Heaven Sent

Hey everybody – welcome back!

Hope everyone enjoyed having a taste of the ‘Too Much‘ over the holidays and new year. We were initially a little bummed that we weren’t going to be able to put that tune on the album (legally anyway), but in the end we’re really happy to have been able to offer it for free. If you missed it, you can click the link at the bottom of this page to check out previous tunes of the month, or you can download it  here.

For our next tune, we had a couple friends request an older one of ours – Heaven Sent. It’s definitely one of the more aggressive ones in the songbook, but always fun to play to just the right (sweaty/inebriated) audience! (Don’t forget, you can download the tune for free – just click the arrow on the right hand side of the player, or click here!)

We recorded this version with our amazing friend, incredible person, and Telfer fan #1, Barry Seymour at a secret location somewhere a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away! We then touched up the vocals and did some guitar and keys overdubs (keys provided by Ian Mosher, the HRM’s grandmaster ivory-man) at the luxurious CodaPop studios. Doug and Tammy down at CodaPop have worked hard to create a beautiful studio – inspired, no doubt, by their own radiant personalities!

When the current ‘Halifax’ version of Telfer formed, there were already a handful of the old high-school-era tunes in the bag. The ‘Star Tannigs’, ‘Half Songs’, and ‘Fireflies’, were on the setlist, but we needed to work up new tunes. Tommy had been tooling around with the riff of Heaven Sent since he first moved to Saint John with Piper to work at the Phoenix Dinner Theatre, and it ended up being the first one on the chopping block. Our writing system tends to start with riffs, and Heaven Sent was the first victim to what is now our tradition! It was a really interesting coming together of a new band. We had a core riff to build from, and over the next couple of jams people would show up having worked out a chorus (Tommy) or a bridge (Bobby). It was a really exciting time for us, as we starting chomping away at our sound.

Since then, that formula tends to be our method for most of our songwriting. We’ll pound away at a riff we really like to play, and try to see if we can build a song around it. You can hear that approach in newer tunes like “Claws in Deep”, “Give It Back To You”, and “I Would If I Could” – and it all started with Heaven Sent. From the riff everyone brings arrangement ideas to table and we hammer it out. Sometimes democracy in a band can work slowly (we currently have almost a dozen tunes on the backburner!), but in the end it’s important that what is played is something all four of us can believe in.

It makes it alot easier to stand on stage in front of a crowd of strangers, playing music and bouncing around like a goofball if you’re doing it with friends who have got your back!

- Tommy, Jonny, Bobby, and Piper

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