Sadly, I was not blessed with the gift of a golden voice. But I was blessed with just enough vanity to sing my own songs. There are few things in life more fun than driving to a recording studio and singing into a microphone. Songs come from the heart, but singing into a microphone is just pure fun.
So far, I have done three albums, the first one called "Blue Lotus" done in 2002. Technically it's an EP (an extended play record) since there are only 6 songs. My favourite song is "I See The Sun in You".
The second album was a serious recording studio effort reflecting the desire to see how my songs would sound if they were professionally rendered (all save for the singing which I insisted on doing myself). All the songs were written over a 3 month period and recorded concurrently.
And finally, my 3rd album is my "Bucket List Covers 2025" which I hope will become an annual series of song favourites. Here are the details:
Bucket List Covers – Volume I
Produced by Ken Sproul and Josh McPhail
Engineered by Josh McPhail
Singing and playing: Ken Sproul
Cover songs except one song written by Ken Sproul (“Katherine’s Song”)
For the most part, the songs chosen are not necessarily sentimental favourites. Often, they are songs where I’ve simply said, ‘I wish I could sing that song or play that guitar part’. Frequently, the songs were chosen off-the-cuff.
1) Bad to Me: This was written by John Lennon in the very early Beatles days before they became famous. He gave it to Billy J. Kramer and with George Martin’s help it became a world hit. And I chose this song entirely because of the way Billy J. Kramer sang the first 4 lines acapella. I’ve always wished I could do that and sound as nice as he sounds.
2) If Not For You: Mostly chosen because I thought I could sing it. It’s also my first time playing slide guitar, which I wanted to do as a homage to George Harrison who also recorded this song. Slide guitar is a very cool sound.
3) Jennifer Juniper: I always preferred Donovan to Dylan. I think it was his capacity for whimsey that won me over.
4) Because: This Dave Clark 5 song was a song I just happened to hear one day on SiriusXM and decided to do it. A bit ballsy me choosing this one given my vocal limitations and the fact that this was a band sung song featuring the great lead vocalist, Mike Smith.
5) Fields of Gold: By the time, the Police came along and Sting’s solo career I wasn’t listening much to the new music but when we moved to Halifax we went to see him at the Scotia Bank Centre. He’s a favourite of my wife and I wanted to do this song for her.
6) Colours: Another Donovan song. Back in the day, this was pretty much the only song I felt I could sing. So, whenever I picked up the guitar, I did it. It’s in Eb; apparently that’s my key. Very few famous songs are sung in Eb, and guitarists find the key awkward. It took most of my life, and a bit more musical knowledge, to understand why I could rarely sing along with anything, stuck as I was in Eb. This is also my first song playing the harmonica.
For my version, I wanted to tie this song to my Katherine, my wife, so I re-wrote the last verse to tell her the feeling I had when I first met her at the airport in Toronto
7) We Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere: This was a Dylan hit covered by a number of bands including the Byrds. I rewrote most of the song, all except the chorus about “goin’ nowhere”. I wanted to message Katherine that I was looking forward to her pending return to Canada the following day, and the re-write allowed me to do that.
8) Guinivere: An example of Donovan’s capacity for whimsy, and yet somehow it captures something that feels stark and real. I changed one line from “Such is the silence o'er royal Camelot.” to “Such is the beauty of my Guinevere.”, a reference to Katherine.
9) I Don’t Hurt Anymore: A song from Nova Scotia native son, Hank Snow. I chose this song partly for my father who was a Hank Snow fan and partly because we now reside in Nova Scotia only a couple of hours from Hank’s ancestral home. Folks forget how big Hank was. Elvis Presley chose Tom Parker as his manager because Parker was already managing Snow's wildly successful career. Hank Williams was probably the biggest country star but I gotta love what Beatles’ Ringo Starr said recently. He was asked by an interviewer to talk about his love for American country music and Hank Williams, in particular, but Ringo responded, “I loved all the Hanks… Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Hank Lochlin.” Of course, Snow and Lochlin are Canadian. And while Hank Williams may have been the Elvis of country music, his famous “Your Cheatin’ Heart’ was #1 for 6 weeks while Snow’s “I Don’t Hurt Anymore” was #1 for a record-breaking 20 weeks.
10) Katherine’s Song: Not easy to write a song for my darling wife. She likes happy songs. And it’s not easy writing a happy song. Still, I’m happy with the result. It’s possibly the only song I’ve written where I feel I would not change one word. Of course, it helps that there are no filler verses and it’s just everything I wanted to say in barely a minute.
11) Jingle Bell Rock: Each year I do a Christmas song that I send to family and friends, students, colleagues, and clients. I don't usually post them here as I feel my voice is really not suited to Christmas songs, and if you think about it, it was usually the crooners who made the best Christmas song recordings. The first Christmas song I did was about 6 years ago and it was “Jingle Bell Rock”, my favourite Christmas song. This year, I’m taking a 2nd crack at it feeling that my singing and guitar have improved a bit, to say nothing of adding the harmonica.
