Wales, around lots of sheep – and it’s raining" [laughter]
Ben said "Oh, psychedelic folk from the early seventies, why didn’t you just say that?" [laughs]
But of course it’s not 1971, it’s 2022, so it’s going to sound the way it should sound now, but we did have our mixing engineer listen to a lot of early seventies psychedelic folk so the vocals and guitars would sound a certain way.
We also brought in a pedal steel player Burke Carrol, a wonderful artist from Toronto who plays with all sorts of folks. I said "have a listen to the song but just be yourself and just do your thing" – and he found all the right notes for it.
RM: A classic case of all the pieces fitting – and of course the cherry on the psychedelic country-folk take is having Alison Young duet with you on the song.
CA: Yeah, that was something we did right near the end. Alison is my partner, we’ve been together a few years now, and I just said "Ali, what if we do co-vocals on this song? Not back-ups, but singing together."
Now she can play saxophone like there’s no tomorrow but she can also sing, so it was really nice to get her in to do that. It was very touching and, of course, there was also that whole thing about us trying to build something together. It was just a nice, all around experience.
RM: Staying with the more delicate and personal side of the album there’s also the song Little man, which I described as a lovely, horns-backed blues lullaby.
That song is not so much you as the musician but as the loving father…
CA: Yeah; that one was for my eldest son, who went through a lot during the divorce.
I try not to talk too personally about that because I want to keep his personal details out of all this, but it’s just a comment on how amazing he is and how strong he was, having to deal with all that from his perspective as a six or seven year old, at the time. So, yeah, it’s a tribute to him for being just this really strong kid.
RM: I appreciate you being so candid here Chris and right through this conversation, because it really does underline the bigger picture element of Morningstar – there are very few personal stones left unturned.
This sounds like it was also an internal and external catharsis of sorts.
CA: The thing I’ve learned about these last five years, having undergone certain changes in my life, is hopefully having become more emotionally intelligent and more in tune with, and acknowledging, mental health.
The importance of acknowledging mental health is understanding that all emotions are valid – you’re allowed to feel what you want; it’s not up to you what comes through but it is important to recognise it.
In that sense the angry songs – Waves of Stone and Trust In Me – are snapshots of how I felt.
I’m not an angry person and I don’t go around talking like that, but those emotions were there.
RM: Trust In Me is a real boundary pushing number – an interesting, primarily downtempo track with a jazzy interlude featuring Alison on saxophone and an angry guitar solo.
Lyrically it makes for a very strong you-can’t-trust-anybody-but-yourself statement…
CA: Trust in Me was the frustration of not just the Trump Administration, but all the politicians of that time.
I really felt like the world had changed and here I was thinking "What’s going on? How am I even seeing soundbites like this in the media? How do I counter that?"
It wasn’t about Left or Right policy, it was about how these politicians, in general, including some close to home, almost had carte blanche to be jerks to each other all of the time, in the media, setting really bad examples.
I’m involved in a parent community and I have my friends and family, but as a parent, in that role, I really felt alone. I had to work extra hard to say "you know kids, you just can’t talk to people like that; that’s not appropriate." That’s really what that song is about.
RM: In summation of Morningstar I have to say that, generally speaking, fourteen songs and seventy minutes would normally be overly-long for anything other than a progressive rock album; but Morningstar seems to play out in a much shorter timeframe, such is the immersion.
CA: I noticed you said that in your review and thanks for that.
I sent that review over to one of the technical staff on the record who said "I told you someone was going to say that; that’s how I’ve felt about it all along."
I thought that was pretty cool.
It is long, and it demands a lot from the listener but that was done on purpose – it’s probably this fascination I have with Martin Scorsese, which I know is totally out there as a guitarist [laughs], but it has to be something like that.
I also had a lot of advice early on about why didn’t I just cut it into two records, that way I would have more to release.
But I said "No; do you know how much is involved in a record release for a guy who runs his own independent label?
