Canadian singer-songwriter Michael Cloud Duguay announces new label alongside the "experimental heartland totalism" of new LP "Succeeder"
SIDE A
1. Introduction
2. A Very Fine Start
3. Someone Else’s Blues
4. Port Hope
5. Emancipation!
6. Succeeder
[* FIRST SINGLE, OUT NOW]
SIDE B
7. Wonderwar pt. I
8. Wonderwar pt. II (Sacred Not Sacred)
9. Crabtree
10. Sorcerority
11. He/Hymn
All songs composed by MC Duguay except ‘Introduction’ composed by Erika Nininger + ‘Succeeder’ composed by Erika Nininger/ MC Duguay. All songs arranged by MC Duguay + Erika Nininger except ‘Wonderwar Pt. I’ arranged by MC Duguay/ Liam Cole/ Jason Mercer/ Teilhard Frost.
Michael Cloud Duguay – voice; accordion; field recordings; keyboards; piano on ‘Sorcerority’
Lumina Beaucage-Frost – spoken words on 'Succeeder', Bertokia – organ on ‘He/Hymn’, Myriam Bhouti – violin on ‘Port Hope’, Jonas Bonnetta– voice on 'Emancipation!', Liam Cole – drums; spoken words & field recording on ‘Port Hope’, Cormac Culkeen – voice, Andrew Frost– pedal steel guitar , Teilhard Frost – percussion; saxophones; flutes; harmonica; jaw harp; fiddle; recitation on ‘Sorcerority’; voice, Justin Hiscox – pocket synth; handbell; bass trombone; melodeon; voice, Jason Mercer – electric/upright/bowed bass; banjo; spoken words on 'Succeeder', Erika Nininger – piano; voice; field recordings on ‘Succeeder’, Justin Orok – acoustic + electric guitar on ‘Wonderwar Pts. I + II’, Ryan Perks– electric guitar, Dayna Pirso – voice on ‘Someone Else's Blues’, Brian Sanderson – hurdy-gurdy; pocket trumpet; flugelhorn; mellophone; sousaphone; pochette horn, Alex Unger – digital editing + re-mixing on ‘Sorcerority’.
Produced by Michael Cloud Duguay. Live session engineered by Amy Fort at All Saints’ Anglican Church, Peterborough, ON, in August 2021. Overdub sessions engineered by Jason Mercer at Neptune’s Machine, Wolfe Island, ON. Voices on 'Someone Else's Blues', 'Emancipation!', + 'He/Hymn' engineered by Jonas Bonnetta at Port William Sound, Mountain Grove, ON. Justin Orok guitar engineered by Thomas Upjohn, Toronto, ON. Mixed by Sandro Perri, Mastered by East End Mastering, Toronto, ON.
Cover photograph by Alex Bierk, Design by Benjamin Nelson + Alex Bierk
Since the early 2000's, the Canadian singer, composer and producer Michael Cloud Duguayhas been weaving his curious aural nest with stray bits plucked from country music, rock, traditional musics, electronic genres, folk and jazz of all stripes, spiritual music, and assorted experimentalisms. His approach has always been immediately recognizable and affable to the ears, but also strange and bewildering. Equally disarming has been the habitual candour with which he speaks about his struggles with mental health, addiction, and homelessness.
As such, at first blush the title of his forthcoming LP Succeeder might seem glib or self-effacing. In actual fact, it extends directly from his characteristic frankness. The record unabashedly celebrates where he came from and his future trajectory as well as his community. Fittingly, it also serves to announce Watch That Ends The Night, his new label alongside lauded Nova Scotian musician Andrew McKelvie (New Hermitage, Scions, Jerry Granelli).
Duguay cut his teeth as a member of several high-profile indie groups including the Burning Hell. Yet as a solo artist he had cultivated such momentum around his work that by the time his sweeping, aptly-titled debut album Heavy On The Glory (2012) surfaced, many regarded it as "long overdue." Following almost a decade of silence on account of his aforementioned health issues, Duguay returned in 2020 with a pair of EPs and his second album The Winter Of Our Discotheque which confronted its preceding period of instability head-on.
The process around his third release, Saint Maybe, began with considerable promise and even major label support, but after forced changes in personnel things became increasingly fraught and the album’s release was delayed by several years. Midway through the album's press cycle Duguay yanked the record out of circulation, frustrated with how distant it all felt from his initial intentions.
Thus Succeeder is an affirmation of working on one's own terms and with one's own resources. It's also a meditation on the subject of home—growing up, leaving and even returning. In fact, the gestation of the record culminated in Duguay moving back to his hometown of Peterborough, Ontario in May of 2023.
