BY DAVID LENNAM. PHOTO: TCHAD BLAKE/FULL MONGREL
Victoria’s popular cover band follows the long and winding road to record at Abbey Road.
Full of nerves, Justin Hewitt cautioned the staff at the iconic Abbey Road Studios not to reveal which legendary singers had used the microphones he was singing into.
“I told them on the first day: ‘Don’t tell me because I imagine I’ll get stage fright. Don’t tell me what I’m singing into until I’m done.’ ”
So, on the third day at the studio, his vocal tracks for Love Will Disarm You (The London Sessions) complete, the staff started pointing them out.
“That skinny one’s John Lennon, that one David Bowie, this one’s Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, this is Oasis …” And so on.
Such is the near-mythical lineup of talent that has laid down tracks at Abbey Road.
Victoria’s Hewitt, frontman for top cover band The Temps, had taken his bandmates and producer Joby Baker to London, to the Mecca of recorded sound, to the most famous recording studio in the world. And there, amidst the musical ghosts of greatness past, they assembled 11 very personal indie-folk and rock tracks — Hewitt’s third album and the first since his 2019 EP The Ways to Love You.
“First time you walk in [to Abbey Road Studios] and get through the front door, you’re like a little kid,” says the 44-year-old Hewitt, who, when not gigging at the Bard & Banker or Irish Times, works as an IT director in the public service. “You go through the hallways and this is a living museum. Every wall you brush against has history. When I walked into Studio Two, it smelled like an old library.”
The story of rock ’n’ roll was everywhere, especially in the iconic Studio Two where The Temps recorded. Abbey Road still uses equipment featured on albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In fact, the silver compressor box that Hewitt’s voice was fed through was used on Sgt. Pepper’s.
Studio Two is more than a holy place for music. It’s where The Beatles recorded almost all their work.
For a Beatles fan like Hewitt (just ask him to talk about Revolver), who recalls a childhood singing along to Beatles tunes with his dad, the project was bittersweet. The pandemic had been a time of loss: his grandmother, uncle, a close friend and, a year later, his dad. Hewitt had already booked dates in Abbey Road when his father passed.
“And he would’ve loved [being in the studio with me].”
His father would be proud of the results, though.
From the power chorus of “Remember When” to the stripped-down introspection of “If This is Goodbye,” the album really captures the band live.
“I approached it like it was the last album I’d ever record. Say this is the last thing you do, so do everything you want on it.”
Hewitt may have felt a bit like he was in Peter Jackson’s recent Beatles doc Get Back and admits he’d one day like to get back to Abbey Road again, but the experience comes with a steep price tag.
Me: “Are you going to tell me how much it cost to book Abbey Road?”
Justin, laughing hard: “Nope. I’m not.”
Hewitt founded The Temps with 54-40 drummer Matt Johnson 13 years ago. While Johnson only sits in from time to time these days, the longtime lineup features heavyweights Rick May (Michael Jackson/Rickie Lee Jones), Murray Creed (Groove Studios/Victoria Drum Fest) and Josh Szczepanowski (the Pink Floyd tribute act PIGS), who have racked up 1,000 live shows together. To describe them as tight isn’t doing them justice.
Hewitt is planning some sort of album release in February, but you can hear some of their London Sessions each night The Temps perform.
For show dates and times, visit irishtimespub.ca or bardandbanker.com.