New single - Lucky
Last year Isabelle and I were in Calgary visiting my brother in the ICU only a week before he died. While we were there I gave him headphones and had him listen to our upcoming album "Amnesia." I watched as he absorbed the music, and noted that his face was pulling a frown by about halfway through. After listening to it all his first words were, "You need a happy song to balance this album out, it's too dark!" I was a little surprised at his take as I thought the album was quite lovely. However given his circumstance, hooked up to machines and being given pain killers hourly, (plus a song about a friend who'd lost her husband) I guess the music did offer a heavy psychic punch.
Fast forward to the spring of 2026 and an old email my brother Ryan has sent me from perhaps a decade ago popped up in my head. In it he had offered up a lyric for an unwritten song. It was titled "I'm so Lucky." I though that was a bit ironic considering Ryan had been living in a wheelchair for the past thirty five years or so when he wrote it and I kinda dismissed it at the time. It seems to one dimensional (at least to me). However in light of his passing and his own critique of our last album the words stuck in my head.
I was messing around with Ableton Live programming a basic beat when the opening riff came to me on the bass. That led from the E minor riff through the verse into a C major chorus chord progression. The words weren't there at first but came as soon as I put the changes into Live. With that we started jamming together on it and somehow we ended up with the outro in D major, I think it was Dan's suggestion. Isabelle dropped the "It's a state or mind" lyric in the outro and the song was formed! (These multiple modulations seem to be a thing for me this year: we have another new song that also goes through three key changes as well!).
The words went through two solid rewrites, the first lyric was completely abandoned after we had been playing it for a month. They weren't fulfilling the vibe I was feeling. The second version is the version on the single. It is a directive, a lyric written to inspire you to get up, go out and try a night out, celebrate life. The chorus was a paraphrase from my brother's lyric, but instead of being singular, "I'm so lucky," it became the more inclusive plural "We're so lucky, lucky". As we finished up the recording I wanted the backing vocals to really play in important part in the song so we worked for a while to come up the vocal stacks that answers each line of the verses. Greg Hanberry, our conga player and powerhouse vocalist features nicely in the chords of those backing vocals. He's a big fan of Steely Dan, so I said let's try doing in their style. He was game!
After we'd performed the song a couple times I decided the programmed drums weren't giving the song enough lift so I set up the drum kit and played the very simple drum part on the record. I am not a great drummer but even my limited skills gave the song the energy and soul that had been missing. Will that final piece it just came down to mixing, and I spent the summer dabbling with it. That is both the blessing and the curse of having a studio of your own, seemingly endless studio time if you choose! I thin the final result is a nice positive thing, and it's already received a lot a college radio play across Canada - please phone into your local college or co-op radio station and request it, I still believe radio plays an important part in promoting music.
Lyrics:
Suspend your disbelief, come on a ride with me
But dress is up, wer'e out on the town now
Your working day is over you can let yourself breathe
So shake it up start moving to this sound
We're so lucky, lucky to be alive
We're so lucky, lucky to be here tonight
We're so lucky lucky lucky
Never in the moment's like a social disease
So stand it up and listen to this sound
A change in your prespective might be just what you need
So shake. it up start moving to this sound
We're so lucky, lucky to be alive
We're so lucky, lucky to be here tonight
We're so lucky, lucky to be dancing side by side
We're so lucky lucky lucky
We're so lucky, lucky. / To be alive
It's a state of mind, it's a state of mind
We're so lucky, lucky We're so lucky, lucky
To be here tonight
It's a state of mind, it's a state of mind
We're so lucky, lucky We're so lucky, lucky
To be dancing side by side
It's a state of mind, it's a state of mind
We're so lucky, lucky We're so lucky, lucky
To be here tonight
Words and music: Henning, Dunlop, Clement
Produced, engineered and mastered by Mark Henning
Recorded at Boutique Empire Studio, Vancouver, BC Canada
Vocals, bass, drums - Mark Henning
Vocals, synth - Isabelle Dunlop
Guitars, backing vocals - Dan Clement
Congas, backing vocals - Greg Hanberry
No release is complete without a video and this one came courtesy of Daniel Clement once again. This one is his vision, a collection of things we are lucky to live alongside of, from Alan Turing's original computers that defeated WWII Germany's enigma machine, the spinning wheel through the Beatles, Kate Bush and ultimately in a time when David Bowie was alive. It's a fun video for a fun song. have a look!
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