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Out of sorrow, entire worlds have been built
Out of longing, great wonders have been willed

– Nick Cave, Are You The One That I’ve Been Waiting For

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair

-Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

With summer’s end approaching, the Khalil Gibran quote above is fitting. I’m rereading Gibran’s The Prophet, a well-worn standby. No one else comes close to putting divinity and unspeakable beauty into words. I’ve spent countless hours this summer barefoot in the grass at the local park. Much of that time has been spent singing for the people. Much of it has been spent writing & reading, and much of it spent starfished and gazing up at the sky and trees. These have been this summer’s meditation.

Each year, I always feel a sense of back to school energy. It’s a time of renewed focus and creativity. This has been a season of retreat, healing and (some) relaxation. Fall is a welcome one this year. I’m excited to be working on new music and keeping the Stereophile flames fanned. I’m writing today to share Dark Horse, one of the tracks from the record and book.

The oldest song on Stereophile, Dark Horse was written years ago, while house-sitting. The words and music started to come to me while sitting amongst piles of bird shit. Say what? It’s true. I was housesitting for a wonderfully eccentric, elderly neighbour, Nancy. She’d been an opera singer in Ireland in her youth. She married a U of T prof and they spent many happy years together before his passing. Nancy, in her later years, kept birds. Not wanting them to be stuck in a cage, she let them fly free about the house. They shat everywhere. She was happy to let sleeping turds lie. There was no shortage of crusty droppings lying here and there.

From these avian-based beginnings came Dark Horse. I’ve been working with depression all my life. At the time the song was written, I was particularly aware that a sensitive being, one prone to chemical imbalance, is also often one that’s very aware and insightful. While the lens we see life through can cause difficulty and be sometimes very messy and devastating (to us and those around us), it’s also something very special. It allows us to see and feel deeply. Nick Cave’s line in today’s first quote always hit me. Pain and longing, when brought forth, have willed great wonders.

Dear Subscribers: If you’re reading this via the email drop, the Soundcloud player doesn’t appear in your email. Click here to listen to the song: Dark Horse

As the years went by and Dark Horse stuck around, it began to take on new meaning. I’m close to someone with a number of different neurodiversities. I see a great awareness, insight and creativity in them. These traits are not limited to those of us who have experienced depression. So many of us with cognitive and emotional challenges look to art to allow us to process. To come back. Our sensitive natures often result in us feeling diminished by the heaviness of the world. Not just its obvious atrocities, but the ever growing isolation we’re feeling, and the general direction of disregard in which the speed of life is taking us. I’ve recently read, in don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, that we’re all, as he puts it, living in hell. This hell is based on all the societal and familial agreements we’ve made with ourselves, those that beat the wild bits out of us, with an aim at domestication and burying our true nature. I don’t disagree. We’re in the throes of global human tribulation. Our masks are suffocating us and very few among us have found the means to shed our personas and all that we’ve learned, to go with an open, authentic heart.

The chorus lyrics in Dark Horse:

Don’t you know you’re not alone
I want you to know you’re not alone

While I’ve always been happy with the song’s verses, the chorus lines are crucial to keep in our hearts and minds. When we’re down in the dark hole of anxiety/depression/ADHD/OCD/basic human sadness, etc., and it feels like there’s no way out, they’re a reminder that we are not the first or the last to feel this way. Reconnection is always available, if we can find the wherewithal to drop our false notion of feeling like a burden and reach out. These words have for me more recently been a much needed reminder of our interconnectedness. We are not alone. Each of us is made of the same light, separated at birth and finding our way through this strange and beautiful place, so often feeling solo, when we are anything but.

Interestingly, for all the years Dark Horse has been around, I’ve never until now recorded it and have never performed it live. I’d like to record a simple live video version of it here at home. Maybe in the fall. It’ll land in the live set at some point. This year has been quiet on the gig front and, for the first time in decades, I’m happy and comfortable saying that. That said, I’m feeling a bit itchy. We’ll see what autumn brings.

May we all find our way back home. Back to ourselves and each other, and the love that waits patiently, with open arms, for our return.

As always, thanks for reading. Enjoy the track…

K.xo

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Hi Friends. Hope you’re all well and warm. At long last, Stereophile is done!!! Please have a listen to the audio below. Also on this page are the credits and story that unfolded while making the record and book. Buy links are below the player. Hope ya dig…

Purchase your copy via PayPal or eTransfer me at kdub@kelvinwetherell.com
It’s $20 for your digital download of the record and physical copy of the book
Canadian residents buying in person (at shows, etc.) please add $2.60 for tax. Total $22.60.
Online purchases are $1.75 to ship anywhere in Canada. Total w/tax and shipping $24.60.
Global shipping fees to be determined according to distance and packaging requirements
Once you’ve placed your order, please email us, along with your address, at kdub@kelvinwetherell.com and we’ll send you your copy of the book. A download link to the record will be sent to your email address.

