Biography

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Official Video - A Thomson Day (YouTube)
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About Hourglass:
Murray McLauchlan is not one to rest on his laurels. Although he’s now in his sixth decade as a singer-songwriter, with shelves bursting with prizes including a prestigious Order of Canada and Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, the vigorous musician remains as creatively active as ever. Hourglass, his 20th studio album, finds McLauchlan still evolving artistically, crafting some of the best compositions in his long and celebrated career.

Hourglass bears many of the trademarks of other McLauchlan albums, including powerful folk and country flavored songs of a personal, philosophical and topical nature. But, this time around, the composer has refined his prose, distilling narratives down to their bare essentials. “I tried to make the compositions simple and accessible, like children’s songs for adults,” says McLauchlan. “I’ve never tried that before. I’m pushing 73 now and I still feel I’m getting better at what I do.” He adds: “Every album is a little different journey. You go where the muse leads
You.”

On his last album, 2017’s Love Can’t Tell Time, McLauchlan rediscovered the joy of playing guitar, learning new ways to express himself while fingerpicking on a vintage instrument. On top of that, he recorded live off the floor, using an old tube microphone. The result was a dazzling album of great warmth and clarity. Inspired by such advances, McLauchlan carried those exceptional musical and audio qualities over to his latest recording.

Much of Hourglass was written in the past year, during anxious Covid times of mask-wearing, social distancing and seemingly endless lockdowns. Yet, even though there’s one song on the recording called “Pandemic Blues,” McLauchlan doesn’t think of Hourglass as a pandemic album. “I’d hesitate to call it that,” he says, “because the album reflects a view of the world and global events that have been evolving for some time.” In particular, McLauchlan sets his sights on chronic issues like systemic racism, economic disparity and rampant consumerism, what he
calls in one song the “global greed machine.”

Every one of the album’s 10 songs began as poems, something McLauchlan admits has never happened before. “Normally, I sit down with a guitar and the words flow in conjunction with the music,” he says. “This time, I already had these poems and they evolved into songs as I found guitar licks and melodies that suited them.” “The One Percent,” inspired by the memory of 2011’s Occupy Wall Street movement, is an example of that. “When I first set that poem to music, I came up with a four-beat rock accompaniment. But it was a dirge, all preachy, and I hated it,” he says. “Then I remembered an old guitar lick I had sitting around and it suddenly turned the whole thing majestic.”

Political strife south of the border led McLauchlan to write “America,” in which he uses the metaphor of an estranged, dysfunctional family to paint a picture of a country deeply divided by political differences. For “I Live On a White Cloud (for George Floyd),” McLauchlan took a first-person approach to institutional racism where black people routinely die at the hands of police. “Cops all call me sir,” he sings, “don’t pin the blame on me.”

Explains McLauchlan: “With that song, I’m really looking at my life of privilege as a white man. Things are very different for me than they are for a lot of other people. I’m taking responsibility for that and saying, ‘I get it and I’m sorry.’” The album’s title track, meanwhile, is a cautionary tale about the blind and reckless pursuit of “bright and shiny stuff” that plagues the western world.

“Is it all about the money,” McLauchlan asks in the song, “don’t we ever have enough?” “Lying By the Sea (for Alan Kurdi)” was inspired by the heartbreaking case of a Syrian boy found washed up on a Turkish beach in 2015 but becomes a larger look at migrant tragedies in general. “The trick with writing songs about events set in a particular time,” says McLauchlan, “is to try and make them universal. That way, they live past that specific moment and come out as something more lasting.”

McLauchlan’s always been an insightful and idealistic songwriter. Think of his early streetwise portraits of the downtrodden and vulnerable, including “Honky Red” and “Shoeshine Workin’ Song,” or later classics like “Burned Out Car” and “No Change in Me.” The songs on Hourglass
represent the work of a mature songwriter who is no less compassionate in his senior years.

“When I was a young man in my 20s, I spent a lot of time raging against the machine,” admits McLauchlan. “I don’t rage anymore. I try to think about things. And I try not to compare apples and oranges.”

His philosophical side is evident on “A Thomson Day (for Tom Thomson),” in which he embraces the power of the outdoors while standing by a lake (“where wildness is king”), buffeted by a strong west wind and rolling waves. He contrasts the awe and wonder of that elemental moment with the realization of life’s ephemeral nature. “I may not be here forever,” he sings, “but I’m here today. That’s okay, it’s nature’s way.”

And McLauchlan’s underlying optimism is crystal clear on “Shining City on a Hill,” a gospel-tinged country number about the dream of a better life. “It makes me think of The Wizard of Oz,” says McLauchlan, “when Dorothy comes out of the forest on the yellow brick road and sees Oz
in the horizon—that’s your shining city on a hill. It’s a destination that probably can never be reached, but it’s something to aim for.”

While he’s still evolving artistically, the 11-time Juno Award winner who has authored a bestselling autobiography and hosted radio’s Swinging on a Star and TV’s Floating Over Canada remains highly productive creatively. A visual artist who works in acrylics and oils, McLauchlan is also a member of Lunch at Allen’s, the popular singer-songwriter supergroup, with whom he’s recorded four albums and tours regularly. And his charity work includes producing Voices That Care concerts for the Room 217 Foundation, which promotes music to alleviate those suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

So what’s next for the restless artist? He’d love to tour the songs on Hourglass with his studio band: keyboardist Vezi Tayyeb, steel player Burke Carroll, bassist Victor Bateman and drummer Al Cross. “I’m keen to get back to performing for audiences, both with my band and with Lunch
at Allen’s,” says McLauchlan, “pandemic permitting, of course.”