Once upon a time, Michael Dunn was a 'long haired git' playing guitar in the Vancouver bar scene. A shift into the world of recording studios as a trainee engineer at Vancouver's famed Mushroom Studios introduced him to many of Canada's top recording artists of the day including Trooper, Prism, Chilliwack and more. Late night recording sessions that ended after the buses stopped running saw him driving a young lad from North Vancouver home each night after sessions. (We understand that Bryan Adams did quite well with his musical pursuits).
A standout event was working on sessions with a certain Ringo Starr and his buddy Harry Nilsson.
Fast forward to 2016: as part of an initiative to revitalize the downtown core of his hometown, New Westminster, Michael started producing concerts at the historic Columbia Theatre. Though limited in number, every show was very well received.
The plan for 2020 was to greatly ramp up the number of shows produced but then... well, this thing call Covid...
Having had numerous conversations with acts both locally and overseas (as well as diehard music fans on a global basis), he heard the same issues over and over:
- Bands struggling to grow their audiences to the point where they could at least pay the rent.
- Fans disinterested in the majority of content hitting their ears via mainstream sources and simply not having the time to sift through the tsunami of music getting released to find "good stuff". Older fans, in particular, resigning themselves to just listening to the stuff they grew up with over and over.
It was his desire to tackle these issues that was, ultimately, the motivation to finally produce his own album so he could use himself as a guinea pig to test ideas he had about how to create a sustainable career in music for independent artists.