All songs written by Derek Christie © SAC 2011, ® SOCAN 2011

Executive Producer: DC
Produced by Marc Ganetakos w/ DC
Recorded Toronto 2009-2011
Mixed by Denis Tougas
Mastered by Fedge
Photography and design by Jon James and DC


SECRETS 2011

Travelling roads that swerve from garage to gospel, roots to rock, lost to found… Secrets puts a stake in the ground and examines some uncomfortable yet everyday topics. The middle class, mid-life, crash and burn crisis is met with both compassion and disdain. The characters are lost in a snow globe haze... mostly deaf to those outside it, oblivious to the suffering, confused by the rage. Yet they also evoke sympathy - they are just as lost as everybody else. Loss, being lost, and trying to find your way through it all, these are all themes that permeate the lives of the characters that inhabit the songs on Secrets.

Based in Richmond Hill for the past 10 years, living a typical family/mortgage/day job existence, Christie has drawn upon the everyday lives of those around him on Secrets: their struggles, their questions, their journeys. At this stage in life, as he observed a number of friends going off the rails, he felt it was time to pronounce and process the mid-life crisis era with celebration and defiance. Produced by guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Marc Ganetakos (Nelly Furtado, Madison Violet), the album is populated by a myriad of guest talent in addition to the core band which consists of: Ganetakos, Jon James on bass (Jay Sparrow, Yiannis Kapoulis), Richard Allen Brown (Edwin) on drums and Rob Cooper (The Kings, Harem Scarem) on keyboards.

We begin with the police kicking open the door as guest drummer Brian Dunne (Hall and Oates) almost puts a hole in the snare drum. As they enter the premises, a father sits at the kitchen table reflecting through the fog of addiction on a marriage failed, the money gone, his future in question. The daughter calls home in the chorus to let the mother know Daddy’s Burned Something Again… In The Kitchen. But regardless of the bleak circumstances, there is hope before the second chorus:

“There’s nothing left to pawn/but I’m beating off all the sharks/’til I learned God’s the one you call/when you really need to borrow”.

We then stumble abruptly into the lobby of the Winnebago Graveyard Motel, a meeting place for the displaced, a symbol of unsuccessful intimacy and alienation on a dead-end street accessed by the off-ramp….

‘Where dreams come to die/or maybe just fall asleep/A lot of road’s gone by/and we’re checking in again’.

The mid (and likely) turning point comes in Prodigal Son, a first person plea from the father’s point of view, based on the biblical parable. The foundational tenet of Christian faith - unconditional love – is the underlying theme which now begins to tip the balance in the journey from darkness to light.

We then veer off into less personal and more world-level issues with Broken Code (written the day the US invaded Iraq) and The Lie Machine in which:

'The Chairman of the Board of the Lie Machine', arrested and 'spread eagled on the hood of a late model Ford', as the progenitor of WW4 which 'can be an easy sell, if the positioning is right'.

A pause for reflection with Golden One, then the journey to redemption and healing begins with the gospel/blues tinged Bring It On where we are urged to:

‘Bring out every dream or plan you’ve ever made/if you’re sick of standing still’.

Sharon Riley and members of her Faith Chorale lift up the choruses, while the saxophone solo at the end by Robert Martin (Etta James, Frank Zappa) evokes a scene where a door opens, she brings you in and kisses you gently on the forehead after you have been walking through a snowstorm for 24 hours. The album ends on an up note as Lisa MacIsaac (Madison Violet) guesting on fiddle and vocalist Laurelle Augustyn on harmonies bring a tender magic to the Celtic flavoured Let Love Lift You Up.

In this sound-bite download era where many contemporary music releases tend not to have a cohesive story woven together through song, the intention was to make ‘Secrets’ an album, to be played from beginning to end. ‘Secrets’ meets the objective.