I produced and arranged a whole record for Edie Brickell which never came out. Broke my heart. She was a pretty big artist then, 1991. My band was all over it, Hugh Phillips, Wayne Cass and Don Kerr plus my talented go to friends for other elements like Sarah McElcheran arranging horns, Jeff Burke on bassoon, penny whistle and unknown letter courier Ron Sexsmith doing all the background vocals. I had produced a record for Ron the previous year and it was rejected by every major A&R company in Canada. They listened to it sometimes with me sitting there on the other side of their desk then told me it was no good. You might smile when a person in a position of power tells you what’s good and what’s bad, not because you accept their opinion but because you made a mistake thinking they might get it. Afterward, I gave everyone I met copies, you can only follow your heart, you can’t predict. She and Paul Simon sort of had chapters of their romance over that cassette, they fell in love with Ron’s work. One of the soundbites that always stayed with me was when we mixed the record, hearing that Texan drawl many times exclaiming “turn up Ron!”.
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She was seen then as a flake in a way because her big song was about feeling uncomfortable and admitting her perspective as best she could. It was novelty song “what I am is what I am is what you are or what”. The judge from Winnipeg says 7 out of 10 on the zen koan-a-meter. Saw my job partly to position her in a way to make it harder for the people who would ordinarily dismiss her. These songs were more serious, about abortion, the gulf war, about envy and some happier notes. We played are asses off. It was awesome and very surreal since this person was on the cover of Rolling Stone 7 months earlier and now we nobodies were rehearsing in the living room of 14 Soho behind the Bamboo club at Queen and Peter.
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She had two managers, Chris and Jeff. Chris had a history working with Joni Mitchell. She called me after hearing how the songs were coming together and complained about Edie swearing in one of the songs. As though I was responsible. As though I had been a bad influence on her daughter girl scout. As though I was suppose to do something about her language. In fact I did, I encouraged her. I said to Chris – but Joni Mitchell swears sometimes. She said I didn’t like it when she did it either. We mixed it at Metalworks where a few weeks earlier Guns and Roses mixed one of their songs for Use Your Illusion Two. The other manager Jeff, told me the material sounded inferior to things done in Los Angeles. No doubt if the world heard it today, that lost record which was engineered by L. Stu Young who Prince later hired to engineer his records, they would all immediately proclaim “shit this sounds inferior to anything done in Los Angeles”.