Do you know how much time and distraction from family is involved; how much money is needed to mount a PR campaign?"
RM: Exactly that – this is the other bigger picture, the one the end-user or listener is seldom aware of, or cares about.
CA: Yeah, if you want to do it right it’s not that easy. I’m essentially running my own label – I’m my own artist and I have distribution partners; I also have financing partners now with Moondog Music, but as the label guy, I didn’t want to go through that again; I wanted to release this as the epic it is.
Everybody still said "you’re crazy, it’s the soundbite and Spotify era" but I said "no, let’s keep it together."
I realise it’s a lot but this is my story, and I hope you like it!
RM: It was absolutely worth the effort of sticking to your full-album stance; I can only hope Morningstar now gets the wider attention it deserves because it’s outstanding, widescreen blues rock.
Chris, thanks so much for spending time with FabricationsHQ; see you out on the UK road.
CA: This has been a great conversation Ross; thank you so much!
Ross Muir
Muirsical Conversation with Chris Antonik
November 2022
Website: https://www.chrisantonik.com/
Chris Antonik music on Bandcamp: https://chrisantonik.bandcamp.com/
Photo credits:
Top image: website media photo
Middle image: Kirsten Sonntag Photography https://www.kirstensonntag.com/
Lower image: website media photo
I really felt like the world had changed and here I was thinking "What’s going on? How am I even seeing soundbites like this in the media? How do I counter that?"
It wasn’t about Left or Right policy, it was about how these politicians, in general, including some close to home, almost had carte blanche to be jerks to each other all of the time, in the media, setting really bad examples.
I’m involved in a parent community and I have my friends and family, but as a parent, in that role, I really felt alone. I had to work extra hard to say "you know kids, you just can’t talk to people like that; that’s not appropriate." That’s really what that song is about.
RM: In summation of Morningstar I have to say that, generally speaking, fourteen songs and seventy minutes would normally be overly-long for anything other than a progressive rock album; but Morningstar seems to play out in a much shorter timeframe, such is the immersion.
CA: I noticed you said that in your review and thanks for that.
I sent that review over to one of the technical staff on the record who said "I told you someone was going to say that; that’s how I’ve felt about it all along."
I thought that was pretty cool.
It is long, and it demands a lot from the listener but that was done on purpose – it’s probably this fascination I have with Martin Scorsese, which I know is totally out there as a guitarist [laughs], but it has to be something like that.
I also had a lot of advice early on about why didn’t I just cut it into two records, that way I would have more to release.
But I said "No; do you know how much is involved in a record release for a guy who runs his own independent label?
Do you know how much time and distraction from family is involved; how much money is needed to mount a PR campaign?"
RM: Exactly that – this is the other bigger picture, the one the end-user or listener is seldom aware of, or cares about.
CA: Yeah, if you want to do it right it’s not that easy. I’m essentially running my own label – I’m my own artist and I have distribution partners; I also have financing partners now with Moondog Music, but as the label guy, I didn’t want to go through that again; I wanted to release this as the epic it is.
Everybody still said "you’re crazy, it’s the soundbite and Spotify era" but I said "no, let’s keep it together."
I realise it’s a lot but this is my story, and I hope you like it!
RM: It was absolutely worth the effort of sticking to your full-album stance; I can only hope Morningstar now gets the wider attention it deserves because it’s outstanding, widescreen blues rock.
Chris, thanks so much for spending time with FabricationsHQ; see you out on the UK road.
CA: This has been a great conversation Ross; thank you so much!
Ross Muir
Muirsical Conversation with Chris Antonik
November 2022
Website: https://www.chrisantonik.com/
Chris Antonik music on Bandcamp: https://chrisantonik.bandcamp.com/
Photo credits:
Top image: website media photo
Middle image: Kirsten Sonntag Photography https://www.kirstensonntag.com/
Lower image: website media photo