Scott Perry

Scott Perry playing on the famous Venice Beach boardwalk
Here’s the deal.
A few years ago, when I was in between bands for awhile, I wrote a bunch of songs and decided I should finally do something with these self-penned numbers that were unattached to any band. I called up a good friend of mine who I knew did some recording and asked if he’d help me out. So we worked on a few and he turned to me, the way good friends do you know? and said:
"Scott, these songs are crap"
Like I said, he's a good friend. So, after I helped him up off the ground and we'd stopped the bleeding in his nose, he explained further:
"I see what you're going for, these are rock songs, like the bands you've been playing in, and there might be something a band could do with them. But if you want to get down to it and record *your* songs, I've heard dozens of things you've written and sung to us all around beach fires and house parties that are better than this. That are more *you*, more honest, more real. I'm building a studio in my basement and I want to record the best of what you've done so far, those songs we all loved when you just played them for us"
Eduardo had a good point. We went through a few dozen of my backlog and decided on 12 that couldn’t miss, maybe even added up to something cohesive together. We worked them to death, mainly because Eddie had to come up with drum parts and we had to settle on arrangements (that meant fighting a lot over what I believed in vs. what his fresher ears were hearing in the possibilities of the songs). When we finally got down to work, I think we spent 2 weeks in the studio and finished all the drums, bass, the lions' share of guitars (and there were many, many guitars), and nearly all the lead vocals plus a few harmonies.
Then I didn't see him for quite a while. You see, he may be my friend but the studio still cost money, and even at a good friend rate, I blew all my dough in 12 straight days in there. So I had to save up for the next session. Then I joined another band, Fancey and put a lot of work into that for awhile, including some touring on both coasts in the US. Short story long, it took a few subsequent sessions spread over several years to finish the actual recording closest to my heart. I did most of it myself, but brought in some friends to help out with keys, trumpets (some of those parts I'd already written/arranged but couldn't execute as well as a pro), and some bass parts I wanted a better bassist to play.
It's hard to do this all yourself, I guess that's why record companies step in and give advances of your money you'll later make to smooth the way (which they will collect with interest). But paying for it all, I had to wait at each stage. At the mixing stage, four of the songs ended up being left off because they just weren't as far along as the rest, significantly more work to finish than I could afford, in money or time. The eight remaining songs definitely had something in common, and strung out 30 solid minutes of music pretty well. So I finished in the studio, saved the money to master it, package it and make the copies that I now, at long bloody last, have in my possession.
Of course in the meantime I joined another rock band, Vancouver’s long-running power-pop juggernaut The Orchid Highway, on lead guitar and harmony vocals. This has now become the main focus of whatever career may be said to apply to my musical life. Which I suppose sort of relegates these 8 songs to a bit of a side project, or a blip between band endeavors. But that’s OK – I think music is timeless, and certainly that’s all I’ve ever striven for, something not exactly on the crest of the current wave, but forever swelling up beneath, behind, and between the twists and turns of the music industry.
So, here they are, for what they’re worth, some songs I wrote and recorded which will go down as Scott Perry’s solo debut. Although I’m now writing for the Orchid Highway as well, and will have at least one of my numbers on our next album (due out sometime in 2008), there are still a lot of tunes bursting to get out, so this will surely not be the last the world hears of this singer-songwriter.