Edmonton Journal
You could call Steve Dawson one of Canada’s busiest studio wizards, outside the country. He’s produced or played on more than 200 albums since 2000, overseeing some 80 projects just out of his own Henhouse Studios in Vancouver, and then Nashville, where the guitar virtuoso-singer has lived for a decade now.
Allison Russell, Big Dave McLean, Jim Byrnes, Kat Danser, John Wort Hannam, The Sojourners, The Deep Dark Woods and frequent touring employer Matt Anderson are a few of the roots artists who have benefited from Dawson’s expertise on string instruments or behind the mixing board, many released on Henhouse Music. Beyond this are eight fine albums under his own name plus early dates in Zubot & Dawson, and his touring consortium The Mississippi Sheiks.
Along the way, he’s collected a closet of trophies, seven Junos, three Western Canadian Music Awards, four Canadian Folk Music Awards, and even started profiling artists on his own podcast, Music Makers and Soul Shakers.
But things changed when the pandemic showed up and largely shut things down two years ago. After taking stock, Dawson found himself going back to school, sort of.
“I really studied in a way that I hadn’t been able to for probably 20 years,” Dawson says. “I was actually reading manuals, learning technical things, but also getting pretty deep into the mixing process, experimenting and trying to bump that up because I suddenly had this time to spend on things that I usually never do. I think that phase is gone because I have to get back to work but now I can apply all that new knowledge going forward.”
Our phone conversation found Dawson back in his hometown of Vancouver for only the second time in more than two years, “getting re-acclimatized” before heading out on tour.
Travel or the recent lack of travel options was a key factor in his deep dive into studio technology, especially the need to finesse remote recording, necessitated by the pandemic. Apart from continuing projects for other artists, he managed to sock away tracks for three new albums of his own, set for release throughout 2022. That starts with Gone, Long Gone.
One of the amazing parts is the way Dawson makes Gone, Long Gone sound so convincingly live and together even though many contributions to the record were made remotely by star drummers Gary Craig and Jay Bellerose, bassist Jeremy Holmes, backing singers, guests on cello and keys, even a trio of horns from Vancouver on the opening track Dimes. Closer to home, his daughter Casey makes her debut as a backup singer on two tracks including the album’s lone cover tune, an intriguing take on The Faces’ number Ooh La La.
“We spent a lot of time working on how to make things sound good,” Dawson explains, “and a few weeks later we had a system that worked pretty well. That led to working with a number of artists on singles and that led to doing full albums again. I started feeling really good about making music that way and that’s when I started writing songs.”
His string playing and soloing is typically brilliant, paired with a warm vocal presence. Then there are the timeless lyrical themes of many of the songs, conjured up by his frequent song co-writer Alberta’s Matt Patershuk, who got Dawson to produce his recent releases.
“He called me out of the blue 12 years ago or something to produce,” recalls Dawson. “We’ve been really good friends ever since and I always liked his writing. I started working in a different way with Matt, with my musical ideas and his lyrics, with me picking stuff out or him throwing stuff at me. I found lyrics that resonated and we just kept going for 25 or 30 songs.”
Another wrinkle of COVID involved moving from one side of Nashville to the other and outfitting a new studio. Being in the thick of music-making for some 25 years, including a decade in Nashville has been a vast evolutionary affirmation of Dawson’s creative instincts and resources.
“When I moved down (to Nashville) it really shook things up, which is exactly what I was looking for. I moved down blindly, not knowing anyone besides Colin Linden and Tim O’Brien. It’s been amazing and it’s an added incentive for some people who think of me as a producer, to come down to Nashville. I’ve worked with a lot of Canadians down here in that time.”
Expect to hear a real breadth of roots, blues and related genres in Dawson’s music, live and on record. What’s next? The second part of his accumulated efforts from pandemic isolation will be released around August, an album devoted to “psychedelic pedal steel guitar” as he puts it.
For Tuesday’s date here, Dawson’s packing his Hawaiian-style Weissenborn guitar, an electric slide guitar and a regular electric guitar, plus a pedal steel guitar, “if space allows.” His touring trio for this Canadian jaunt includes bassist Jeremy Holmes, keyboardist Darryl Havers and drummer-percussionist Joachim Cooder.