Used To
This track I recorded in 2018, when I had first moved to Lethbridge. The producer, Deez Waxx, is a guy I knew from years before that in Edmonton, and I had no idea he was living down here when I moved. He’s a great engineer, producer, and even emcee. He’s also a total audiophile, so he’s always upgrading gear and learning new techniques and plugins to use to get things sounding better and better. He’s done a lot of work for me and with me in the past few years and the sound just keeps advancing. This one was early. He came over and brought his mic and preamp, the names of which I can’t begin to remember, but I’m sure he would if you asked. I think we did a different song as well before this one, and then he played me this beat he had made recently. I decided to record this verse which I had written to one or two random beats that I can’t remember any more, over the course of probably a good half a year. I thought it worked nicely, so we put this together.
The cover art is a legend of a moniker, “The Colossus of Roads”. Monikers are a culture all in their own, but a basic description is that they are quick sketches that an artist would mark over and over on many cars over many years. There are a lot of them, and some people know a lot more than I do about the culture, but I know enough to know that Colossus of Roads has ridden a lot of distance on a lot of trains. As you can see in the video when it shows the original piece drawn in chalk marker on black construction paper, it was done by buz blurr, who has been drawing that pipe smoking cowboy on train cars since the 70’s. For the #FPG4Ever series of singles my intent has been to pay different visual artists, especially from the graffiti community, to draw quick sketches for each track, so when I saw that you can commission a Colossus of Roads moniker with whatever you want written below, I knew it would be a good match for a song where I’m talking about nostalgia of the past. You can check out his IG HERE.
The song itself is about a bunch of dumb risks that I once took. The bit about the check-stop was the scariest shit in my life. I remember we had left the spot where we’d picked up in small town interior BC, hit the highway and 20 minutes later pulled around a corner into parked cop cars and flashing lights stopping traffic in both lanes. Trunk full of stupidity. I was sure we’d been set up and were about to go to jail, but they must have been either looking for someone specific or looking for a certain vehicle, because they let us through after checking ID and registration. I think that’s still the only check-stop I’ve ever went through at 11 am, and I have no good explanation. What I know for sure is that was only one of many situations where I’m lucky to say I didn’t get arrested.
That reality is long in the past now. I’ve learned some lessons and made changes in my life, and encourage others to do the same. It’s not so long ago that I forget what it felt like. Not so long that I can’t at least find some sympathy for the people who are currently ducking prohibition laws, or the ones who failed to do so. It was a day I thought would never come when Trudeau legalized weed, and I think everyone who sold, and smoked, and normalized it for the decades prior to that decision had a big part to play in that eventual inevitability. Half of us were smoking it regularly anyway, how many lives were they going to ruin? How many more lives are they going to ruin now? The people who are still imprissoned while big business profits are made off legal weed sales need to be freed. Their charges need to be cleared.
While we’re at it, all the other drugs ought to be decriminalized and regulated so that people who decide to use it are able to know how much fentanyl they’re taking, and what other drugs they’re mixing with it. The war on drugs is long lost, drugs are everywhere, they just aren’t regulated. Safe supply saves lives. It’s past time for more harm reduction, more social programs, more supports, more treatment centers, more homeless shelters, more compassion. Less ineffective punitive measures.
