The first vinyl album I bought was Thick As A Brick by Jethro Tull in 1972. The first cover song I recorded was Thick As A Brick by Jethro Tull in 2012. I was so pleased with the result that I did something I’d never done before - I entered Thick As A Brick The Synth Edition into the Canadian Juno Awards and was immediately disqualified. No cover songs allowed in the Electronic Album category! My first thought was, “If I had entered a cover song in the Country Music category, they wouldn’t have said anything.” At that moment I asked myself, “What if I did a country album using nothing but synthesizers?”

Fast forward about 10 years. I was quite nervous when I released My Electronic Country Album in 2021. That wasn’t just because it was a risky combination of country classics and monophonic synthesizers. The album also contained some very personal stories. Details I had never before revealed publicly like catching my partner cheating or losing my house and entering rehab. I was afraid people might make fun of me or would judge me harshly, but the majority embraced the album. Many were inspired to share their own very private personal stories. Thank you.

There wasn’t a single acoustic instrument on the album, not even a snare drum sample, so when the album went to #1 at CJSR Edmonton on the Folk/Roots/Blues charts I knew there was something special going on. The album eventually went to #1 on the Canadian Campus Electronic Chart. I appeared on the cover of SCENE magazine. I was even featured overseas in a UK magazine, The Rodeo. The Rodeo is a beautiful bespoke paper music magazine from Manchester and doesn’t publish online. I love that. Very old school. Like me.

On my first trip to Toronto (early 80s) I stayed with Paul Hodge (a member of the Glass Orchestra) and he worked at The Music Gallery that started a magazine called Musicworks. It was all very new, very exciting and very progressive stuff for a kid from the prairies and I never imagined I’d be in a magazine like Musicworks but nearly 40 years later it happened because of MECA. Issue 143 Fall 2022. Ohama’s Alternative Dimensions by Jesse Locke.

After the unexpected success of MECA, it felt like the “cover song” door was wide open for me to try ANY genre of music, and I began work on 13 Electronic Cover Songs. I was very deep into the project when something happened in November.

November 25, 2021 to be exact. Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary Get Back was released. Wow! It was stunning to see the Beatles alive and working after all these years. Absolutely incredibly stunning. I got shivers. I shed tears. Maybe you have to be of my age and generation to truly get it but I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing and feeling. You know, it never occurred to me that the Beatles wrote songs the way most people work their day jobs. And they didn’t just write, they played a LOT of cover songs. I suddenly realized I was wasting my time recording more cover songs and scrapped my project. Not a light decision. I had already spent hundreds of hours but I knew my next album had to be all originals. The problem was I hadn’t been writing much and definitely wasn’t ready to write a full album. The solution was obvious: cover my old songs.

13 Electronic Cover Songs was written, produced & performed by me except Track 1 - Written with J. Halbertsma. Tracks 4,11 - background vocals Janine Bracewell. Additional vocals by my mother-in-law Kathleen (b.1933 d.2023), my wife Mia, our cat Lilly and my newborn (b. 2023) grandson Kyler. Artwork by Mia Ohama. Release date Feb 22, 2024. Limited edition 13 compact discs.

I think it is important to note that although I’m only selling 13 physical copies, these are not burned CDRs, they are actually replicated, or in other words, these CDs are manufactured from a glass master. I’ve owned CDRs where the dye faded so badly the discs became completely unreadable. Unacceptable for an expensive limited edition CD. How expensive? $99.00 US plus shipping. Each signed copy includes actual pages from my recording journals plus copies of both The Rodeo and Musicworks magazines. Available only through Bandcamp. Streaming everywhere.

I’m not a politician. I’m not a soldier. The way an artist shows support...and resistance...is by creating art. That is what we do.