These CD's by Bob Egan are easily available on-line. Click the  The Promise or Bob Egan, S/T.    If you don't have a credit card simply e-mail us at contact@bobegan.com and we'll work something out.

The Promise is being distributed in Canada by Festival Distribution in Vancouver.

The Promise
- self-released spring 2002

Bob describes what the record is all about...

"While recording with the Tragically Hip at their Bathhouse studio (for Phantom Power) I decided that this was how I wanted to make a solo record - in a country house, off the clock, good food and totally relaxed with my friends. I was very taken by the vibe of their studio. It was warm and comfortable. It was a fun and a creative place.

Funny enough, three years later Greg Keelor from Blue Rodeo offered up his country home recording studio to make my new release "the Promise." In the winter of 2001 a handful of musicians moved in and we lived and hung out and worked together. It was a blast.

We recorded mainly live in the same room to a big old 8-track 1-inch tape machine. The beauty of it was we all knew there were only eight things we could put to tape so everyone played in a connected ensemble way. You can hear the room breath and the warmth of the tape.

It was an all-star, all-Canadian band. My right hand men were Bazil (from Blue Rodeo) and Travis (from the Sadies). Baz co-wrote the songs with me and Travis played guitar and mandolin. Richard Bell (Janis Joplin and the Band) was a god on piano and Hammond organ. The rhythm sections were great too - Baz and Maury LaFoy (the Supers) on bass, Cam Giroux (Luther Wright and the Wrongs), Stephen McGrath and Glenn Milchem (Blue Rodeo) on drums. For special guests we had the Be Good Tanyas singing and Lisa MacIssac on fiddle.

The songs deal with a certain range of life's experiences from lost love (Cold Wind, Honest Night), alienation (Disconnected, Chosen One) and death (Mystery of Love, When I'm Gone) to hope (Float Away), redemption (Starting Over) and the promise of new love (Mr. Moonlight, Country Girl and Just a Dream).

The sounds are pretty rootsy and Stones-like with Beggar's Banquet era acoustic guitars, slide guitars and mandolins and Sticky Fingers era piano, organ and riffin electric guitars. There is even a Baba O'Reilly meets Gallows Pole moment where the whole record careens to the edge of out of control with fiddles and feedback.

Bob Egan, S/T

MAKING MY DEBUT RECORD

OSLO, NORWAY

I began writing the songs for my first record while gigging in Oslo. My girlfriend, Kristin, persuaded a prominent Norwegian promoter that I was, in fact, more than just the steel player in Wilco, that I was a seasoned singer/songwriter. The next thing I knew I was in Oslo to perform several solo shows. The only problem was that I wasn't a seasoned singer/songwriter at all!

I spent a week at Kristin's kitchen table in her apartment in downtown Oslo with a guitar, a notebook, some ideas and plenty of coffee and smokes. In one week I would be performing in a Nashville-style "songwriters in the round" session in front of hundreds of Scandinavian fans and industry folks. Talk about pressure to deliver the goods!

I was able to focus because venturing out into the dark Norwegian winter was not at all appealing to me. Check this out - it would be pitch black until 10:30am then it would turn to a grey dusk until around 2:30pm, then back to black. And it was frigidly cold and everything was covered in a layer of powdery snow. Not at all my cup of tea! In fact, the only time I left the apartment was in the early evening to go to a quiet pub with my notebook to re-work lyrics. It was a very monk-like experience but in the end I wrote 5 songs that began my career as a singer/songwriter. These songs also made it onto my first record.

LEAVING WILCO

Months after my Oslo songwriter debut I was in Dublin with Wilco and Billy Bragg overdubbing my parts on the Mermaid Avenue record. It was understood that this would be my last hurrah with Wilco as they were moving away from music with the pedal steel and toward more keyboard based music (ala Summerteeth). Even though this was understood and we were all still very much friends, it was a bit sad. We were all exhausted and at the end of our ropes after two years of non-stop touring to support Being There. Spending a month away from home during a cold Dublin winter didn't help.

