Reviews "Edge of Day"

A year ago, the Mabou native started work on his new album, Edge of Day, in Nashville, which hits stores on Tuesday. But a few months later he found himself in the middle of an acclaimed Rankin Family reunion album and national tour with sisters Raylene, Cookie and Heather, plus niece Molly. And two weeks ago came the most important production of all, a new daughter with his wife Mia, with the musical name of Chloe.

"The two projects kind of overlapped," says Rankin of his studio work, taking a rare break at his Halifax home. "I was finishing this CD while trying to get material together for the Rankins record, and then I mastered mine in January. But the Rankin thing came together very quickly, from start to finish. It wasn’t even really supposed to be a record, but we kept gathering material for it. So essentially I made two records over the course of a few months.

"I’ve been doing nothing but making records and making babies . . . it’s time consuming! Where do you get the time to do all this stuff?"

The arrival of Chloe doubles the kid population in the Rankin household, where son James is now 20 months old, but as the member of a rather well-known and prolific family himself, the musician has more than an inkling of what he’s in for.

"It’s amazing, I highly recommend having kids," he affirms. "They don’t realize it, but they need a playmate, and they’re a good space of ages apart. I come from a family of 12; I can’t imagine being an only child.

"But now four seems like a big family, and here I am, I can’t imagine handling more than two."

As for his musical offspring, Edge of Day features 13 bouncing baby melodies, with Rankin’s mix of contemporary pop and folk getting an extra polish from Canadian producer/musician Colin Linden.

"It was really fun working with him, I’ve wanted to for a long time," says Rankin. "He’s one of those people you keep running into at events, and you start talking about music. He’s also a writer, which is nice for me as a songwriter. It’s a bonus, if you’re second-guessing something about a song, you can ask him what he thinks because he’s got experience in that department.

"He was great to bounce ideas off; if you’re not sure about the shape of a bridge, or the break in a song, or a lyric. And the band he assembled was really cool, which is his thing. He likes an organic approach to recording, he’s very rootsy."

Linden is known for a variety of projects, from working with Colin James to joining in the O Brother Where Art Thou? roots music phenomenon. Plus there’s his own solo work and his membership in Blackie and the Rodeo Kings which keep him in the limelight on the concert and festival circuit.

Preferring a simple approach for Rankin’s songs of love and loss, he assembled a top notch band of players and recorded most of Edge of Day live off the floor, trying to avoid overdubs and digital fixes. While in Nashville, Rankin got sister Cookie to provide sweet harmony on a handful of tracks, while Cape Breton’s Grammy winner and longtime friend and cohort Gordie Sampson plays guitar and sings on When I Rise and their collaboration Got to Leave Louisiana.

"We started writing the song before the hurricane, and it was kind of a gratuitous love song, and I didn’t think it really fit," Rankin recalls. "The melody was too good for the song to wind up a throwaway, so I rewrote the lyrics after meeting a lot of people who’d come up to Nashville after fleeing New Orleans.

"I got to experience the city before all that happened; the French Quarter, the bars and all the craziness, and what a grungy great place it was. But the song started then, and it went through all these incarnations, and then after the disaster it seemed to have a new purpose and found its way. Sometimes you just have to wait for them, y’know?"

Among the assembled players at the suburban Nashville hideaway studio known as the Rendering Plant were former Band and Janis Joplin keyboardist Richard Bell, bassist Dave Jacques from John Prine’s band, guitarist John Randall, whose gigs include Lyle Lovett and Emmylou Harris, and as an unplanned surprise, Willie Nelson’s harmonica player Mickey Raphael.

"He was just hanging out in the studio, just popped by to say ‘Hey, how you doing?’ so of course we asked him if he wanted to play on a song. He went out and got his harmonica and the next thing I know he’s playing on my song.

"He’s in his late 50s, but he looks like he’s 40, and he’s been with Willie for 35 years! And he’s a Jewish guy from Brooklyn playing harmonica in this Texas band. Great gig, how many harmonica players get a steady gig for over three decades?

"Nashville’s a great town like that, everybody’s there. Anne Murray’s drummer Gary Craig played on the record, I hadn’t seen him in years, and he’s a great drummer; you wouldn’t know how versatile he is from seeing him play with Anne."

Another special guest was bassist Garry Tallent, best known for providing the bottom groove for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, but also a busy producer and guest on records by the likes of Steve Earle, Steve Forbert and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.

"He was with Springsteen since the beginning, but now he lives in Nashville, and he’s just a nice guy," says Rankin. "Well-rounded in his interests, and really cool to play with. It took a while to get to know him, but he’s just this cool guy who comes to work, and is easy to shoot the breeze with, talk about wine and travel.

"Music too, of course, I get the impression he’s quite the record collector. It’s funny though, he’s in one of the biggest bands of all time, but he’d never get bothered walking down the street."

With the arrival of Edge of Day, the next step will be for Rankin to get back out on the road to perform the new songs for his fans, but with a new arrival on the homefront, he’s not scheduling shows for a few months yet. There’s still the afterglow of a rewarding coast-to-coast Rankin Family concert tour, the first since the band left the road in 1998 and also the first time he and his siblings have appeared under that billing following the death of brother John Morris in 2001.

"It was a blast to just get out there and play," he says. "Audiences were great from west to east, and you never know if people are going to turn out. It’s not like we’ve been out there actively keeping that thing alive, but it must have had some major impact on people because they came out in large numbers across the country.