If it seemed like I checked out for a while, there, well, yes.

After a few years of touring, I got sick of being Kev Corbett, Solo Acoustic Songwriter. I toured my last record as hard as I could, and then I was: just done.

I took sideguy gigs, I started learning carpentry (which I’d always wanted for myself), waited for songs to come. They always seem to. People came into my life, and went from my life. This site got hacked to bits and I didn’t know what to do about it, so I waited. The only one feeling it was me. (It’s being gradually rescued by my pal Graham Lindsey, whom you should totally hire for your forensic webdudery.)

Until Shandra MacNeil came along.

Shandra runs the Brandon Folk, Music and Art Festival. She had been watching from afar, and wrote to ask if I’d be interested in coming out to play, based almost solely on my politics on Facebook, which was the fire I needed lit under me to rejoin the world. I had no plan, some half-finished songs, no money, and not a lot of wind in my sails. Nonetheless, I worked, and saved, and chose my pal Jason Mingo to produce this thing. I knew, more than anything else, was that I would rather shoot myself in the face than make a record that sounded exactly like my last.

I’ve been a drummer for 33 years: there would be drums. I have a stellar, highly customized Gibson Les Paul and an amazing mid-80s J-series Telecaster: there would be electric guitars. There would be choruses, and the songs would be more succinct. I needed to get out of habitual forms (generally: verse, verse, verse, verse, verse, verse… kill me now…) and find the distilled essence of the song. I wanted groove, on top of the things that needed to be said. This is what Jay is really good at. I can’t thank him enough, or Shandra for hooking the booster cables up to me, or my pal Meaghan Smith for turning around the art and layout in miracle time.

This is what we’ve come up with. I’ll be touring these songs, mostly solo-electric, but occasionally with a full band, to a town near you as soon as I can. Thanks for your patience. I’ve done some living, gone off, and returned with some stories to tell you.

Being the Ultimate Summer Roadtrip record, or at least as close as I can get, it’ll come out May 1st, just in time. See you out on the road.