In some regards, the album continues to mine the sumptuous, expansive rootsiness of Duguay’s earlier albums, yet also gestures toward the more outward experimentation of several of his upcoming projects through its careful, yearning ambiences. The album's underlying creative process started in spring 2020 when Duguay concocted a songwriting exercise to stoke his creativity and occupy his mind under the duress of the pandemic. He set out to compose one piece of music about every house or institution he had ever lived in—anywhere he received mail or slept for more than 90 consecutive nights. Ultimately yielding upwards of fifty individual compositions, Duguay reflected on the resultant body of work and sharpened his focus looking at only the songs pertaining to his upbringing and time in and out of his hometown, which he had left around the time when his personal obstacles had become untenable. Given the subject matter of the collection, it became clear that recording it in Peterborough and enlisting a cast of local musicians that he knew from its community was the best way to present the material.
The nucleus of his new ensemble comprised a rhythm section of collaborators from the Kingston/Wolfe Island area where he was living during the album's initial phases. Duguay had been awarded Kingston, Ontario’s very first artist-in-residence position and used this opportunity to workshop the album’s material. Around them, he gathered a large group of performers that represented the entire spectrum of his Peterborough experience including old high school bandmates, musical heroes from his teenage years, and his best friend from University. He even included his first piano teacher George Bertok (aka Bertokia), as well as a musician that he had met at his very last show before the lockdowns, Erika Nininger, who plays piano and contributes compositions and arrangements to the record. The vocalist Cormac Culkeen, best known for their poignant work as half of Joyful Joyful, played a crucial role on the LP. "Cormac’s voice is a sound that I most closely associate with my adolescence in this community," notes Duguay of his longtime collaborator. In addition to offering their distinctive otherworldly singing on nearly every cut, Culkeen also coordinated the core sessions for the album at All Saints Anglican Church, where they are a member of the ministry team. Despite being primarily a product of lockdown-era necessity, these five days of live sessions with the nine-piece band captured in the church's sanctuary elegantly amplify the spiritual tenor that's long been a key feature of Duguay's music.
The varied background and instrumentation of the musicians involved also propels Duguay's vision—various credits include the likes of Esmerine, Ani Difranco, Utah Phillips, U.S. Girls, Bob Wiseman, Silver Hearts, Ron Sexsmith, John Southworth. Duguay's stated intention was to produce a sort of "experimental heartland totalism" as he calls it; an amalgam of sounds that recontextualizes aspects of Americana amidst more atmospheric and abstract elements.
For all the album's languid twang and rustic contemplation, it's worth noting that an acoustic guitar only appears on the album once for a mere five seconds and almost half of the material is instrumental. The sonic landscape is in fact populated by all manner of sounds—winds, brass, Duguay's own accordion, hurdy-gurdy, contrabass, fiddle, jaw harp and even disorienting flashes of electronic coloration. The robust auditory environment that he creates with these forces, as Duguay reveals, was designed to evoke "the nocturnal sounds of [his] coming of age in Peterborough: bar bands, rural fields, late-night kitchen parties, many voices joined in song” bathed in a sort of psychedelic nostalgia. And true to the record’s title, he succeeds in carving out this distinct and powerful emotional space.
Succeeder is the debut release for the new imprint Watch That Ends The Night, a joint endeavour between himself and award-winning Haligonian saxophonist, improviser and composer Andrew MacKelvie. The label specializes in documenting a distinctive DIY spirit of experimentalism across genres. Its diverse crop of projected releases will present several of Canada’s freshest musical thinkers, united by their staunch commitment to exploration whether through composition, execution or production. MacKelvie and Duguay met through mutual friends in 2019 when both were visiting Canada's Yukon Territory and subsequently developed a prolific collaborative partnership throughout the pandemic—first online, and then in real life through multiple recording projects and ensembles including Scions, Talismanic Episode Assembly, Many Worlds, and more. Watch That Ends The Night represents the outcome of both artists' extensive respective histories in community-building, arts curation, and creative music production, and rich collaborative history.
The label's artist-centred mandate includes aims to facilitate the production and release of new, creative, and singular music that might not have found a home elsewhere, help artists achieve what they wish for themselves and to find them an audience, and foster ongoing and immersive collaboration between label artists. They're also interested to participate within the marketplace, making both digital and physical copies of artists music eminently available, while also working well outside of the exploitative conventions that exist within the music industry.
"Simply put, The Winter of Our Discotheque is an uniquely indulgent album, and audibly the work of an idiosyncratic artist skillfully working out a decade’s worth of pent up creativity. In Michael’s patient and thoughtful hands, this sort of indulgence is a virtue... both boldly obscure and remarkably cohesive."
— Bringin' It Backwards, American Songwriter
"Yankee Swap has an anthemic feel, lifted by parping horns and a rousing refrain giving way to bells and sleigh-bells. Michael C. Duguay's track is a tale of the challenges of returning to a hometown - and dealing with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future."
— Ro Cemm, Line of Best Fit
"Duguay can’t help but express the utter joy of still being around to tell his story (“Handle With Care”) while acknowledging just how precarious day-to-day existence can be (“Ain’t Apathetic.”). It’s a slippery slope, hammered home by the fact that this album about how we all are one or two decisions away from disappearing has done just that."
— Jim Di Gioia, Favourite 50 of 2023, Dominionated
