MusicRatty: New Music Canada Track of the Day for June 09, 2008: The Old Familiar "Rest For The Weary"

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New Music Canada Track of the Day for June 09, 2008: The Old Familiar "Rest For The Weary"

2008-06-16 00:00:03 by Editor in CBC Radio 3

Last night I was chatting with Vancouver songwriter and friend John Bunyan. John and I often talk about songwriting, tossing around ideas and at one point in our conversation, I asked him about his song "Rest for the Weary". The opening lines place the singer on the church steps, sitting there playing with a blade of grass. Is that you? I asked him. Well, not exactly. He told me that he wanted the song to have a pastoral setting so that image just came to mind.

Furthermore, it was one line in particular that he had been tossing around in his weary head for some months that fueled all of the verses in the song:

Open up the present and wrap away the past

This line became the seed for the rest of the narrative and in fact, as you listen, you'll hear him playing with the idea of the past and pastoral, weaving distinct imagery right into the texture of the verses; tanners tanning leather, poets, priests, holy water and so on.

John is just getting ready to release a new collection of songs that have an old fashioned yet contemporary feel to them. The instrumentation is simple - acoustic guitar, drums, standup bass and lap steel guitar. And he's found the perfect name for it: The Old Familiar which comes from the name John's grandfather used for the TV set when he could no longer remember what it was called.

The Old Familiar performs at The Wired Monk in Vancouver on June 19, 2008.