Remy Shand  -  The way I feel (2002)

Tracklisting


1.  The Way I Feel
2.  Burning Bridges 
3.  Everlasting 
4.  The Second One
5.  The Colour Of Day
6.  Take A Message 
7.  I Met Your Mercy 
8.  Rocksteady 
9.  Liberate 
10. Looking Back On Vanity 
11. The Mind's Eye

 

 

http://www.remyshand.com

 

Freshman Artist: Remy Shand

"Fresh is an overused (and usually exaggerated) description of a lot of
new music, but sometimes, once in a while, it actually applies. Well,
fresh is definitely one way to describe Remy Shand's Motown debut album,
The Way I Feel. Remy, 23, recalls the masters of soul with an uncanny
authenticity that sometimes sounds as if he’d actually collaborated with
the icons of his childhood: in the lush, jazzy Stevie Wonder and Marvin
Gaye-influenced flow of the title track; in his loving evocation of
Memphis R&B in "The Colour of the Day" and "I Met Your Mercy," and in
the literate neo-classic soul vibe of "The Mind’s Eye" and "Looking Back
on Vanity." As a songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist and
self-producer, his work is at once accomplished and, yes, fresh; deeply
rooted, yet original. Here’s an artist who attacks the boundaries of
R&B, pop and alternative with his own timeless fusion, undeniable, as it
is unconventional.

"Everyone who’s fusing that old soul back into songwriting -- D’Angelo,
Erykah Badu, Maxwell, Shelby Lynne, Macy Gray -- that’s who I relate
to," Remy says. But his musical relations, so to speak, go a good deal
further back, and to call him "self-taught" is almost the whole truth.
He credits his musical education, in his hometown of Winnipeg, Canada,
to a crate of classic albums salvaged by his dad from a club his
construction crew was remodeling. Here, My Dear, Marvin Gaye’s searingly
honest chronicle of his divorce, became Remy’s favorite album and a
musical Bible: "I look at it as being taught by the masters -- the
geniuses will take you all the way." Albums like Ann Peebles’ I Can’t
Stand the Rain; the Isley Brothers’ 3+3; Marvin Gaye’s I Want You,
Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life and the works of Rufus, Sly
Stone and Steely Dan, among others, all became Remy’s sources as a
musician, songwriter and producer.

Home-schooled through tenth grade, Remy enrolled at the local high
school (mainly to play in the jazz band, whose teacher Remy would later
hire for a recording session) but left after just one year. "I wanted to
go back to home schooling but rules didn’t permit it. I promised my
parents I’d accomplish something in music, and they saw me put my head
down and really accelerate. So they supported me through it. My music
bills were as much as the mortgage on our house." He’d started on
acoustic guitar and bass around age 12, and his record collection
provided his benchmarks. "I listened to Stanley Clarke, and Jaco
Pastorius, to learn from the best -- not just learn pop cover tunes and
go out and play. Same thing with keyboards: I went to Herbie Hancock,
and when my mom brought me some Billy Preston albums, I was all over
them."

Remy started writing the songs that became The Way I Feel at 19. "I was
playing in experimental rock bands but no one else in Winnipeg wanted to
sing my kind of music." Album tracks like the Isleys-influenced
"Everlasting," the irresistible first single "Take a Message" and the
loping, coulda-been-an-Al-Green-hit "Rocksteady" were among his first
completed songs. "I wanted to get some feedback, so I put some songs on
a tape and a friend sent the tape to his brother, a manager in Toronto."
Out of the blue, Steve Warden, now Remy’s manager, called to assure him
that he could be signed to an artist deal in a year. "I said, 'Yeah,
right.'" But in just three months, two labels had offered development
deals. Remy took a deep breath and declined, choosing to press his luck
and insist on a contract to make a full album. Soon there were several
labels offering multi-album deals. Universal prevailed, signed Remy as
an album artist, and gave him all the time he needed to complete work
himself. In total, Remy worked on his album for four years recording and
mixing his album entirely at home in Winnipeg.

Remy only learned that Motown was a part of Universal after he got his
deal, and when his album was circulated at a company meeting in spring
of 2001, he was stunned and delighted to learn that Motown president/CEO
Kedar Massenburg was the first on the scene to pick up the album for the
U.S. market -- not only because of his deep identification with the
classic Motown, but because of the new era of the company, as well.
"He’s done such amazing things, totally against the grain, on behalf of
his artists right now. I’d been afraid to come out in the current
market, because this isn’t a hip-hop album, and I was wondering: Who’s
gonna help me do this? Then, it just clicked. This is what Kedar does --
with Erykah Badu, with India.Arie. I’m feeling confident about that
now."

Remy’s studio self-sufficiency -- obsessive to the point of "sickness,"
he laughs, had originally been a way to bring off the vintage vibe of
his tracks. But, he says, it now assures that "there’s no filter between
my ideas and the recorded medium. It took time to ease off (the
perfectionism of track-making) and let my own voice come through. I’m
taking my feelings and finding some spin, some humor. This record is
purely about relationships. I've pretty much covered my ups and downs of
the past four or five years, but 'The Way I Feel' really represents
where I’m at now, which is in a great place. There’s no fiction; it’s
all true stuff. One breakup drove a lot of the lyric writing." "Looking
Back on Vanity"articular, sports a killer line worthy of the smartest
indie screenwriter: "She was rich, but I was beautiful."

Remy hopes that album listeners will "put it on in the bedroom, put it
on in the car, and relate to it. I want to make them feel the magical
feeling that they do when they listen to Marvin and Stevie, and soul
music in general. That’s the reaction I had listening to them, and
that’s the reaction I wanted to project. It’s still just one percent of
what I can do -- I didn’t really get to the uptempo stuff yet, but for
this album, the topic is love. Basically, it’s four years of feelings."

When Remy says his album expresses The Way I Feel, you can take him at
his word. He’s ready to confound the conventional wisdom of the
industry, and write his own page, from the heart.