Last year, I wrote a track which I thought was pretty catchy. I'd categorize it as "indie soft rock." I recorded a rough copy of the song one Saturday evening before work at the Pub, and sent the recording to Mike Allison to listen to. A day later, Mike emailed me back to say that he really liked the song, and recorded a rough version himself. As soon as I heard it, I decided that I would try to release the song professionally.
What with all my other jobs and projects, it took a while for everything to come together, but over the next eight or ten months, I finally got the project moving forward quickly. We recorded the song partly in New Brunswick, in my own studio, and partly in Vancouver at FaderMaster Studios, with Shawn Cole acting as a recording and mastering engineer. Mike did the lead and backup vocals, and the acoustic guitar and bass. I played the drums, keyboards, electric guitar, and shaker in the new version.
I also enlisted the assistance of Deanna Musgrave to help me put a video together. We did some filming last spring, and more filming this past fall. Deanna has a lot of practice at putting videos together, and has a really interesting abstract style for some of her work which contrasts interestingly with the usual style that I’ve used in the past to put a lot of videos together. Deanna put together the first version of the video for me, and then added some additional footage with the help of Julien Strasfield as a technical guru in Final Cut (since I’m used to PC-based software). Having Deanna and myself working together as co-filmmakers and co-editors was a really educational experience for me.
It’s interesting that this project has turned into a “Mount Allison University Community” project. Mike is an alumnus at MTA. Shawn used to be my roommate while we were at university, and he worked at the campus Pub with me as the Student Manager (his mom, Filis, still works at the university too). Deanna is an alumnus. Julien is still a student, although he graduates this year. Ian Allen, another employee at both the University and the campus Pub, did the graphic design work for the CD, and helped with marketing. When we needed extra actors for the video, we recruited Dinao (a friend of mine who worked with me as a bartender last year) to act as Mike's supposed girlfriend. For the older version of Mike & Dinao in the future, we were lucky to have the assistance of Robert Campbell (MTA’s President) and his wife Christl (a professor at MTA) as characters. In fact, the only two people involved in the entire project who are not members of the MTA university community are the two kids in the video – Evan (my nephew) and Mira (Evan’s friend), which provided the "flashback" footage of Mike and Dinao when they were young. Maybe someday one or both of them will decide that they want to come to Mount Allison.
Here’s a link to the video, for those who want to watch it.
We also put together a full CD with this song as the first track on the CD, and I included eight of my favourite other Mike Allison tracks. Some of the other songs have been released on his various albums before, and some were not. The CD is called "Tilting At Windmills." I’m also working on getting a listing for the CD on Amazon.
You may be curious about the name for the CD. “Tilting At Windmills” is a phrase from Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. Basically, "tilting" was another word for jousting (by knights) in Medieval times, and in the book, our hero thought that a windmill was actually a giant, and so he wanted to attack it by jousting. Essentially then, “tilting at windmills” has come to mean “fighting a futile fight” or “fighting against imaginary enemies,” or variations on the same theme. I suppose that you could infer that since this song (and CD) are being marketed purely through guerrilla or viral marketing approaches, rather than conventional musical channels, we are “fighting the musical establishment.” However, we’re just doing this for fun, so the “musical establishment” is really an enemy in imagination only. Don Quixote is the best-selling work of fiction of all time (for non-political, non-religious works), so hopefully some of that charm rubs off and makes the CD popular too.
Anyway, if you like the song, please send the website link and/or the YouTube link to your friends. We’re not trying to make money off CD sales, so we definitely encourage you to share the mp3 freely. And if you want to hear the song on the radio, click here to see a full list of Canadian radio stations, so you can give your favourite local station a call or an email request to hear the song. Here are the links to the video on YouTube, and also to the page on my site where you can download the mp3 for free:
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJjauOyEt40
"When I Grow Old" (and the rest of Mike Allison's "Tilting At Windmills" album) is now available for mp3 download from iTunes, AmazonMP3, Rhapsody, Napster, and Shockhound. We especially recommend that you check out the Shockhound link, because you can sign up for a free account now and as an introductory offer, you can download thirteen mp3's for free. In other words, you can get the entire "Tilting At Windmills" album for free that way!
Edit, December 2011: Sorry for the low quality of the YouTube video, especially by today's standards. Remember that this was created back in the early days of YouTube video, and before High Definition video recording.
Also, here's a link so you can play the song directly through SoundCloud, or download the music, by clicking on the down arrow to the right of the track:
Bolivia feat Mike Allison - When I Grow Old (Radio Edit) by djbolivia
Finally, here's a link to a SoundCloud page with a few of Mike Allison's other songs:
http://soundcloud.com/mike-allison
Check it out, as the songs there can also be downloaded for free.
