LESLEY PIKE
TUG OF WAR
A bio about: me
By: me
Seaside in Brighton, UK. It’s February, 2012 and i’m staring into endless blue having just heard the final mixes for my new album TUG OF WAR. I’m not sure if the tears streaming down my face are tears of relief, nerves, exhaustion, or joy. Probably all of the above. It took three tries, three rounds of producers, and three years to get this album from my heart to your ears. They say the third time’s a charm, and in this case I suppose they were right (times three!). I’d love to tell you the process was all roses and rainbows, but in truth it was the most challenging experience of my life. (And speaking of ‘they’‘, 'they’ also say I should get a fancy hired-gun bio writer to tell you all about it, but I figure who better to talk about my album than, well, me!)
Quick rewind before I get into the album. Several years ago, after graduating from Wilfrid Laurier University with a degree in Classical Music, I released a folk-pop album called ‘Blink’. I spent the next couple of years toting myself (and usually my lil’ dog Monkey) around North America and the UK, playing 400+ shows. I sang for 8 people in Castine, Maine, 15,000 people at Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre with Jason Mraz, and everything in between. I opened for a lot of really great artists (Darius Rucker, Three Dog Night, Cowboy Junkies, Justin Nozuka, Jeremy Fisher to name-drop a few), nearly fell into Lake Okanagan in front of a boat full of celebrities just before I was scheduled to sing for them, and got to sing for not one but two Presidents (ok, Presidents from the show ‘24’ - does that count?). Looking back, it was a time of extreme highs and lows, as often seems to be the case when one is taking risks and following a dream. And of course, it was all entirely worth it.
Many of the experiences from those adventures have found their way into this new album, TUG OF WAR, produced by Tim Glasgow (Metric, Sonic Youth), Juno winner Vincent Marcone (Johnny Hollow), and Yours Truly (that’s me). It’s a collection of 9 songs exploring human interaction on various levels and, as with all of my work, each song is inspired by an overwhelming feeling or emotion.
The thematic thread throughout the songs is DESIRE in all its fiery, primal and complicated glory. The opening track, I Go Wild, is an unabashedly lusty, sexy track, which leads into the mysterious, Leonard Cohen-esque lilt of The Great Unknown, a song exploring the relationship between pleasure/pain and risk/reward. White Lies (a co-write with Canadian songstress Emma-Lee and Karen Kosowski) is a quirky and impossibly catchy toe-tapper that pokes fun at the lies we so frequently tell ourselves, framed by a simple almost child-like whistling bit; an ironic juxtaposition to the lyrics (these little white lies, they’re keeping me alive / I don’t even have to try to tell these little white lies).
The title track, Tug of War, is the glue that binds these songs together, capturing the push/pull, back/forth thing that I think we all struggle with on various levels throughout our lives (push me, pull me, forward and back / this tug of war breeds heart attack / elevate me, sink me like a stone / love me big and then you leave me alone) and though initially sparked by a romance it quickly grew into a bigger song symbolizing the incredible struggle in getting this album finished.
Writing is basically how I process my experiences and what i've been witness to in this life. Weapon Down - an emotional recounting of a Toronto shooting I was witness to in the summer of 2011 - was one of the most challenging songs to write, and yet I felt it was most important to include. My plea to the shooter (what will it take to turn it all around / what will it take to put your weapon down / if it’s an eye for an eye then we’re blind / if it’s pain for pain we’ll never get out alive). Little Spark, an ‘80‘s infused upbeat song about a love that just won’t quit, was the biggest surprise on the album, born out of a version we tried of a different song and then it just found its own wings and took flight. The Longest Goodbye, a starkly honest ‘attempted goodbye’ song was recorded in one take live off the floor, and We Build Towers was written and recorded in one-take collaboratively with myself, Tim and Vince; a songwriting experiment unlike anything i’d tried before. Last but not least, of course, is Head Over Heels, our take on one of my favorite Tears for Fears songs, which started out as an ‘ice breaker’ and we felt it belonged.
So here it is, and now I send it into the world. Raw and intimate, the way it should be, complete with highs & lows, laughter & tears, the culmination of many years. I am so proud and excited to share it with you. I hope you like it.