If you live in Toronto, I might be able to hand deliver the book and give you a hug. It depends on where you live, or if you like hugs.

Thanks so much for your support!

Credits
Kelvin Wetherell – Vox, Acoustic Guitar, Les Paul, Bass, Piano, Organ, Drums, Percussion, String/Vocal Arrangements
Howard Ayee – Bass on Grip The Raven and Dark Horse
Kaleb Hikele – Piano on Kinder Things

Produced, Recorded and Mixed by Kelvin Wetherell
Acoustic Guitars recorded by Kaleb Hikele at The Townhouse
Mastered by Howard Ayee

All Songs Written, Composed and Arranged by Kelvin Wetherell Copyright 2025

The Stereophile Story
On an unseasonably cold and grey day at the end of April, 2022, I pulled round the last corner of an east end townhouse complex, checking each address and looking for the mailbox with the music stickers plastered all over it. After successful location, with acoustic guitar in hand, I knocked. Greeted by friend/studio owner (and fabulous singer/songwriter!) Kaleb Hikele, we navigated the barking of his dear doggo, Bear, and headed down to the basement to get to work. The idea was to record five of my songs with just my acoustic. I didn’t know at the time what the heck I was going to do with them. There was certainly no idea that they’d become part of an eight song, full length record and book. Over two days we succeeded in tracking five songs. I was down with most of what I played, then, in the true fashion of (usually unneeded) songster angst, I thought everything was shite. I needed a break from what I’d tracked.

Enter the studio upgrades. I’d just been turned on to the world of plug ins (digital instruments, recording hardware, etc.). I’d been recording at home for years. My beater of a laptop, eight years old at the time, therefore prehistoric in terms of technology, couldn’t handle the new oomph I was throwing at it. I’d recently reconnected with my old mate, Howard Ayee, who’d produced on of my records back in 2009. It was great to reconnect with him. He’s responsible for my new plug-in-fanboy-geek-out status. He was forever dangling the many new carrots that make modern recording truly awesome. I bought everything he sent me. I also bought a new laptop, which, after six months of agony trying to figure out why it wasn’t recording properly, made me so irate that I shelved the recording for months and spent the summer barefoot and busking at Jimmie Simpson Park here in Toronto. I returned the craptop and swapped it out for a new one. I got it set up and was off again…

I spent 2023 recording in bits, whenever energy or will permitted. Some of my peeps reading this are already aware of my chronic struggles. I’ve been living the effects of a botched hip surgery and was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in early 2023. At the end of that summer, I tore the medial meniscus in my knee and could hardly walk. My personal stars were not aligned and it felt like the universe was giving me the boots over and over. Still, we persist. I kept going, working my day gig and being a present, single Dad and solo householder. I kept up with my live playing and preparation, always wanting to keep my pickin’ and singin’ chops in shape, or “match fit”, as Jimmy Page calls it. 2023 was a great year for gigs. I played a bunch of out of town stuff and made some great friends. I was not much concerned that the progress of the record was not swiftly moving. In November, I decided to start creating the book that would accompany the record.

The written part of Stereophile, affectionately known as Booky, is a collection of lyrics and images that my daughter, Ava, and I created. The first drafts were created in a free, Word-light type program. My old friend, Alexis Campbell, recommended moving the creation of the book over to InDesign. I did so. She also let me use her Adobe suite, without which I couldn’t have made the book. I then spent many days wanting to fire my laptop through the sliding glass doors that lead out to our back garden. Anyone who’s used Adobe in the past can attest to how frustrating their proprietary, weird-ass way of doing things can be. Still, we persist. No laptops were harmed in the making of the book or record. Bit by bit, I was making progress. Through days of pain sometimes so severe I couldn’t think straight, the record and book were happening!

Sleep, eat, parent, work, parent, record, rehearse, repeat. So it went for the next year. The sonic elements of the record were the easy part. I’ve made many records and written many songs. Writing and designing the book were new, as was working with the plugins. These were steep learning curves, happening while I was in full creative singer/songwriter/arranger/producer mode. I loved building the colours around the acoustic spines of the tracks. I worked extensively with strings and choral vocal arrangements, as well as digging in and creating unique sounds out of whatever was available to me, digitally and otherwise. The parts came fluidly. If an idea wasn’t cooking, it was scrapped. I didn’t wrestle with stuff not working. Usually, the parts sang themselves in my head. It was a matter of extracting them and finding the right sound, the one that fit with the track.

Also new to me was mixing a full length record. I’d released a few singles during the pandemic years and beyond. Mixing a full record is a different beast. Another learning curve. I mixed as I went. There was little to do when the tracking was done. I tweaked a few of the acoustic guitars and made some small changes. It was then time to master.