All this being said, Dublin was still a lot of fun. I mean, if you can't have fun there, you must be dead! We had the services of Nigel an amazing chef, we had the best pints of Guiness in the world, we got to record in some wonderful facilities including U2's studio and the resulting record was nominated for a Grammy. In addition to all that, my flatmate Jerry (the engineer on Mermaid Avenue) had recently returned from months in Cuba working on the Buena Vista Social Club record (my favorite record of the year!). We would sit up at the end of these long days, drink a cognac and have marvelous conversations about how that record was made.

LONG NIGHTS IN KINGSIZE

Upon returning to Chicago I officially left Wilco and needed to start my solo record in earnest. I had five songs from Oslo so I booked a couple of weeks at KingSize studio in Chicago. In the first few days we completed all the "bed tracks" with a band of musicians. The rest of the time was all mine to overdub guitars and vocals. These were very long, lonely nights in the studio - just me and the engineer and these new songs that I had to make presentable. I remember finishing up at 2 or 3 every morning and driving an hour out to the suburbs where I was staying, totally exhausted and wondering what in the hell this music career held for me next. It was both scary and exhilarating.

MISSISSIPPI

I needed desperately to finish my record (both writing and recording) and I knew that Chicago was not the place to do it. I needed someplace that was warm, that was cheap and that would be good for me creatively. I chose Oxford, Mississippi because our tour manager Daniel was from there and he recommended it highly. I found a three bedroom/two bathroom house on a huge tree-covered lot three blocks from the town square for $375/month. It fit the bill perfectly because I could play guitar and sing 24 hours a day without disturbing anyone.

Oxford itself was made for artists - a sleepy southern town of 10,000 locals and 10,000 student nestled on the edge of the Mississippi delta just and hour and a half south of Memphis and four hours north of New Orleans. It is the home of William Faulkner and many other southern authors of note and was in general, a hotbed of southern culture that embraced writers, musicians and artists. The people were incredible - accepting, supportive, generous and of full of that "southern mystery" and charm that northerners can only admire and never quite figure out.

I developed a pretty healthy work regimen of coffee and smokes on the picnic table in the backyard from whenever I got up until it got too hot to be outdoors. Then I would have lunch and head up to the town square where I would sit in the air-conditioned bookstore or café re-working lyrics in my notebook and drinking iced tea until the midday sun faded. Then dinner and whatever the night brought. Get up and do it again. I spent months in this routine until I had enough songs written to finish my record. Indeed, those endless summer days in Mississippi are among my most cherished times.

FINISHING THE RECORD

I chose to finish the record in Champaign, Illinois because there was great studio there that had very flexible financing. The recording all went smoothly but because I was so broke, I had to sleep on friend's floors and not eat a lot. Once again there was this feeling of both fear and excitement. Fear because I was broke and had no idea what to do next. Excitement because the record was coming together well and soon would be released to the world to launch my solo career.

WAKE UP CALL

I was pretty naïve about the music business. I assumed that because I had been a sideman in a very popular band that my genius would quickly be discovered and all my troubles would be over. Well…..it didn't happen that way. I was turned down by every label I approached. I was also turned down by every management company and booking agency I talked to. Clubs were not interested in booking me and musicians weren't that interested in playing with me unless I paid them well. I've never felt so rejected in my life. I was broke and living in Mississippi with a record that no one wanted. Brutal.

HUNKERING DOWN

It was obvious that I was going to have to "go it alone" and release this record by myself. It would be a struggle and a lot of hard work but it would also be an education. By doing it myself I would learn how this business works from the top to the bottom and that would be a valuable thing.

My spare bedroom became a "war room" with the walls covered with checklists and strategies and maps of the world. I called everyone I knew in the business and got lists of distributors and writers and clubs. On the average I spent 8 hours a day in there pounding the pavement. The net result one year later was that I had gotten press around the world, developed a small fan base and sold 3,000 records. I also caught the attention of other musicians who saw what I was doing. One of them was Bazil Donovan who led me to my current job with Blue Rodeo so all in all, it was time well spent.

THE SAVIOURS

The most beautiful thing about this whole process was those folks who came out of nowhere to help me in this quest. These were people that I did not know who listened to the record and felt compelled to help in any way they could. They helped sell records and offered me food and shelter. Most importantly they provided a psychological support structure that motivated me to continue pushing my first record. I wouldn't be here today without them.