Toronto-Based Psychedelic Folk Rocker Gary Edward Allen Reflects on Faith in Confusing Times in New Single “Understood”
Sometimes when you’re in the heat and tumult of living, it’s hard to know exactly what a particular time of your life might mean. Toronto-based folk rocker Gary Edward Allen captures the beauty and confusion of youth in his warm, reflective new single “Understood.”
Featuring the very steel guitar used on Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” Allen’s “Understood” is jangly, melancholy, and journeying through the years. The song begins with a beautiful walk home, one that the narrator can still see vividly in his mind’s eye:
The trees they dance and sway
The traffic rolls by
We live in complicated times
From the floor of an old friends house
…pictures hanging upside down
When writing the lyrics, Allen flipped through his old diaries, settling on a time in 1993 when he had just moved to Halifax as a young man in his 20s.
“I still have a memory of walking those streets near my apartment, no street lights in a lot of the city so it’s very dark and lonely,” Allen recalls. “The lyric ‘the pictures hanging upside down, halfway from me to the ground…’ is also such a strong memory. It’s about arriving in Halifax and sleeping on a friend’s floor, staring up at the pictures on the wall. Feeling lost in the world, in a new city. Scared but excited.”
Never mind what you fear
The signs they are so clear
And I know what I know….
The seasons change and so do I
Still livin’ large behind these eyes
The song is philosophical, about the ways in which we change – and also don’t change – as human beings.
“It’s about just watching time roll by and trying to remain true to what you believe in, in the things that bring you joy, in the things that make you YOU,” Allen muses. “That’s a constant thing in life, not just specific to that time. Ultimately, ‘Understood’ is about having faith in confusing times.”
Most of the song was recorded in one session with industry veteran Tim Bovaconti, who has worked with Burton Cummings, Leonard Cohen, Ron Sexsmith, and more.
“Initially, it was just two tracks of acoustic guitar and me singing. Tim put some piano on after the first verse and then added a track of pedal steel guitar,” Allen explains. “Tim owns the actual pedal steel guitar used on Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’, played by Pee Wee Charles.”
It made for a very appropriate tribute.
“Gordon Lightfoot passed away the week we were set to record ‘Understood,’ so it seemed fitting for Tim to use it,” Allen continued. “Tim is a pro. His pedal steel track is the first and only take he did. He just nailed it immediately and it really makes the song.”
The track also features Mishka Gogitidze on bass and Andrea Ciacco on drums.
Allen started playing guitar at seven years old before falling in love with it as a teenager after listening to Queen and KISS. After a brief stint in a music class, he taught himself different guitar-playing styles using his love of different music genres. By his early 20s, he gradually overcame his performance shyness by playing live in Ottawa at various clubs.
After moving to Vancouver in the mid-’90s, Allen took a hiatus from performing live but never stopped playing the guitar and singing. When Allen entered his 40s, he decided to return to performing music after meeting indie artist Robb Hill. Not long afterward, he would record his first songs with producer Doug Fury before meeting AJ Ottaway and John Dean and recording their debut album Ottaway Broder Allen. This would lead to a local tour in Vancouver as well as a second album, Invictus, that was made and released in 2015.
Sometime after Allen moved from Vancouver to Toronto and met his partner Tara (also from Ottawa, but as fate would have it, they didn’t meet while in the city), the band called it quits. By 2017, Allen would become a solo artist that collaborated with his former bandmate AJ mixing new songs and recording with producer Tim Bovaconti.
Watch the video for “Understood” below and learn more about Gary via our mini-interview.
You’ve been here before, and welcome back! How’s the summer been for you so far?
Thank you for having me happy to talk to you again.
Oh, it’s been phenomenal. Once I get even a bit warm I’m biking everywhere I can, I can’t get enough of it hahaha…
I flew out to BC for a week in June, visiting some old friends and playing Slocan.live Festival.
That was a lot of fun.
My wife and I went to the Pink Floyd Exhibition here in Toronto, that was nice.
Seeing all the guitars and gear they used was impressive, and the artwork, everything.
I started a band as well, Lon Chaney Movie, and we did our first show at Linsmore Tavern in July.
Packed house, and a great crowd.
A lot of fun.
Tell us about the process of writing and recording “Understood “?
I wrote Understood in December 2022.
I had the 2 chords kind of ringing in my head for a year at least before I got around to writing a song to it.
One night I felt inspired and leafed through an old journal and found a few lines and all the lyrics just fell out of me within a few minutes.
I was thinking about my brief time living in Halifax, feeling young and confused but still hopeful about life.
The song is about learning how to stay true to yourself even when you feel completely lost in the world.
At first, it was an awkward song to sing; the lyric starts sort of between the 3rd and 4th beat of the bar, and it took me a while to get it sounding natural.
I got it together and started singing it at my shows, people responded well to it so I booked some studio time with Tim Bovaconti.
The week before we were set to record it Gordon Lightfoot passed away; Tim happens to own the actual pedal steel guitar used on those old classic Lightfoot albums so it seemed fitting to get Tim to use it on “Understood “.
We did the entire song in one 3-hour session; the singing, 2 tracks of my acoustic guitar and Tim playing pedal steel and piano.
Then AJ Ottaway helped me find bassist Mishka Gogitidze and drummer Andrea Ciacco.
I don’t like telling people what to play, I want them to find the magic on their own, and they did.
AJ mixed and mastered and voila, all done!
What took you a long time to understand about life?
That it’s ok to not have a clue what you’re doing hahaha, that it’s ok to feel out of step with society because society can feel very messed up and intimidating.
The Subtle art of not giving a damn.
Let other people play along with the games.
Let it go.
What will you never understand?
The meanness some people have.
Society is divided along so many lines and it’s like once people pick a side they can’t see the other side as human anymore.
It’s about how much you can cut another person down just because they have different views than you do.
Social media is a big part of why it’s like this.
Everyone is a keyboard warrior and thinks they’re smarter than everyone else.
What’s the one album we’d be surprised that you have in your collection?
“Well I’m not someone who believes in “guilty pleasures” hahaha, I think we should enjoy what we enjoy.
But the record that comes to mind is Miles Davis live at the Fillmore West in 1970.
I am not a big jazz guy; I can appreciate it but give me Triumph or Aerosmith, I’m a rock guy for sure.
But a friend of mine and I were out buying cd’s, this would be 2002 or so, and he bought that Miles Davis album and I thought to myself “Oh man the last thing I want to do is listen to 2 hours of jazz… ” and then within literally 40 seconds of it playing Miles played a run on his trumpet that was so amazing, it made so much of the crazy guitar stuff I love make sense.
I could hear Allan Holldsworth, Joe Satriani, all that stuff that I loved, I knew at that moment that Miles Davis influenced everyone who came after him and it gave me a deep appreciation for his music.
I went out and bought my own copy the next day and tried to learn all the crazy trumpet lines on my guitar.
Miles Davis is a God.