In the beginning.

I was formed in the early autumn of 1966, in the then sleepy southern Ontario town of Guelph. I am the youngest of three boys. My parents had relocated from the UK, the year before. My first musical memories were of my mum and I, sitting on the green couch at 4 Heather Ave. when I was three or four. Listening to Revolver, Pepper, the soundtrack of Help, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (Vol. 1) and Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow.

By the time I was nine, the music bug had bit me (despite not having any natural musical talent). My pals from the neighbourhood would meet at my place, tune up our tennis rackets and air band along to Beatles records in the front room. In 1977, my dad packed up the family and we moved to Aberdeen, Scotland, where I became obsessed with the early punk scene after seeing The Jam, Stranglers etc. on Top of the Pops and Marc Bolan’s after school TV show on ITV.

Back in Guelph a year or two later, I attempted to take guitar lessons to no avail. Regardless, my school buddy Chris Dowling and I formed our first punk rock band. Chris lived on a farm outside of Guelph. During the winter of ’81, his parents let us rehearse out in the barn. We would get so cold that we had to take frequent trips to the kitchen where we'd thaw out our hands in a wash basin filled with warm water. Later, Chris's brother John joined as the singer (and was horrified by having to sing my terrible lyrics). Somehow, we got our first booking. John and Chris’s older brother Mike was having a massive mid-summer party out in the barn called Barn Beat. We were the opening act... but oh no, no drummer! No worries, Adrian Stickland, who was going to the party anyway, joined that very afternoon. That night we got on stage. I was terrified! We played everything at twice the speed. The audience hated us. Somebody cut the power. We were very rough, probably outta tune for most of it, but it was so fun! Laissez Faire was born!

After Barn Beat I lasted one more show. We got booked at a University of Guelph pub night opening for a ZZ Top tribute act. I was 15 at the time so my dad had to attend as my chaperone and I wasn't allowed in the bar before or after our set. Chaos ensued! The ZZ Top fans weren't particularly happy with us as the opening act and let us know by showering us with insults and the occasional beer bottle. Our friends got in fights with the "rockers!" It was a mess. In the car on the way home, my dad informed me, “That would not be happening again.” He was right! Laissez Faire needed a guitar player who was of legal age (or at least looked it). I was fired the next week. My dreams in tatters, my first attempt at rock stardom thwarted.

Never mind, within a year my brother Chris and I put together a new band.

EXTREMELY heavily influenced by The Jam, we went through bi-monthly name changes starting with Accent On Youth, Youth in Asia (cringe!) and finally, Atomic Survival Kit. We rented a 4-track Fostex and recorded a tune I wrote called Confused for a Guelph artist compilation cassette called Five Point Compass. Bass player Mitch moved away to go to college, we were no more.

Not one to self reflect and realize, "maybe this whole music thing ain't gonna work,” I quickly put a new band together called The Insurgent (think early U2, Alarm, Waterboys). I didn't wanna sing, but the singer quit, so I had to. We rented the same 4-track machine (this time using all 4 tracks!) and recorded a demo. We played a bunch of shows, and won a Battle of the Bands. We used the prize money to go into a ‘real studio’ and record the most embarrassingly awful demo I've done before or since. I really could NOT sing! The rest of the band discovered Jesus, I did not. We played one last show at a biker fest in Puslinch, got booed offstage... the end.

London, 1985.

London Ontario... not London England! Throughout the summer of ’85, I knew I had to move. My dad was sick of me lazing around the house and disgusted with my final high school marks. I thought about moving to England.

I had friends there and my oldest brother lived in Scotland. As fate would have it, my buddy Mike (who was/is an incredible drummer) convinced me and my ASK bandmate Mitch to join up with him and his pal Pat and move to London. Pat was in the recording arts program at Fanshawe College. The plan was to rent a house together, rehearse like mad, and record during the graveyard shift at Fanshawe College's Studio A. After this, of course, the demos would find themselves the hands of Steve Lillywhite, Danial Lanois etc., and we'd be huge! We called ourselves Lifeless Currents (I always hated the name). Appeared on the London Underground record put out by CHRW. To pay rent we busked on Dundas Street, until it got too cold. Eventually we all got kitchen jobs. After Pat left we changed the name to Zen Bones and released a cassette called The Importance of Being Naked. By 1989, we remained ‘undiscovered’ and broke up.

Celtic Blue.

As one door closes another one opens! In the mid-80s my Guelph buddies had put together the Pogues/Dubliners-inspired Celtic Blue (featuring 70s psychedelic country artist Arthur “Riki” Gee on fiddle).

I was desperate to leave kitchen work behind and become a touring musician. Lead singer Al and drummer Bo let me know they were looking for a mandolin player. I immediately went out, bought a used mandolin, a chord book and learned a couple of their tunes (which were very familiar, in that my dad loved Celtic music). I went to a rehearsal, drank too much Bushmills, passed out on the floor... I was in.

We bought a converted school bus and embarked on a cross-Canada tour (my first of around 30) and spent the next year or two criss-crossing Canada, playing festivals and pubs. I attempted to learn banjo. We released a record entitled Breaking Traditions. Played more festivals. Our converted school bus broke down on the side of the Coquihalla in BC – the end was nigh! To this day I am still a terrible mandolin/banjo player.

The Morganfields.

Around this time, the ragged glory of high-energy, distorted guitars and feedback was calling me! Hence, The Morganfields came into existence, the result of many late nights of substance-infused jams at the rehearsal space behind St. Regis Tavern in London.

