Focus Music Notes. "Out of the Blues". Popular music through the decades

Adam Cohen will release his new album ‘ We Go Home ’ on 15th Sept ’14 on the Cooking Vinyl label. ‘ We Go Home ’, Cohen's fifth album, is a homemade affair. Since the band was playing in Europe, Adam decided to set up shop in the little white house on the Greek island of Hydra where he had spent much of his childhood. They continued recording in Montreal, where Adam was born, in the house where he spent his earliest years. "I knew I was painting a target on my back, making my album in the so-called homes of Leonard Cohen, but they're my homes too. These are the walls that saw me grow up the most and that I needed to come back to. My muse is my home". Some of the themes on ‘ We Go Home ’ continue the conversation that his 2011 album ‘ Like A Man’ began. "I want the songs to speak for themselves", says Cohen, "but what I can say is that the songs on this record mostly chronicle conversations I’ve either had with my old man, or want to have with

Cherished Canadian crooner Ron Sexsmith will release his new album Forever Endeavour on Feb 4, 2013 on the Cooking Vinyl label. Forever Endeavour features another batch of deftly poetic, gently affecting songs that perfectly distil the pitfalls of being human. This record pairs Sexsmith again with producer Mitchell Froom, who, on numerous records over two decades, has framed Sexsmith's music in its most sympathetic surroundings. Noted for his production work with everyone from Los Lobos to Crowded House, Richard Thompson to American Music Club, Froom produced Ron's first three albums and 2006's ‘Time Being’. The heart of ‘Forever Endeavour’ is a batch of songs sparked by an unexpected health scare in the summer of 2011, and it's these tracks that give the album its sorrowful gravitas. "In the middle of a tour last year, they detected a lump in my throat, so I had this period of a few months where I was freaking out about everything,” says Ron, “and that prob