Gene Mascardelli the owner of the King of Hearts club contacted me. He was also Keith McKie's manager and he wanted me to play piano on Keith's new album. It was a fabulous experience recording in a real professional studio Kensington Sound on a Grand Piano. Keith is an amazing talent and former leader of the legendary Toronto band The Kensington Market. They were like the Beatles in Toronto in the 60's. Keith is another musical genious. Above is one of my favorite Keith McKie songs 'Amen'. Unfortunately I can't find a record player to copy the actual song from the Album, this is an unfinished demo I had on cassette. Even so you can hear what beautiful song this is and the sweet sound of his choir like voice.

The next song 'Two Winds' was produced by Felix Pappalardi who had produced The Youngbloods and The Cream. He kept tweaking this, and altering that until he found what he was searching for. Once he started dancing in his engineer seat you knew that we finally had the groove he was looking for. Both of these songs should be heard in good quality. I will try and remedy that in the near future.

One of the great benefits of spending months recording Keiths album was the relationship I developed with Tom Rogers, who was an intern at that time and was always open to letting me record on studio downtime. 'Silver and Gold' was one of those sessions.

Around this time my friend Howie Rypp from Nephesh Theater produced a play based on Kaddish by Allen Ginzburg which I did the music for. Allen came to the opening and made a big splash in Toronto, with interviews and poetry readings. Keith and I backed him up with his readings. Allen played an Indian type accordian, with Keith on guitar and me on Piano. It was a very inspirational time and I started writing poetry as well. One of the poems I put to music in the style of Allens poetry readings. It was an ode to Ginzburg called 'Beatnick Daddy'.

I was like a kid in a candy store having access to a great studio to record in. This next session I arranged had Shane Adams on upright bass, Keith McKie on guitar, my friend Pete Dako on organ, Dave Norris from the Basics on drums, and a new friend who had moved from Winnipeg with his band The Fuse, Jeff Hatcher also on guitar. There may have been others but I don't remember. I loved this session. Practically no rehearsal, just roll the tapes. They were all pro's so they caught on right away. I think all these songs were recorded in one night; 'Dancing Beauty', 'Too Hard to Please You', 'One Girl', 'Well,Well,Wel'l, and 'Hang On'.

The last song from this period has an interesting story to it. I was still high on the whole Allen Ginzburg experience and I wrote this song called 'Freedom Song'. Tom had some late night opening in the studio and I went to a few bars, the Peter Pan and the Black Bull and maybe a few others and told my friends to come to the studio because I needed a chorus. Of course they were all drunk it was 2 am when they all arrived after the bars had closed. I think they were the same musicians as above plus a few musicians who came after their gigs, like the mandolin player, a sax player, and Debbie the violin player who you would always see at the after hours clubs. Tom freaked out at me. He said there is no way to record all these people properly. I said its ok, it doesn't have to be done right, I just wanted the energy of all those people there. It was pretty cool in the end.

It was around this time that I also wrote and recorded Johnny Boy which was also a late night session at Kensington Sound with Keith McKie on harmonies. You can hear that Songs of Love and Devotion.