Remastered for vinyl by Dany Laj in commemoration of Stew’s 20th anniversary.
Multi-Gold selling and multi-JUNO Award nominated Canadian blues rockers Wide Mouth Mason announce the forthcoming 20th Anniversary reissue of Stew this November 27th, 2020 to be released as a limited edition LP by the band and their management, We Are Busy Bodies. The original album was released by Warner Music Canada and licensed to the band for the anniversary release.
“Stew was intentionally Wide Mouth Mason’s funkiest offspring,” original band member Shaun Verreault, along with Safwan Javed, recalls. “It showcased a specific subset of our musical influences, and was a mashup of musical styles passed through the filter of Wide Mouth Mason.”
“But it was also a case study for Wide Mouth Mason to better understand those musical styles,” Javed adds “We’d been listening to a lot of Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies, and the like. Meanwhile, our good friend Gordie (Johnson, Big Sugar), who produced it, was hipping us to bands like The Meters and The Gap Band. We dug in and deconstructed the component parts of records that were undeniably funky.”
Inspired by the tunes and arrangements on those records, Wide Mouth Mason honed in on the audio ingredients to utilize. “Drums that were punchy and taut, almost 808-like, the bass ran simultaneously through a bass amp, and a little guitar amp hanging on for dear life,” Verreault muses. “We made falsetto harmonies — almost like horn parts — a recurring theme, and broadened the sonic palette with some keyboard parts by Gordie, and a string section.”
“Though we’d plotted a defined sonic mission statement, there was a lot of room for happy accidents and spontaneous invention,” Javed says. “They were fun, funny, joyful sessions.”
Pre-Order the STEW Vinyl at: We Are Busy Bodies.