Beautiful World

Lionel Lodge & Brother Bro

They were in bands together for years, a bass and drums duo. They were signed to BMG Canada and recorded many CDs together. And then Lionel moved to Europe in 1992 and since then they have both continued to write, record and perform only not together anymore. Beautiful World marks their first full CD together since The Corndogs recorded What The Hell Is Going On in 1991. The CD is a stark and some times spooky ride with the two brothers' keeping it to just two guitars (acoustic and electric) voices. Some of the songs rock and some sway. They set up in an old church in Southwestern Ontario with a stack of originals from both of their catalogues. The full sound of the church's acoustics resounds and reverberates while the brothers shimmy and churn, grind and growl their way through the 13 songs on this CD.

"It was deep in the heart of the Canadian winter when I arrived at the church. The serious cold and lots of snow. I stopped to wonder if I was crazy, then I realised that oh course I am and decided not to dwell on it. I was going to be there for two months, mostly alone, with Brodie coming by each day to record. In the downstairs area of the church there was a full two bedroom apartment for me to live in and upstairs was the big room, the 12 meter ceiling, the space. We set up with 6 microphones, some close on the source some giving distance to capture the room more. We had a lot of songs to go through, both of us had a bunch of new ones but also there were many older ones from each of our catalogues that we want to try. We decided to just play through them, to have our fun with them and then once we recorded them all we would decide which would make it to the CD. While recording we went by feel mostly, if we both agreed that it felt like a good take then we went on to the next song, if not then we'd play it again. We didn't listen back during the session, we didn't scrutinise, if it simply felt good then we noted that take and moved on. At the end we had enough recorded for 3 CDs, then I had the task of going through it all and picking the tracks that made up the CD, it wasn't easy getting it down to just one CD. On some of the sessions Louise, Brodie's wife, joined us to give some very lovely backing vocals, it wasn't planned as much as her being there and singing along. I think the real star of the CD is Zack the cat, his meow at the end of Village Of Stone is purr genius."