With Howard on board to master the record, we set to work finding the right chain of gear to put the final stitches into the Frankenstein. It was a looooooooooooooooooooong process. I’d always left mastering to others. I was fully involved this time. It meant going back to the songs and massaging the vocals deeper into the sonic landscape of the arrangements. I also had to tweak some of the levels on the instruments to sit better in the tracks. We wrapped the mastering and the end result is a beautiful sounding record. When I was able to take myself out of the recording and listen as just listener and not creator, I was touched. It felt like the singer was in the room with me. The sonic wormhole surrounding the vocals were what I had first envisioned. That coming to pass was a feather in my cap. While mastering, I was working concurrently on finishing the book and getting it printed.

The design of the book was going amazingly. I added a dedication, table of contents, afterword, all the things to make it feel like a proper book. The printing then became an epic situation, due to a ghost in the machine. The first run of books did not look like the proof I signed off on. Something happened in cyberspace that made one of the images look wacky. This required another few weeks of back and forth with printer and Alexis, figuring out what the issue was. It was mad. Finally, out of the murky mist, the final proof was good and off to print we went. I received the first run of books in the middle of February of 2025, which is the same month I’m writing this. With the book and record done, here I am, getting it set up for all of you to read and hear.

The creation of the book was important to me. As I mention in the afterword, I wanted you to have something to hold. Something tactile and real, to compliment and help heal the disconnect of all our modern digital trappings. As a kid I used to love pouring over an album’s liner notes, reading all the details about what went into making it; the names of the band members, the lyrics, the artwork, where it was recorded, and the little tidbits of random info that made you feel like you were on the inside of something.

So, here we are. A new record that I never thought I’d make. My first book, the first of many, I hope. Against the odds, with the help and support of dear family and friends, these creations happened. In hindsight I’m aware of the Herculean effort that went into completing this phase of my artistic life. There were days I wanted to die, not because of any garden variety artistic crisis, but because living with intense chronic pain, along with prolonged use of pharmaceutical painkillers, have a way of taking their toll on a body and being. It’s hard to stay ahead of the black dogs of depression when sitting still hurts. Still, we persist. I made it. It was no small feat. The record and book are beautiful. I hope the songs on the record hit you. Here’s to creativity and connection.


K. xo

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“Fak, these blankets smell nasty.”

– Me

I bunked off work early yesterday with much excitement. Last week I’d tracked vocals for Tattoo, the last song I need to add anything to. It was a bust. The intro is the most sensitive as far as needing quiet to record. The recording of vox and acoustic guitar for this record have been anything but quiet. We live only feet away from the streetcar and main street traffic ripping by, to say nothing of the orange men on the DeGrassi Street train bridge, whacking away at the the Ontario Line all hours of the day. I was able to make the rest of the vocal tracks happen, along with traffic noise and life sometimes audible on the vocal tracks, but Tattoo needed some real quiet.

I moved my vocal mic into the anteroom outside of our bathroom and reran the studio leads accordingly. I then headed off to Canadian Tire and picked up some moving blankets, at a friend’s recommendation, to help buffer the noise. I got home and excitedly hung the blankets and got my MacGyver vocal booth cooking. I noticed that the blankets were a bit stinky. I thought it was because they were just out of the package. After a special afternoon visit from a friend, I had some dins, went for my usual night walk around the east end and arrived back home, not sure if I’d record then, or spend the night kicking back and wait until today, when I was fresh with Saturday’s promise, to lay this final track down. The latter won. With the lights down low, I went slack and took in all the proper British crime drama that my inert, self-flagellating self could handle.

I woke this morning with my lungs and sinuses on fire. Our place is not that big and is open concept. The whole place bore the funky smell of yesterday’s newly opened blankets. I checked the material label for contents. Turns out some sod thought it was a good idea to put propylene in the blankets. I’d heard of this chemical before, but didn’t know much about it. Turns out it’s shite and should not be huffed in. Small wonder, on the heels of lifelong asthma and two recent, back to back respiratory infections, that I felt like crap after sleeping with these olfactorily strange bedfellows.

A quick shower and some brekkie, then off to return the offenders. I’m at the local now, having a coffee and feeling good about getting the Tattoo vox done. I’ll go old school and hang up some blankets and go for it. When the recording is done, I’m planning some studio upgrades. I’ll add the acoustic treatment to the list and get something dope cooking for future vox and acoustic geetar recordings. It’ll be crucial, as I’m planning for the next round of recordings to be live, off the floor solo voice and acoustic.

In the meantime, I’d like to share the premaster of The Pass, which is the first track on the record. Some of you have already heard it and have been in touch with your praise, which makes it all worth it for me. Thanks so much for that.

Hope ya dig.

The Pass

K. xo