Andras Jones
&
Ford Pier
From ANDRAS JONES: I recently spent a week in Vancouver, BC recording episodes with three great Canadian songwriters; Sarah Wheeler, Geoff Berner and this week’s guest FORD PIER. Ford and I go way back into the last millenium when he was touring with Veda Hille and I was touring with my own band, The Previous, and booking lots of shows in Olympia for Veda and other Canadian acts. Ford isn’t just a sideman though. As you’ll hear in this episode, he is also and extremely original songwriter and performer, writing about things most people don’t even think, let alone write 3 minute songs, about.
The last time I was in Vancouver as a musician I was making a record called “All You Get” with Ford producing. It featured some of Vancouver’s best musicians of the day (among them Ford, Barry Mirochnick, Veda Hille, Peggy Lee, Keith Rose and Frazey Ford & Samantha Parton of The Be Good Tanyas). I think it was the best thing I ever put to tape which makes it kind of a mystery to those who have heard it that, after recording was completed, I abandoned the tracks for over a decade and a half. I’ve recently been working to make it available with the help of Marshall Thompson, Sheldon Gomberg & Erica from Baltimore and, being back in Vancouver and seeing so many of the folks I used to play music with there, I was forced to confront whatever it was that drove me to actively lose such a big part of myself for all this time
It’s a mystery to me too and I’ll be wrestling with it over the next three episodes as I do with my first question here about the alternate timeline that would have been if I had moved to Vancouver back in 2002.
Here’s a great article about Ford that came out the week we recorded this.
