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Village Squire, 1978-10, Page 21produced his first solo recording. His band was called the Perth County Express, a boogy.band atld he chuckles at the in-joke that the band had. The Perth County ' Conspiracy used to say it didn't exist; Perth County Express said it didn't exhaust. Members of the Express later joined to become Perth County Apple Jack which backed him up for the album and in his club dates. More recently he has been working solo. doing gigs in lounges and folk clubs but this fall there are plans to reassemble a band. Will I Ever Get to Heaven (distributed nationally by Treble Clef Distribution in Ottawa) is as much a promotion piece as it is an end in itself. People who produce their own records can't hope to get rich off them. Bob says. Most producers hope that the record will pay for itself financially and will open new doors to them as professionals. Already Will I Ever Get to Heaven has nearly paid for itself and has been very successful in terms of promotion getting some air play on radio (which has its own reward through royalties) and helping to introduce him to club owners and a wider audience. Since those early days when the Conspiracy first produced its own recordings. the field has blossomed with small companies producing albums. Today there are perhaps 30 little recording companies producing the albums of an artist and perhaps a few of his friends. The channels for such productions have opened up greatly in recent years making it easier and more attractive to try to produce records. There are some smaller record manufacturing plants that are willing to take on smaller runs these days. The big record companies want to produce a minimum of 5000 up to 65,000 records for giants such as Walt Disney Productions, Bob says. but today there are companies willing to produce in numbers of about 2000, a quite common run. Recording costs are the biggest variable in record production. They can soar with the addition of increased effects such as a larger backup group. Other costs such as art work and manufacturing are more stable. If someone wants to produce his own record, the first step is to get the material together. get the musicians and rent a studio, in Bob's case Track Four. From the recording phase comes the master tape which is then fed into the record cutting operation which produces the master disc from which the lacquer disc is made. This is as far as Bob's work in the production of his album went. That disc is delivered to the record manufacturer who then goes through a series of making positive and negative impressions of the disc until the final stamping discs are made which do the actual pressing of the record. Producing the record was a pleasurable experience for those involved, Bob says. "Everyone who was involved was happy with what they had contributed," he said. Itis much more interesting working in a studio with friends than with studio musicians who are simply hired for the recording session, he says. Ideally, he'd like to be working with the same musicians 10 years from now as he is now. He certainly feels he couldn't improve on quality from the musicians who backed up Will 1 Ever Get to Heaven. David Woodhead, Jerome Jarvis and Brian Lee Griffith are all experienced musicians backing up such well known performers as Valdy and doing studio work for the likes of Noel Harrison and John Allen Cameron. He's happy because they still like to play with him. It's possible that he night do another album in the spring, Bob says, but he doesn't feel pressed yet. For one thing his current album is still doing well. For another, he wants more elaborate production values in his next album and that means a lot more money is needed. Will I Ever Get to Heaven is simple that way. Bob does the vocals and plays the accoustic guitar, harp, mandoline and fiddle; David Woodhead contributes the electric bass, keyboard, electric and accoustic guitar and some vocals; Jerome Jarvis provides drums, percussion, vocals and effects and Brian Lee Griffith plays the electric guitar. Variety is added by Kim Deschamps on dobro, Richard Hutt on flute and vocals, Doug Biggs on pedal steel and the Birchettes with vocals. In all the record has a folkish sound where the vocals are the most important element in the product and the instruments are used to enhance, not compete with the voices. The effect over all has been compared to J'_mmy Buffet and Jesse Colin Young by one critic. Brian Chadderton of the Ottawa Journal in one of many laudatory reviews that greeted the release of the album last year. "The most outstanding elements are Burchill's voice and his ability to pen good songs in the country -rock, blues and rock fields," Chadderton went on to say. "It is an albytm of which Burchill and the band and the Canadian music industry itself can be justifyably proud." It's high praise for the young man who started out playing in local rock and roll bands while he was in high school. Later he was caught up by 'the music of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and others of the mid to late '60's era and moved more to the folk idiam. Early in the 1970's he started writing music. He studied classical guitar for two or three years, including a year at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He also worked in theatre for a time with the group THOG in Toronto producing Canadian historical theatre before he came back to his home territory to join the Conspiracy. There are times he wonders if he should be back home, he admits. 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