We'd have described ourselves as The Replacements meets the Band of Gypsys. Somebody reviewed us as ‘thrash-folk’ and it stuck. Every artist needs a label I suppose. 

In the summer of 1989 we played a bunch of shows around town, and recorded a cassette called Harba Harba Harba, I still have a box of them in my basement! By ’91 we had relocated to Toronto and subsequently released Scribbledhead in early 1992. A bunch of Canadian tours followed. We made a video for a tune called Frances, eventually getting the attention of fledgeling MCA (now Universal) subsidiary label Watch Music. Who, truth be told, were looking to cash in on the whole grunge thing. Watch re-released Scribblehead this time with Canada-wide distribution. Still Sane Records released it in Germany, and Thermometer Records, based in Chicago, distributed it stateside. We were on our way!

After coming home from promoting Scribblehead, we began work on our major label debut, Thrash Waltz. It was the first time we'd ever had a budget to record.

We finished it late summer of 1993. Made a video for the first single, Up The Ladder and later, for another tune called Back Here. After releasing Thrash Waltz in October of ’93, we hit the road to promote it. Up The Ladder made it into Much Music's top ten and people started actually coming to our shows! 

In the meantime, Canadian comedy legends, Kids in the Hall, became big fans and supporters of us and ended up casting drummer Jay and I as part of the band, Death Lurks in their film, Brain Candy. I probably made more money pretending to be the lead guitarist in Death Lurks than I ever did in The Morganfields.

A year after Thrash Waltz came out, we went back into the studio to record the follow-up record, Joy.

Watch Music was distracted by the sudden success of their other band, and left me and co-producer Dan Brodbeck alone to make the record. It ended up being my fave Morganfields record and despite making videos for Someday and Crumb, it failed to catch. The label lost interest and the band disintegrated.

Going solo.

With no band to play with, or label interest, I started to make 4-track demos in my basement and returned to the service industry to pay my bills. 

I concentrated on acoustic guitar/harmonica for a year or two. I hit a bunch of open stages, and became a regular at Frank Nevada's Tune Saloon and Scot B's open kitchen, both hosted on the main floor of the old El Mocambo. Week in, week out there was an ever-changing crew of songwriters honing their craft. After being blown away by Peter Case at a bar on Queen West in ’98, I was chomping at the bit to make a new record. I even learned how to finger pick!

Around that time I got hired as an assistant/apprentice recording engineer at Chemical Sound just off of Portland St. Mainly sweeping, laying cables, soldering gear and getting coffees at first. I got the chance to work with a ton of different artists including Sloan, Blue Rodeo, Godspeed You Black Emperer, Colin Linden etc., eventually co-producing a few records (Stephen Stanley, That Thin Wild Mercury) and engineering The Rheostatics Night of the Shooting Stars. In the studio's downtime I was able to work on my own stuff which later became Balladesque, my first solo album.

I released Balladesque in January of 2000. It seemed to me that the easiest and most economical way to promote the record was touring as a solo performer.

I booked a ton of shows and spent many hours in the back of Greyhounds going from gig to gig. I slept on couches, caught rides with other bands. If I made enough money I'd catch a cheap flight home. However, touring alone is lonely business. So I hired both Mike and Jay from the Morganfields to be my back up band (with a revolving cast of characters). We called ourselves Alun Piggins and the Quitters, and we unfortunately lived up to that name.

Chemical Sound changed hands, and there wasn't room for an oft-away recording engineer. I bought some mics and set up shop in my basement. Shortly afterward I started work on my second solo record, Awaken The Snakes. It reflected pretty much where The Quitters were at at the time. We were a folk rock bar band. When our lead player stopped showing up at gigs, I picked up my telecaster again. We thrived on spontaneity. We never had set lists, just a list of 100-odd tunes that I’d call out at any time. Drove my band insane, but it was a lot of fun. Awaken the Snakes came out on Fred Eaglesmith's AML Records in August of 2004. Soon after, I toured the southern States opening for Fred.

A couple more Canadian tours followed. A year after Awaken The Snakes came out, my son Deklan was born. When Deklan was just 6 weeks old, Dave Bidini (Rheostatics) invited me to tour Europe, starting in London (UK not Ontario!), Finland and ending in Moscow. Followed shortly after by my first of three tours in China. An amazing way to see the world.

I came home and immediately started work on the follow up to Awaken The Snakes: At War With The Elephants. The title came out of me mishearing the name of a documentary I was watching on TVO. At War with the Elephants came out in the spring of 2008. I got back out on the road again. Sometimes alone, sometimes with different incarnations of The Quitters. I started a few projects that have yet to see the light of day (Bad Hombres – Rocket Surgery, and a bunch of solo stuff). Unfortunately my shockingly short attention span has gotten the better of me. I do intend to finish said projects at some point.

I've spent the last decade or so mainly playing locally around Ontario. Occasionally my old Kids in the Hall friend Kevin MacDonald asks me to provide musical accompaniment for his One and a Half Man Show.

I was also the musical director for his rock opera, Cheater Falls In Love. When not gigging, I've been working in the service industry, coaching the kid’s soccer team and attempting to be a good dad. The pandemic came. I got laid off. I taught myself how to play drums. Set up a bunch of mics (again) and started working on a couple of new projects. The first to be released was a single by my sorta comedy/sorta cruel project The Lobstermen. That's Death and Sending Nan To No Frills came out last spring. Currently I'm putting the finishing touches on a concept album entitled Impermanence. It'll be out in early 2022. This is a very compressed history. I've left a ton of stuff out and forgotten lots of names.

Cheers!