Strong-armed country rock with an occasional Steve Earle echo and a touch of rockabilly"

11 MP3 Songs
COUNTRY: Country Rock, FOLK: Modern Folk



Details:
Michael Brennan:

Portrait of a cautious
man who sings the truth

Michael Brennan is a big man. Looks a little ragged, like many people who teach for a living, have wives and families, and donât drive late model cars fresh off GMâs production lines.

But, as the saying goes, donât judge a book by the cover.

Michael Brennan is on stage, fronting his crack edgy country band, The Wayward Angels, with some of the best musicians in Toronto. Heâs in charge and suddenly the attention is on a voice that rumbles and trembles, and on songs that are as true and direct as the man who is singing them.

Michael Brennan is the voice of REAL country music in Toronto. âCountryâ with edge, true stories, full of honest characters whoâve loved and lost more often than theyâve won. Thereâs sentiment here, but not much sentimentality. Heâs seen too much; this is the sort of guy whoâs been there and done that â and survived.

Michael Brennanâs story: Cape Breton, Nova Scotia born and raised, moved from the salt air to Torontoâs smog, settled down, and formed The Wayward Angels. Four years of hard graft in bars and clubs, and, finally, one well-received and well-reviewed CD. Writers described the self-titled Angelsâ CD as âstrong-armed country rock with a touch of rockabillyâ and âpowerfulâ (the latter from a Belgian music magazine).

Six years later â with vitally important time in between to raise a family, dig into a teaching career (math is his specialty), and write more songs â Brennan is back. Cautious Man is a collection of 11 of those songs, recorded with his core band: Dave Tufford (Melody Ranch) on guitars, John Adames (Prarie Oyster) on drums and Dennis Pinhorn (Downchild) on bass. Icing on the cake came from studio stalwarts Michael âPepeâ Francis (Rita MacNeil, Stan Rogers), Ray Parker (Shania Twain, kd Lang), Roly Platt (Dutch Mason, Matt Minglewood), and Neil Donell (Caitlan Hanford, Doug Riley).

And, perhaps most importantly, Cautious Man is a showpiece for the inspired skills of producer Chad Irschick, who worked with one eye on the heart of the songs â all Brennan originals â and the other on the elements grownup radio wants the listeners to hear and relate to.

Not that a single record will necessarily change Brennanâs life. In some ways, he is a cautious man, and heâll hang on to his day job. But now that his kids are growing up heâs got more time to hit the clubs and the bars where the rubber hits the road and the real people who love this music dance and drink and sing along and understand the things heâs singing about.

And he is going for it. But musically heâs not being cautious â as he sings on the CDâs last cut:

âSuch an endless highway, such a twisted road, so full of holes, such an endless highway of goldâ¦â